The Platinum Collection

The Platinum Collection

Artist: David Bowie
Label: Virgin Records Us
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 3

UPC: 094633130425
EAN: 0094633130425
ASIN: B000AMUU94

Release Date: 2006-01-10

The Platinum Collection

Related Categories:

Proto Punk

| Hardcore & Punk | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

General

| Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

General

| Rock | Styles | Music

Progressive Rock

| Progressive | Rock | Styles | Music

General

| Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

Hard Rock

| Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

Album-Oriented Rock (AOR)

| Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Glam

| Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Box Sets at 30% Off

| Blowout Music | Stores | Music

Pop

| Styles | Blowout Music | Stores | Music

Classic Rock

| Styles | Blowout Music | Stores | Music

Rock

| Styles | Blowout Music | Stores | Music

Alternative Rock

| Styles | Blowout Music | Stores | Music

Hard Rock & Metal

| Styles | Blowout Music | Stores | Music

All Blowout Music

| Blowout Music | Stores | Music

More Titles at Least 25% Off

| Blowout Music | Stores | Music

Tracks:

The Jean Genie
Space Oddity
Starman
Ziggy Stardust
John, I'm Only Dancing
Rebel Rebel
Let's Spend The Night Together
Suffragette City
Oh! You Pretty Things
Velvet Goldmine
Drive-In Saturday
Diamond Dogs
Changes
Sorrow
The Prettiest Star
Life On Mars?
Aladdin Sane
The Man Who Sold The World
Rock 'N' Roll Suicide
All The Young Dudes

Tracks:

Sound And Vision
Golden Years
Fame
Young Americans
John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)
Can You Hear Me
Wild Is The Wind
Knock On Wood
TVC 15
1984
It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City
Look Back In Anger
The Secret Life Of Arabia
DJ
Beauty And The Beast
Breaking Glass
Boys Keep Swinging
'Heroes'

Tracks:

Let's Dance
Ashes To Ashes
Under Pressure
Fashion
Modern Love
China Girl
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
Up The Hill Backwards
Alabama Song
Drowned Girl
Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)
This Is Not America
Loving The Alien
Absolute Beginners
When The Wind Blows
Blue Jean
Day-In Day-Out
Time Will Crawl
Underground

Similar Items:

David Bowie - Serious Moonlight
Heathen
Reality
Retrospectacle: The Supertramp Anthology
Diamond Dogs [ECD]

Album Description

UK pressing is packaged in a slip case. The compilation features the cream of the material the star recorded between 1969 and 1987. David Bowie remains impossible to pigeonhole - first there was Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, a White Soul Boy and a Thin White Duke. He went on to invent synth-pop with Tony Visconti and Brian Eno and then disappeared behind the make-up of Pierrot when the New Romantics mixed all of his eras together. And then, he became a truly global megastar in the 80s. This collection contains four UK No. 1s, 15 Top 10, six Top 20 and 14 Top 75 hits; 338 weeks of UK chart history. But David Bowie could never be contained by statistics alone: any collection that contains Starman, The Jean Genie, Fame, "Heroes", Sound and Vision, Ashes To Ashes, Under Pressure and Let's Dance spells it plainly - this is a collection of some of the greatest and best-known music of the 20th Century by one of its very finest performers. 57 tracks in total. EMI. 2005.

Album Details

Digitally Remastered Triple CD Set of the Best of the Enigmatic Rocker's Best Recordings from his Years on Both RCA and EMI. Includes the Hard to Find Cover of Kurt Weill's "Alabama Song" as Well as Many Single Versions of Hits. 56 Tracks in all with Extensive Liner Notes.

Customer Reviews:

if this would be the only david bowie album youd buy.............................2007-04-29

make it this one i say this because one you get all those songs of him and plus its onlly 25 bucks not bad. plus this set contains all the essential songs of david bowie two you get all these songs that you can explore throguh and listen to, three just buy it youll be satisfied i was inleast

