Best of Bowie CD weirdness

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Dr. Webster's picture
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Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 17:34
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Best of Bowie CD weirdness

Hey all,

I recently picked up a copy of "Best of Bowie" and noticed some weirdness on track 7, "Young Americans." The first refrain, where the background singers sing "alllllllll night" is distorted, as if the digital audio level peaked. Subsequent refrians don't have this, but there are inklings of it elsewhere in the track. This does not happen on any other copies of the song, e.g. "Young Americans" on "Sound & Vision" sounds perfectly fine.

My question--does anyone else have this disc? Pop it in and listen to track 7; hear what I'm talking about? If so, who do you think we should contact about getting this fixed? Virgin USA's site is less than helpful.

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I don't have it, but its been

I don't have it, but its been out for awhile and I'm sure it was noticed immediately. There was probably a huge discussion on Bowienet or somewhere else. I wouldn't put it past DB to join in under an alias critizing the problem then officailly announce that it was intentional lol.

Are you looking to fix the problem entirely or just your disc? You could try returning it and looking for a newer copy elsewhere that make have been pressed after this was caught. I'd check the net to see if there's any word of Virgin bothering to fix it before trying this. If I were you I'd burn a backup copy (good idea always) and substitute the track from another CD. Its the album version right?

I saw Bowie in concert during the last tour and the tickets each give you a 1 or 3 month trial membership to Bowienet. I haven't had a chance to poke around there yet but I may have a look soon and see what its like. I've got two tickets so lemme know if you feel like checking it out and I'll hunt down the code or whatever it is you need.

BTW, if you play it backwards its supposed to sound like a Tibetian chant.

Tom

Bowie Rocks! Wonder if he has his own G5 cluster yet?

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Young Americans is fine on my

Young Americans is fine on my copy, no discernible distortion, however it isn't track 7, it's track 15 on disc 1. Which poses the question, which 'Best of Bowie' CD do you have? There were a fair few released as Best of Bowie over the years. Mine's the one released in Europe in 2002.

Dr. Webster's picture
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I probably should have specif

I probably should have specified which version I have. I've got the single-disc USA release (i.e. the one sold at Target):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006L736/qid=1090584888/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-0304839-0254364?v=glance&s=music

I'd just burn a backup with the track from a different album, but the only other copy of "Young Americans" that I have is from Sound + Vision, which is the album version. The one on Best is the single version (2 minutes shorter).

I've Googled for the problem, but all I've come up with is one page of just somebody mentioning it. Can't find anything on if Virgin is/has fixed it.

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