David Bowie - Karma Man (1968)

While a lot of people were under the impression that David Bowie emerged fully-formed onto the music scene in 1969 with the 'Space Oddity' single, the real fans knew that he been slogging away in the music industry for the best part of a decade, playing in bands, writing songs, and trying to make a name for himself, quite literally as it turns out, and that name was Bowie, which he chose to replace his actual name of Jones. I've covered his early career playing with groups such as The Konrads, The Mannish Boys, The Lower Third, and The King Bees, in my 'David Bowie And...' post, and following the chart failure of his debut solo single 'I Dig Everything', he released the 'David Bowie' album on Deram Records in 1967, but once again this didn't achieve any commercial success. At this time he was going through what has become known as his 'Anthony Newley phase', where his vocals were a strange mixture of old-fashioned vaudeville and upper-class singers like Anthony Newley, but if you'd heard the album at the time you would have realised that the songs themselves were far from ordinary, with 'Rubber Band' being a marching tune that employed tuba as the lead instrument, while 'Little Bombardier' and 'Maid Of Bond Street' were in waltz time, and also made extensive use of brass and strings. 'Love You Till Tuesday' and 'Come And Buy My Toys' were among the few songs on the album with an acoustic guitar as the lead instrument, and lyrically he was choosing subjects that were not usually seen in the pop charts, with 'Join The Gang' being an excursion into contemporary youth culture, and 'She's Got Medals' was a gender-bending tale with gay and lesbian connotations. 

After the album was released, Bowie recorded  several more tracks for Deram in September 1967, all of which were refused release as singles, including 'Let Me Sleep Beside You' and 'Karma Man'. Both these tracks had a radically different sound to the material on 'David Bowie', harking back to his mod period, but despite this Deram refused to release them, even after Bowie offered to replace the 'sexually explicit' 'Let Me Sleep Beside You'  with a new version of the album track 'When I Live My Dream', but Deram wouldn't budge, and they were just as intransigent when he presented them with 'In The Heat Of The Morning' and 'London Bye Ta–Ta' in early 1968. The failure of the album and its singles, as well as not being able to produce anything that the label felt worthy of release, cost Bowie his record contract with Deram Records, and they dropped him in April 1968. Bowie immediately went on to form a folk rock trio with Hermione Farthingale and Tony Hill called Turquoise, and the band quickly recorded the single 'Ching-A-Ling', with all three taking vocal lead on different verses. However, before they could look for a record company to release it, Hill left the band, and was replaced by John Hutchinson, with the band changing their name to Feathers. Almost immediately Farthingale left Feathers, and soon after, so did Hutchinson, and so 'Ching-A-Ling' thus became Bowie's fourth abandoned single in a row. He continued to write songs and record demos throughout 1968, and following his death in 2016, many of these previously unheard recordings have surfaced, adding another chapter to his career that was previously just a murky sidebar. He also recorded some music for a proposed film called 'The Looking Glass Murders', as well as making a promotional film of music videos called 'Love You Till Tuesday', to sell himself to a new label, and it also included a narrated mime called 'The Mask', from another of his side projects where he worked with mime artist Lindsay Kemp. 

With so much unheard material appearing in recent years, it's tempting to gather it all together to try to see what a follow-up album to 'David Bowie' might sound like if Deram had kept faith and allowed him to release it in 1968. Obviously the sound quality is going to be variable, although the solo demos are surprisingly good for their age, while the acetates are studio quality as would be expected. One track was even professionally recorded by two bands and released as a single, with 'Silver Tree Top School For Boys'  being issued by The Slender Plenty in September 1967 and later by Scottish group The Beatstalkers in December of the same year, and Bowie's own demo exists in two versions, of which the stripped-back one is the best quality. Of the most recently unearthed songs, 'April's Tooth Of Gold' is an interesting bridge between the 60's Deram records and his darker music around the time of 'The Man Who Sold The World', with the lyrics at odds with the more light weight material that he was writing in 1968, while 'C'est La Vie' was unsuccessfully offered to singer Chris Montez for him to record. The other demos vary between solo acoustic offerings and band demos, alongside a BBC session recording of an otherwise unrecorded song, and the shelved single by Feathers. Because nearly every song has come from a different source the album doesn't run as smoothly as I'd liked, but I think it's great to have all these rare tracks in one place in the form of an album that could have been released in 1968, and it just shows what a prolific period 1967-1968 was for the fledgling pop star. Paul over at albumsthatshouldexist has posted collections of rare Bowie tracks over the years, and a lot of these songs have appeared on them, but these versions will sound a bit different as I've not always used the demo where a finished take was available, and I've done a lot of work on the demos themselves to try to make them sound as good as possible, as well as including those newly discovered pieces from the film soundtrack that he was involved with in 1968.    

 
Track listing

01 Karma Man (unreleased Deram single 1967)
02 April's Tooth Of Gold (demo 1968)
03 Let Me Sleep Beside You (unreleased Deram single 1967)
04 Columbine (demo for the film 'The Looking Glass Murders' 1968)
05 Angel Angel Grubby Face (demo 1968)
06 C'Est La Vie (demo 1967)

07 Silver Tree Top School For Boys (demo 1967)
08 Goodbye Threepenny Joe (demo 1968)
09 The Mirror (demo for the film 'The Looking Glass Murders' 1968)
10 In The Heat Of The Morning (unreleased Deram single 1968)
11 When I'm Five (BBC session 1968)
12 Mother Grey (demo 1967)
13 Life Is A Circus (demo by Feathers)
14 Love All Around (demo 1968)
15 London Bye Ta Ta (unreleased Deram single 1968)