David Bowie – Reality

How many different copies of this album need to be released? I have the Music On Vinyl copies in orange, green, and black that are numbered. All of the copies are 180g , but the black copy is the one that’s played most often. They were re-issued in 2014, and I had to purchase them from Europe. It wasn’t that hard to buy them at the time , but now with Covid-19 it’s a lot harder and costly as well. They sound very good, however I think the black vinyl sounds the best. Also I’ve noticed with the limited number of swirled, two tone, and especially the splatter colored vinyl, they don’t sound as good as the solid translucent colored copies or the basic black. Clear sounds good as well, but it’s sort of hard to see the beginning and end of each track as you can see both sides.

Since then, Friday Music has released this album in several different colors and now color mixtures of this album and it’s kind of a shameless promotion to get collectors to buy the new colored copy.

I am a huge fan of David Bowie and his work, but it’s to the point that it is becoming more about profiting from his untimely death than the actual music of an incredibly talented artist that we lost far too soon. I was 13yrs old and my mother took me to the Serious Moonlight concert and it was the best concert I’ve ever been to for several reasons. Great sound and great company! I lost my mother in 2004, but still that concert to this day. We had front row seats because she worked for the promotion company that brought the tour to Norfolk, VA. I still have the program and the ticket stubs for the show.

From the reviews I’m reading about this album, it’s not the best sounding copy nor is it pressed as well as previous copies either. This even makes it more of a “just for profit” situation as you would think that as great of an artist as David Bowie was, they would show some respect and honor in repressing his work. I don’t own this album and refuse to buy it again just to satisfy their profit margins.

It’s not just these David Bowie albums either, it’s very noticeable that a lot of the new pressings are not as good as they were when vinyl became the newest fad again. I’ve been buying vinyl for decades as it was still available in the peak of the CD era. You just had to look very hard for it or buy it from the internet. The prices of a lot of the latest pressed copies are much higher than they started out at in 2012 or so when vinyl took off again and the quality has seemed to be less than stellar for most re-issues in the past year. I don’t mind spending $50.00 on a very well pressed album that’s usually a 45rpm remastered version. It depends on the company who presses them and where they are pressed. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the people who pressed albums in the 70’s up until the introduction of the CD are now retired or they’re no longer with us. The new people who are doing the actual job of pressing the album are not as experienced as the others and haven’t quite got the hang of what is an “art form”, the pressing of a vinyl album. Companies like RTI, Pallas, and MFSL are still putting out great vinyl LPs, and I think it’s because they still pressed vinyl while the CD was still King.

I still purchase Japanese SHM Mini LP CD box sets and SACDs. I have also ventured into High Resolution and MQA CD as well as High resolution s and digital audio. I mean “The Sex Pistols” in MQA? It’s quite fascinating to listen to. The Platinum “Queen” SHM Mini LP CDs sound far better than the MQA versions of the same album. The MQA copies are only 24Bit/44mHZ, where as the Platinum SHM copies are 24Bit/192kHz. So it’s not worth spending $35.00 on a MQA disc that doesn’t sound nearly as good as the Platinum SHM Disc. Vinyl is still my favorite format and I’ve been collecting albums for 35yrs now.

I have received a couple of MFSL copies that where not the best sounding copies and I’ve had a few arrive with greasy finger prints or an oily like substance on the surface on them. I still buy them as they have a great resale value. I also clean every single album I add to my collection as well, before I play it. I learned the hard way that this should always be done. One company I avoid is Mexican Summer. The very long response as to why I clean every album before it goes into my collection is listed below in the group thread below. It’s the one reason I try to avoid Mexican Summer albums.

https://discogs.programascracks.com/group/thread/778440#7758857

Texasbear

Wow, 2 vastly different reviews/opinions below. i have to say i'm in the middle. While this LP is by no means as bad as "dghkfhldfdhlfa" feels it is it is also not worthy of the huge amount of nonsense "guybahir" feels the need to write about it. Its a good solid effort. Some awesome songs (the title track-disco king-pablo picasso-days) and some less efforts but NONE poor. It grew on me a lot and although i think technically and commercially successfully, HEATHEN is a better album i somehow prefer REALITY. With less "silly songs" and covers REALITY hasnt aged or got boring for me yet. Now THE NEXT DAY has been released i think its safe to say this is a much better effort. Although, don't get me wrong, for a God a short time away from 70, THE NEXT DAY is still irable and i like it very much. Anyway, REALITY, if you like Bowie, you like this.

(Found this lying around... wrote it when the album came out)

Let me start you off with a warning: I am the last person on Earth to take a Bowie recommendation from. I am what you’d probably call a Bowie fanboy; when I saw him live I hit an emotional meltdown as soon as he opened his mouth. Not that I think all Bowie material is on the same level of greatness, some of his work is, infact, pretty bad. But Tin Machine aside - well, let’s just say I love the albums nobody seems to until 20 years after their release, when they suddenly realize that yes, once again, Dave was blissfully walking ahead, whistling his cleverly camouflaged trailblazer tunes to a world populated by deaf mutants.
Also, unlike way too many music connoisseurs and other wankers, I think that Bowie’s output of the last 15 years has pretty much been the best in his career, a couple of pre - Let’s Dance albums aside.
So I went and finally bought ‘Reality’.
Let’s put it this way: imagine the best DJ in the world playing 8 different records at once, divinely mixing them together into one album and then cutting it into tracks and remixing; and then Bowie supplies all the vocals. Ok? No? Ok.
Imagine visiting a parallel Earth, and opening the radio. You seem to sort of recognize all the songs you hear, but you also know full well that you’ve never heard them before; besides, the pitch mechanism back at the station seems to have somehow malfunctioned, as none of the songs follow a strictly ‘correct’ harmonic pattern, but they still all make perfect pop sense.
See, Bowie recognizes the value of grit and distortion, and here is what he does: he doesn’t get influenced by musicians like the rest of us; being a true pop genius (and - unlike all those instrument-whacking zitfaced morons who make up 99% of any music scene in these sad times - a MUSICIAN), he understands what his favorite people do, and simply assimilates them. Resistance is futile, the Bowrg is here. THEN, you see, he processes them, and out the other end they come, fully Bowieized, to be incorporated into his own material and according to his sensibilities. He is the most convincing form of musical parasite that ever existed, a human sampler, a walking musical collage, and everyone from Your Favorite Crooner through Tricky & Co., Bird, Sting, the Beatles and Angelo Badalamenti to Sonic Youth, Bowie himself and Bowie-only-knows who else, is effortlessly featured in this album - reflected through his internal hall of mirrors.
That much being the first stage is obvious.
Then, I would imagine, he composes and arranges 20-30 straight pop tunes, cuts them up into pieces like he says he does his lyrics, throws everything into a cylinder-hat, turns it on a table and pastes them back together pretty much accidentally.
Having done the basic research, he cleans up the residue and visible seams, plays around with whatever it is he has there, and distorts some of the resulting harmonies so as to not be too confident with the end result. Now that the structure is clear, he’ll insert the lyrics into his musical hybrids and bring it to his (phenomenal) band and producer to play with, and when everyone’s had their fun and the song is recorded, he’ll just create some more internal soundscapes, noise layers and time-machine substructures you can barely notice and plant them in there, carefully layered in order to disorient you just a bit without any real damage to your brain.

Yup.

So, this is Reality.

Seeya.