The birthday of the late legend David Bowie was marked on January 8th, and two interesting celebrations were noted on that day in 2024.
As a sort of a tradition, a new Bowie release has been announced. The online version of the monthly Uncut magazine notes that this time around it is Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth), essentially an alternative version of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, taken from the Trident Studios 1/4” stereo tapes dated December 15, 1971, which were created for the provisional track listing of the final album.
The track listing for Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) runs differently from the Ziggy Stardust album and features four songs that didn’t make the final album. On Side 1, in the place of “Starman” (one of the last three tracks recorded for the album in February 1972), is the Chuck Berry cover “Round And Round”, later released as the B-side to “Drive-In Saturday.”
Initially, closing Side 1 of the album was Bowie’s version of Jacques Brel’s “Amsterdam”, which would later appear as the B-side of “Sorrow.”
Side 2 features a re-recording of the 1971 single “Holy Holy”, which surfaced as the B-side of “Diamond Dogs” in 1974. Meanwhile, “Velvet Goldmine” was not released until 1975, backing the re-released version of “Space Oddity” that eventually reached No. 1.
The cover of the LP features a photo taken at an early Ziggy Stardust-era session by Brian Ward, and the two sides of the inner bags are the fronts of the two Trident Studios tape boxes.
Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) will release April 20, 2024 for Record Store Day.
At the same time, a street in Paris named after Bowie officially opened on January 8, 2024. The Rue David Bowie also featured his year of birth and death.
It is situated between two modern office buildings, including the headquarters of news publications Le Monde and L’Obs, and opens onto Avenue Pierre-Mendes-France and will connect to the future bridge linking the avenue to Boulevard de l’Hopital, near Austerlitz train station and Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital.
