David Bowie – Spying Through A Keyhole (Demos And Unreleased Songs)

In retrospect, I wish I had bought better-known The Mercury Demos instead of this one. I was enticed by the idea of hearing a couple of early Bowie songs I had never heard before. But the sound quality here is even rougher, with grating distortion when the home recording equipment got overloaded — especially in the choruses.

This set is for completists only. In the 5+ years since I bought it, I think I've spun the whole thing twice.

Nice packaging, though.

Some people might hate the box format, but I love it for this set and prefer it over the idea of this being on a 12 inch.
I feel like I am digging through Bowie's early tapes in a secret basement and playing them with one single at a time captures that feeling perfectly.

A good season for the Bowie lunatic. Parlophone and the Bowie estate has been releasing a series of demos, that is from the late 1960s. All are fascinating. "Spying Through A Keyhole" is part of a two-volume boxset of 7" singles. Elaborate packaging, perhaps a tad too much of a design project, still the music inside is way more than worthwhile. This boxset is four 7" singles (9 tracks), and it's total Kenneth Pitt era Bowie. Before he went Anthony Newley, he had a folk fixation that eventually turned into British Music Hall aesthetic, but at this time, and demo quality, a quiet look into the Bowie psyche. The famous song here is "Space Oddity," and we get two versions, one just an excerpt, and the other is a more full arranged with the assistance of guitar and voice John "Hutch Hutchinson. Who I think plays a bigger part in the other Bowie 'demos,' but more of that in another blog post.

The obscure songs here are "Mother Grey," "Love All Around," and "Angel Angel Grubby Face." Not as great as the other undiscovered Bowie material, but still interesting to hear how strong his sense of aesthetic and vision was at the time. The other obscure number, and it's excellent is "Goodbye Threepenny Joe." A great melody, lyric, and I don't know why he didn't re-do this song on a future release. For me, this is the tune that is worth the whole package. If you are a Bowie lunatic, you must have this package, but there are better demo albums out there by David, and I will be writing about them shortly.

As much as i like boxes with surprises and extras, this 7" box format is just silly. I hate it! Why would you even put 9 songs the were never released as a single in the first place in a 7" single format?
The songs are interesting for fans and it's absolutely great that they finally get a proper release, but fer feks sake: put 'em on a proper 12" inch so that I don't have to get off my ass and flip the disk every 2 and half minute!

In the pack of 4 that I bought two of them were wavy, does anyone have the same case?
Thank you