The Inimitable David Bowie tonight. From his groundbreaking 1990 Sound + Vision tour, a performance at the Milton Keynes Bowl on August 5, 1990.
Billed as a “greatest hits tour” with the object of retiring many of his longtime concert staples in favor of newer material, it was a massive undertaking, spanning five continents and playing some 108 performances from opening night in Quebec on March 4 to concluding in Buenos Aires on September 29th, 1990.
The impetus for retiring much of the old material was due, in large part to looking for a way to rejuvenate a career which had hit a bump in the late 1980s. His previous two albums; Tonight and Never Let Me Down were critically panned, forcing Bowie to reassess his career at this point. He issued a press statement echoing that sentiment:
“It’s time to put about 30 or 40 songs to bed and it’s my intention that this will be the last time I’ll ever do those songs completely, because if I want to make a break from what I’ve done up until now, I’ve got to make it concise and not have it as a habit to drop back into. It’s so easy to kind of keep going on and saying, well, you can rely on those songs, you can rely on that to have a career or something, and I’m not sure I want that.
And despite a strong desire to do so, no film or audio of this concert tour was officially issued. So this Concert recording is rather special, particularly to Bowie fans who haven’t heard it.
Ironically, rather than bidding farewell to a lot of time-tested classics, it becomes a reminder of just what a phenomenal talent David Bowie was throughout his career and just how much that talent is missed.
Needless to say – play this one very loud.
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