I think the whole live album recording thing is quite embarrassing sometimes.

It's just the same old stuff sung without the polishing of a studio and regurgitated to make a few pennies.

Having said that, Stage will always be my favourite live album of Bowie. Perhaps because the visuals during the actual tour weren't there as they were for Diamond Dogs and Ziggy or indeed the 80s shows and Glass Spider even.

That's why I think David Live is awful. There was interaction and interplay on-stage. You don't get the skull-chat of Cracked Actor or the boxing ring of Panic In Detroit or the cherry picker of Space Oddity (for the latter we don't get it at all, in fact). You just hear the croaky-cokey voice of David with no sense of situation at all.

Having heard very few StationToStation tour recordings, and the ones I have heard were adequate, I think Stage takes the trophy (and I've said this on here before) because of its sheer professional recording technique.

I've heard live gigs from Robbie Williams, The Cure, Queen, Iron Maiden and suchlike and it all lacks the visuals - that's 50% (at least) of why you go to concerts anyway, surely?

Bowie has always been a visual recording artist and that's why his non-studio album work doesn't do itself justice, in the main.

Perhaps it serves to remind those who were there what it was like to be there - certainly that can be said of The Motion Picture soundtrack.

It's like listening to radio reportage of the shooting of JFK and then watching it overdubbed onto the Zapruder film. The difference is stark.