Space Oddity
	A side produced by Gus Dudgeon
	Released on July 1969
	UK CHART POSITION #5 . . . US CHART POSITION #15 charted January 27, 1973 (14 weeks) . . . UK CHART POSITION #1 (1975)
	Find it at GEMM
GB-10470 wo. picture sleeve

B eing a young Bowie fan familiar with the song “Space Oddity” in legend only, I brought this single home from the store one day and waited patiently for the solitude of night to unlock its secrets. I can still remember pressing my ear against the speaker and drinking the song’s strange magic in like some extraterrestrial oxygen, amazed that the artist had once again cleared the impossibly high expectations I held for him. This magical moment, by the way, was delivered courtesy of an all-in-one stereo system produced by the likely long-defunct Lennox company, and featured no less than a cassette player/recorder, three-speed turntable, 8-track player and AM/FM receiver within its modest frame. This, back in the days when consumers confused innovation with function, before we became so drunk with our own technological illiteracy that we came to believe innovation equated to unnecessary features, higher prices and pleasing aesthetic shapes. In fact, the standard-bearers of the industrial revolution have done a lovely job of washing their hands from the whole unseemly business of manufacturing altogether, preferring to skim profits from the works of other countries under the guise of distribution, moneylending, paper-pushing and productivity enhancement. (Planet Earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do.) In this spirit, “The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud” was soon displaced by “The Man Who Sold The World” and, eventually, “Ashes To Ashes.” An English EP from the mid-70s featured “Space Oddity” alongside “Changes” and the non-album “Velvet Goldmine.” David Bowie also re-recorded “Space Oddity” in the late ‘70s (limply, I’m afraid) as the B side to his Brechtian exercise “Alabama Song.”

TRACK LISTING

Original 1969 track listing

1. SPACE ODDITY
2. THE WILD EYED BOY FROM FREECLOUD
   
   1973/5 reissue track listing
   
1. SPACE ODDITY    (David Bowie)    5:06
2. THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD    (David Bowie)    3:53
   
   UK 7-inch EP reissue track listing
   
1. SPACE ODDITY
2. CHANGES
3. VELVET GOLDMINE

CREDITS

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