Music Monday: John I’m Only Dancing Again

Music Monday: John I’m Only Dancing Again

I don’t get why this is being reissued.

CHANGESTWOBOWIE is being reissued this week on vinyl, no extra tracks, and not the CHANGESBOWIE compilation that combined the two “changes” compilations.

David Bowie has many “best of” compilations including the (relatively) recently released and completely career spanning Nothing Has Changed (which, even for those of us who have nearly every David Bowie album is something to pick up).

There have been a number of fantastic compilation albums released throughout Bowie’s career. Originally the best of them were CHANGESONEBOWIE released in 1976 and gathering up a number of his more notable tunes up to that point. In 1981 his record label released CHANGESTWOBOWIE which picked up where the previous compilation left off.

I have the original vinyl editions of these two albums, as well as subsequent “best of” compilations, such as The Singles Collection (featuring the first CD release of his duet with Bing Crosby – a tune that can still be difficult to find), Best Of Bowie, Sound + Vision, and of course the aforementioned Nothing Has Changed.

What is it about this compilation that makes it viable for remastering and reissue?

All of the songs here, save one, are available on various albums Bowie released in the 70s. Instead of simply taking the next set of singles this compilation also reaches back into the early 70s to cull tracks from the Ziggy persona on through to his 1980 album Scary Monsters and his “clown” persona (which stuck around for the one album).

The one oddity (for lack of a better term) on this album is “John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)” – a song that hasn’t really made many appearances on compilations or as bonus tracks on other album reissues.

Originally “John, I”m Only Dancing” released as a single in 1972, then rerecorded with saxophone and released as a single in 1973. Both versions have been included on various compilations. In 1974 the song was rerecorded again and released as a single as “John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)” – which has appeared on far fewer compilations.

At some point I am hoping there will be a compilation that gathers up comprehensively the various extraneous tracks and alternate versions as well as the soundtrack appearances that have not made their way onto the “best of” compilations. “That’s Motivation” from Absolute Beginners comes to mind, as does “Nature Boy” from Moulin Rouge!

Until then we have to scrape and scrounge for the various versions of tracks, this one included.  And it’s not even being releases on CD as far as I can tell.