On a scorching summer s day in August 1990, 60,000 music fans travelled through the suffocating heat to attend David Bowie s homecoming concert at Milton Keynes Bowl. As expected, all the hits were performed in an event broadcast on Radio 1, televised on ITV and simulcast on the Westwood One network across America. The show opened what would be a final lap of Europe for the Sound + Vision Tour, before Bowie took his show to South America for the tour finale. Although there were two dates at Milton Keynes, August the 4th and 5th, the 5th was billed as a farewell concert , the final time that Bowie would perform his hits of the past three decades to his native audience. A greatest hits tour, Sound + Vision had kicked off in Canada as a means to provide David Bowie with what he hoped would be new impetus. His two most recent studio albums, Tonight and Never Let Me Down, had both been critically panned and, although he had formed a new band, Tin Machine , to help rediscover his muse, the heavy legacy of his previous golden period still weighed on his career. The release of the Sound + Vision retrospective box-set in September 1989 offered Bowie an opportunity to step into a new decade unencumbered by the past, and he parked Tin Machine in order to embark on tour in which his back catalogue would be officially retired . Perhaps in order to placate fans bereft at the thought of never hearing their favourite songs live again, Bowie announced that he would involve them in the send off: the set-lists for each show would be determined by votes logged on calls to the number 1-900-2-BOWIE-90, with proceeds from the calls donated to charity. Three North American legs, with a lengthy European circuit and a landmark show in Asia at the Tokyo Dome, met with rapturous reviews between March and July 1990 and set-up the return to the UK in August. Although many in the crowd were subsequently treated for sunburn, heatstroke and exhaustion, it was perhaps a small price to pay for being in attendance as the first half of Bowie s extraordinary career went into supernova. TRACK LISTING CD1 01. Space Oddity 02. Rebel Rebel 03. Ashes To Ashes 04. Fashion 05. Life On Mars 06. Pretty Pink Rose 07. Sound & Vision 08. Blue Jean 09. Let’s Dance CD2 01. Stay 02. China Girl 03. Station To station 04. Young Americans 05. Suffragette city 06. Fame 07. Heroes 08. Changes 09. Jean Genie/Gloria 10. White Light/White Heat 11. Modern Love
