David Bowie – What In The World (1978)

What In The World was originally a track from David Bowie’s album “Low”, released in January 1977, the first of four extraordinary ground breaking records he produced that year.

The audio of this live version is from the 2005 Tony Visconti remaster of the David Bowie’s 1978 album, “Stage”.

“Stage” was recorded live in 1978 on the “Isolar II” world tour. The recordings were made in the Spring of ’78, during the early part of the tour, at U.S. shows, in Philadelphia, Boston and Providence.

The footage used is from the show at Dallas Convention Centre, in Texas, on the 10th of April, 1978. The show was shot by RCA as a promotional film for “Stage”. Thankfully the 21 minute film survived in great quality, and is easily the best record we have of the ’78 tour.

The original version of What In The World is a wonderful, short, brittle and abrasive avant-pop track from side one of Low. That original cut is just a little over 2 minutes long. However, for the ‘78 tour the song was quite radically rearranged,. It was doubled in length, split into two and transformed into something enormously enjoyable. For me the track is one of the highlights of the set. Musically the first half was unrecognizable from the original, having become a slower, funky reggae-tinged groover. Then after a quick drum break, the beats are doubled in time and the band belt out something closer to the original. The entire lyric of the Low original is sung in full, in both sections. And Bowie’s vocal is a joy – he’s ditched the cold severity of the studio version and sings with emotion and a more developed melody.

Carlos Alomar was the rhythm guitarist and musical director for the tour. It is likely that it was Carlos and his rhythm buddies, Dennis Davis on drums and George Murray on bass, collectively The D.A.M. Trio, that came up with the new grooves. It is hard to overstate the importance of the D.A.M. Trio on Bowie’s output from 1975 to 1980. After Dennis Davis death last year, Carlos wrote an article about his friend Dennis and the D.A.M. Trio, “The uniqueness of the D.A.M. Trio was that Bowie allowed us to work the arrangements with just the Trio. Everyone else would over-dub. To that end, the sky was the limit…no idea was out of bounds.” https://carlosalomar.wordpress.com/20…

In the comments section of Chris O’Leary’s What In The World article on his “Pushing Ahead of the Dame” blog, “Ian” writes, “I think the Alomar/Davis/Murray trinity was a great foil. It sort of seems like DB comes to town with some chord progressions, a melody or two, and little more than a shell, and Alomar and the dudes take those and make either a really solid Jam that Bowie can do whatever he wants over, or they make a more put-together song. What I mean to say is, I love giving Alomar as much credit as people give Ronson.”
https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011…

Dennis Davis extraordinary 10 year old son, Hikaru Davis, has started a beautiful initiative:

“Tracing My Dad – The Life and Music of Dennis Davis”.

It is a video tribute series to his late father, whereby Hikaru interviews the musicians that knew and worked with Dennis Davis. In Volume 3, Hikaru interviews Carlos Alomar:

HD: If you could play one song… with Dennis… what would it be?
CA: What In The World… a simple song, but the music was so cool, I love playing that kind of stuff.
From Tracing My Dad… Volume 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY0JB…

And so this video is dedicated to Hikaru. Tracing My Dad… is a beautiful, heartfelt project and I wish him the best of luck with it. I’ll be helping him along the way, where I can. He really wants to get more followers and comments and likes on his social media platforms, so it would be great if he could get some support from Bowie fans. You can find him online as The HD Projects:
www.facebook.com/thehdprojects
www.youtube.com/channel/UCY2aDqSy2_g6hysuYU7uOPw

As always…
Hope you dig it!

Do me an’ yerself a favor – watch it in the Highest Def available with the sound UP LOUD!

Footage supplied by the db Digital Archive.

If anyone has any other footage, or ideas for another video project, of material from Bowie’s classic period, do please get in touch: nachomarcho@gmail.com

Putting this video together was another huge labour of love, made with love and with respect for the source.

I don’t own the rights, and I’m not making any money out of this etc. Just a fan making videos for other fans.

Nacho, March 10th, 2017.