David Bowie
The Forum
Inglewood, CA
February 11, 1976
Barry Goldstein Master Series Vol. Seven via JEMS

Recording Gear: Sony TC-55 portable cassette recorder

JEMS 2024 Transfer: Barry Goldstein Master Cassette > Nakamichi RX-505 azimuth-adjusted playback > Sound Devices USBPre2 > Audacity 3.1 capture > iZotope RX > iZotope RX9 Advanced and Ozone 9 > MBIT+ resample to 16/44.1 > Audacity > xACT 2.50 > FLAC

01 Station To Station
02 Suffragette City
03 I'm Waiting For The Man
04 Word On A Wing
05 Stay
06 Band Introduction
07 TVC15
08 Sister Midnight
09 Life On Mars?
10 Five Years
11 Panic In Detroit
12 Fame
13 Changes
14 The Jean Genie

Known Faults: It is possible (if not probable) that Bowie performed 1-2 more songs, likely "Diamond Dogs" and "Rebel Rebel"
-Station To Station: joined in progress
-Life On Mars?: start cut

JEMS is proud to continue our partnership with longtime Southern California taper Barry Goldstein. Barry began taping in the early '70s and has been active ever since, though his later work focused more on video than audio. In his heyday, Barry was a dual threat, recording the shows he attended and photographing, too, with impressive results.

His master tapes circa 1973-83 include several previously uncirculated shows and recordings of David Bowie, Genesis, Roxy Music, Fleetwood Mac, Rory Gallagher, Eric Clapton, Supertramp, The Who and others.

Beyond his own captures, Barry was a close friend of the late, great Mike �The Mike� Millard, attending many concerts with him as well as recording nights and concerts Mike didn't cover. Like Jim R, Barry shared Mike the Mike tapes with JEMS that are not in general circulation for our continuing Lost and Found series.

Volume seven of Goldstein's master recordings appears to be yet another highly desirable, previously uncirculated recording of a previously undocumented show: David Bowie's final night at the Forum on the Isolar tour supporting Station To Station.

JEMS released Ed F's recording from Feb 9 a few years ago, the second of three shows at the Forum. Ed's recording was the first full capture to emerge from any night of the Forum, but suffered from overloaded levels and severe distortion. Now Barry's recording of the final night emerges and gives us an even better document of the LA run. In case some of you are wondering, why Millard did not record any of Bowie's 1976 shows (having taped him in 1974 and 1978) remains a mystery.

As usual, Goldstein was ideally seated near the PA and his recording offers up-close sound and real clarity. While it does suffer from the same bass distortion in moments of high SPL levels like many of his other captures, we've done work to tame the impact and the result is highly listenable and enjoyable, sounding excellent on the slightly less-loud material and to our ears very good overall. Samples provided.

We suspect Barry may have missed the encores, but his list states this show is but a single 90 minute cassette so we're fairly confident this is all there is (unlike our recent expanded edition of Barry's Led Zeppelin June, 22, 1977 recording). Bowie's performance this night is excellent and he engages with the audience on more than one occasion.

Once again, JEMS thanks Barry for trusting us with his incredible audio, video and photographic archive, and for deciding now was the time to share that material widely with fans. Please let him know how much you appreciate it in the comments. His fine photos from this show are featured in the cover art.

Other essential contributions were made by Professor Goody, who checked the pitch, and mjk5510 who took care of post production and designed our cover art.

We look forward to sharing more of Barry's master recordings in 2024.

BK for JEMS

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: