DAVID BOWIE - "LIVE ON STAGE: MELBOURNE CRICKET GROUND 18/11/1978" CS

David Bowie’s first tour of Australia in 1978 is the stuff of legends and to say there were high expectations would be an understatement.

The announcement in September's Saturday paper that tickets would go on sale the following week generated such a buzz a few eager punks got down early, vying with football fans there for the Collingwood v Carlton semi-final, to see if they could swing early tickets.

As the punters dissipated from the G these like-minded souls staked out a position in front of Gate 2 while others were recruited and gathered camping supplies. As the week dragged on and word of mouth traveled the modest camp grew to thousands.

This started the most famous ticket queue in Australian history as immortalised in the cult classic ‘Dogs in Space’. Cars were utilised as sound systems, rubbish bins burned for warmth, the gates adorned in music related graffiti and booze and substances ingested openly.

The queue reconvened in October for another three weeks of debauchery and the media circus it generated made its way all the way up the top to Bowie himself.

With a ticket stub that boasted ‘we play rain or shine’ it was typically a torrential downpour on the 40,000 capacity crowd. Members of Bowie’s band recall the show as one of the most incredible of the tour - with the media circus, expectations and rain resulting in a crowd of frothing bedraggled fans, makeup streaking, getting wild and letting off fireworks in the crowd.

Bowie is at the top of his game here, promoting 'Heroes' and burning through reinterpretations of his earlier work in that vein.

This tape is all that remains of that performance, with the rest presumed lost due to the aforementioned rain, and one of the most legendary concerts in Melbourne’s history.