A Wonderful Glastonbury Evening (Eat A Peach EAT 117/118)
Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, Somerset, UK. – June 25, 2000
Disc 1 (58:17) Wild Is The Wind, China Girl, Changes, Stay, Life On Mars?, Absolute Beginners, Ashes To Ashes, Rebel Rebel, Little Wonder, Golden Years, Fame, All The Young Dudes
Disc 2 (61:15) The Man Who Sold The World, Station To Station, Starman, Hallo Spaceboy, Under Pressure, Ziggy Stardust, Heroes, Let’s Dance, I’m Afraid Of Americans. Bonus Tracks; David Bowie and Mike Garson, Yahoo Internet Music Awards, Studio 54, New York City, July 24, 2000; Wild Is The Wind, Life On Mars?
Back in the year 2000, NME (New Musical Express, there long running and influential British music publication) held a poll under the banner, “Glasto’s Most Historic Sets” ranking the Glastonbury Festivals best performances, at the time Bowie’s performance from that year was unanimously in the top five, recently (2016) festival founder Michael Eavis declared it the “best ever” paying a homage to the recently deceased artist. I, like many people, have been listening a lot to Bowie this year, I feel as though I took him for granted as he has always been there. I can remember seeing the Ashes To Ashes video and wondering who in the hell it was, in true Bowie fashion the music and ever changing look would help define MTV in the 80’s and leave a significant stamp on popular music. The collectors market has been flooded with releases and I pick up a few here and there which brings me to this review. From the moment I first put the first disc on and began listening I was individuality sucked into the performance, it just seems like something special.
Taken from the BBC Broadcast, it came out on CD early on as Glastonbury Messiah (No Label) and Glastonbury 2000 (Switch On! 2001-13-1/2) and recently as Live At Midnight-Glastonbury Festival 2000 (Sound and Vision Archive SVAC009CD1/2), Glastonbury 2000 (Rebel Records RR 1958 24) and this new release from Eat A Peach. Speaking for this title only, the sound is excellent, professionally recorded with superb balance, the audio engineers did an excellent job mixing the crowd as the presence and feedback they give David resonate throughout the performance. The set list is superb, very early deep cuts (Man Who Sold the World), the mid 70’s funk stuff (Rebel Rebel and Fame) and a nice piece of Station To Station (Station To Station, Stay, Golden Years, and Wild Is The Wind) as well as a couple of his 80’s hits (Ashes To Ashes, Let’s Dance). David speaks of having laryngitis days before then gives a moving performance of Life On Mars?, certainly one of the evenings most moving songs. Newer songs Little Wonder and the finale of I’m Afraid Of Americans fit perfectly with their classic counterparts. This concert needs no play by play and long drawn out review, it needs to be played and enjoyed, simply put, one of the finest Bowie shows in my collection and one that music fans should have in their collections.
There are a couple of bonus tracks on this set, David and long time keyboard / piano player Mike Garson doing a couple songs at the Yahoo Internet Music Awards in 2000. The recording is excellent and sounds like it was recorded over the Internet, yet the performance sublime. Garson is an exception player, the sole player from the Ziggy days Bowie kept around and for good reason.
The packaging is what we expect from Eat A Peach, wonderful pictures intertwined with font graphics from his Hours record as well as a nice insert with liner notes. Great packaging and a must have historic concert, if you do not have this concert in your collection, do not hesitate to get a copy of this concert as it is a classic.
