Bowie 'Shel Talmy' Recordings Criticized as Generic 60s Filler — SkimNews
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- The Shel Talmy Recordings is a 21-track compilation of David Bowie's mid-1960s output as Davie Jones — including two flop singles with the Mannish Boys and The Lower Third — released with a merchandise range spanning four T-shirts, a hoodie, a baseball cap, a tote bag, a commemorative mug, and a pair of socks.
- The reviewer labels the material "pretty flimsy," citing direct impersonations: Take My Tip mimics Georgie Fame, Baby Loves That Way reworks Smokey Robinson's You Really Got a Hold on Me, and other tracks sound like B-sides by the Swinging Blue Jeans or Dave Clark Five.
- A red vinyl collectors' edition ships with 8,000 words of sleevenotes by 60s rock historian Alec Palao, while late producer Shel Talmy's quote — "He and I were about six years ahead of the market" — is challenged given the music's heavy debt to 1965 British rock from the Yardbirds, Who, and Kinks.
- The release is framed as part of a posthumous "rewriting" of Bowie's career that casts him as an "unimpeachable genius"; the reviewer notes his 2000 Glastonbury set didn't actually reinvigorate his career, and his 2001 album Toy — which revisited this same 60s material — was bafflingly rejected by EMI.
- Among demos striking out in different directions, "I Live in Dreams" stands apart as the one track that, "with a spit and a polish," might have fit on Bowie's 1969 self-titled post-Space Oddity album.
- Judged on quality alone, the reviewer argues, these tracks would be "filler for collections of obscure 60s freakbeat" — pointing to genuinely superior peers like the Syndicats, the Eyes, and Ronnie Wood's mid-60s band the Birds, whose single Leaving Here became a lifelong touchstone for Lemmy of Motörhead.
Why it matters: The release bundles 21 tracks of derivative 1965 British rock with four T-shirts, a hoodie, baseball cap, tote bag, mug, and socks. The reviewer argues Bowie's posthumous mythology inflates mediocre early work into a collectible artifact — while genuinely superior 60s peers like the Birds and Syndicats receive no comparable deluxe treatment.
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