About two and a half years ago, I bit the bullet and bought Bowie's double- disc Singles collection, simply because there were so many tracks on it that I knew well and already loved. "So what if it costs over $20," I thought. "If it's good, who cares?"

Well, piled into that double- disc set were a number of those early '80s tracks where Bowie seemed to lose direction and falter, settling for the pop limelight at the cost of originality and substance. For this reason, Singles gathered dust in my collection until I painfully gave it up at a huge loss to the local CD reseller. Which brings me to The Best of 1969-1974.

Simply put, here's one disc with almost all of the music worth looking for and none of the dubious '80s stuff. This is Bowie in full theatrical effect, his rockabilly strapped firmly into a sequined bustier under a space- suit. 19 out of 20 of the tracks (and 77 minutes) have seen previous release on classics like The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, and Aladdin Sane (among others). I'm not going to list the tracks here, but I'm willing to bet that if you have even only a mild interest in Bowie, you'll find this to be a superior compilation of his best early work. And if you still feel like you need more, there's plenty more good stuff on this album's counterpart, The Best of 1974-1979.

-James P. Wisdom

"Ziggy Stardust"

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