David Bowie’s Station to Station Special & Deluxe Editions Reissue Out Now–Win a 3-CD Set

STATION TO STATIONEven as a huge fan of 70’s Bowie, I always regarded Station To Station (1976; recorded right here in Los Angeles) as one of my least favorite of his LPs. Before Napster, I only had a beat up vinyl copy which I didn’t drop the needle on all that often. (At only 3 songs a side, what’s the point in breaking it out, I’m sure I thought at some level.) Never really dug the funk or disco touches and there’s just far too much muso noodling going on by all players. Overall, listening to it felt like work; my ears had to strain to pick out hooks, apart from “Golden Years.”

Now, having lived with the new 2010 remaster (out now) in the car now for the last couple weeks, while I can’t exactly report an epiphany, that I’ve wholly awoken to its widely praised virtues, I can say I’ve thawed to it and perhaps have begun to get it a bit more. It doesn’t necessarily deliver what I need when I put on a record most of the time, but then neither does, say, Dirty Projectors–whose Bitte Orca deluxe reissue is also spending time in the car these days—75% of the time to me. This record is for that other 25% of the time when a simple two and a half minute hook won’t scratch that itch between the ears and sometimes you need a five or six minute excursion that is halfway between pop and something more experimental that doesn’t necessarily resolve tidily.

The bonus discs in the new reissue of a recording of a ‘76 Nassau Colosseum live show sweetens the reissue package, as a live document of the period. Be warned, there is a lot of disco high-hat throughout that begins to fatigue and is particularly unnecessarily on a cover of the Velvet’s “Waiting for The Man.”

ENTER to win in a copy of the 3-CD special edition and maybe tell me what I’m missing in this record. (Include a mailing address.)

Station to Station