Edited versions make for a botched oppurtunity.......2007-01-12

For the casual Bowie fan this is a pretty good and pretty thorough collection, spreading across the breadth of what is widely considered his classic years, and including most of his well known songs, as well as a hit and miss selection of various rarities and semi-rarities. But is the song selection here as good as it could be? Is it listenable all the way through? Does it contain any bad songs? And what purpose does it serve in a world that already contains several Bowie compilations?
The real reason to consider this compilation is for the third disc, as the other two are available separately. Bowie's 80's period (discounting Scary Monsters)is the one in most need of a compilation cd as it was his weakest era. Let's Dance, Tonight, and Never Let Me Down are really of interest only for their singles and frankly not worth buying to anyone but a diehard. A compilation that simply rounded up the singles from these three albums would nicely fill a gap in Bowie's catalogue. Does disc 3 of the platinum collection fit the bill? Not quite. For one thing, the superb song "Never Let Me Down", from the mostly bad album of the same name, is inexplicably ommitted in favor of dreck such as "Underground" from the Labyrinth movie, and various other movie soundtrack songs that, while handy to get in one place like this, are generally from very decent soundtracks that would be worth having on their own. Futhermore in the effort to cram as many songs, including various sundry rarities, on here as possible, the compiliers have resorted to inferior edited versions of some key songs. Thank God they at least seem to have chosen the soundtrack version of Cat People (judging by the amazon song sample) instead of the absolutely wretched remake that mars the "Let's Dance" album. [Incidently, the Cat People remake is the very thing thing that pushes Let's Dance from a mediocre album to a bad one in my book, knocking it off my to-buy list and making this compilation tempting in the first place because of its inclusion of the 3 excellent Let's Dance singles].
However, despite what appears to be the inclusion of the original version of Cat People, they have chopped off two minutes of the song, a butchery job which borders on blasphemy! I really wonder why compilers think that this sort of thing is acceptable these days. Arbirarily cutting off minutes this way just to save space shows a real lack of respect for a recorded song as a performance and a peice of art. Can anyone imagine "Stairway to Heaven" or "I am the Walrus" or "Hey Jude" with two minutes lopped off? Would they be just as good? No? Then why do it here? The soundtrack version of "Cat People" is one of Bowie's very finest vocal performances and is somewhat hard to find on a Bowie cd in its original 6 minute plus version. If the idea was to include some genuinely worthwhile rarities from this era, an unedited "Cat People" should have been top of the list. But instead they amputate two whole minutes. I'm sure apologists for this kind of mutilation have their reasons. Perhaps someone will say this edit was actually some obscure 7 inch single version and not a new edit made specifically for this compilation. Regardless of such irrelvencies, everyone knows the definitive version of "Cat People" is the 6 minute plus version, so why not include it? If space was the only reason, I would gladly get rid of boring rarity-for-rarity's-sake crud like "Drowned" and "Alabama Song" that drag down the momentum of this cd anyway, to get back those 2 minutes of one of my all time favorite Bowie songs.
Disc 2 has a similar problem in the severely edited version of "Young Americans". Some songs simply need to be heard in full. These two are prime examples. As a result it's hard to reccomend this album and I consider it a botched oppurtunity to make sense of Bowie's 80's output.
Finally, as the Best of David Bowie 1969-1974 and 1974-1979 respectivly, are identical to disc one and two of this set, it seems to be adding insult to injury not to make disc 3 available separately as well---perhaps they thought it wouldn't sell on its own. Instead, those who own the first two discs already in the form of the earlier collections would be forced to duplicate them if they simply wanted the third disc as a representation of bowie's 80's period.
Though I might make this compilation sound pretty bad, it does enough things right to make itself tempting (such as collecting together some essential singles and rarities, especially from the shaky 80's period) and, in its favor, it actually could have been much worse. At the very least the compilers should be lauded for having the good taste not to include that horrendous monstrosity of a cover of "Dancing in the Street" Bowie did with Mick Jagger in the early 80's. I consider that abomination to be Bowie's absolute career low point and hands down THE worst song he's ever recorded bar none (yes I have heard the entire Deram Anthology including the infamous "Laughing Gnome", Dancing in the Street is worse). I cannot even listen to Dancing in the Street all the way through without feeling the overwhelming urge to press skip and actually got rid of the otherwise excellent "Singles Collection 1969-1993" simply because I was tired of having to get up and skip that godawful song every time I listened to it. So, simply by not including "Dancing in the Street", this collection earns an extra star from me, bringing it up from a 2 to a 3. And I truly hope this precedent becomes a trend for all future retrospective Bowie compilations.
To end on a more positive note, disc one of this album is a terrific encapsulation of bowie's glam period. It includes great rarities such as "Velvet Goldmine" and the almost impossible to find Bowie version of "All the Young Dudes", which is almost enough on it's own to make it worth buying, even if it does include a bit too much from Aladdin Sane. Fortunately, it is available separately as "The Best of David Bowie 1969-1974".

exhaustive yet essential.......2006-04-14

The Platinum Collection collects 58 of Bowie's most beloved recordings

Pluses:
- everything is remastered
- most of Bowie's essential hits are here
- a few rarities that are only available on the very expensive "Sound And Vision" box
- unlike "Sound And Vision", contains the hits as well

Minuses:
- I am fine with radio edits sometimes, because some are needed to save space, but... why do we get the heavily edited "Heroes" (one of Bowie's finest hours) yet 7 minutes of "John I'm Only Dancing Again", which is one of the worst disco forays ever.
- the idea that 1987 was the end of Bowie's career is kinda presented here. Any true Bowie fan knows that the past dozen or so years have been more fruitful and full of highlights than the 1980's were
- slightly overpriced considering the import is almost half the price as the US version

If you don't already have a huge Bowie collection, this one collects many of the greats for the first 20 years. However, don't think that this is all you need... check out his latter albums, such as "Reality", "Hours", "Heathen", "Outside", "Earthling" and "Black Tie White Noise", all of these albums are wonderful and Bowie's had a silent renaissance.

One for completists.......2006-03-12

Previously issued as three separate discs, this set covers Bowie's career through 1987. This ignores the last 20 years, in which Bowie released eight albums.

If you're a casual fan, the 2-disc "Best of Bowie" is a better bet. It includes all the hits and features selections from the later albums such as "Tin Machine", "Outside", and "Hours".

The four disc box set "Sound and Vision" covers the whole of Bowie's career (so far) but leaves off "Fame" and "Let's Dance", while including two or three rarities.

This leaves "The Platinum Collection" squarely in the middle. All the hits are here, although many of them are radio edits, which may be jarring if you're used to the full-length cuts. (The edit on "Young Americans" is particularly weird, and to my knowledge has never appeared on CD before.)

For the completist, this set includes a handful of rarities, some of which are unavailable elsewhere ("John, I'm Only Dancing Again 1975," for example).

This may be an ideal one-stop solution for a casual fan, if you're not interested in the last 20 years. However, the 2-disc "Best of Bowie" is still a better choice, because it's more comprehensive and the full-length edits are all there.

Music Album:

Music Album

Music CD

Belonging ~ Keith Jarrett with Jan Garbarek

Design in Time ~ Ken Vandermark's Sound in Action Trio

Sunday Mornin' ~ Grant Green

The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions ~ Chris Woods

Crudup's After Hours ~ Big Boy Crudup

Choros & Alegria ~ Moacir Santos

Classique Marocaine Musique ~ Various Artists

The Prince of Love: Vocal Art of North India

10 Anni Live 1971 - 1981 ~ PFM

M-Flo Works ~ Various Artists