Posted on 07/27/2022 11:30:44 PM PDT by DallasBiff
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of David Bowie's legendary Starman performance on Top of the Pops
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
They have Brady Bunch wardrobe teenagers dancing in the Brady Bunch way
OK, it obviously isn’t the album version, and the vocals look live, but where are the strings coming from? And how does Bowie get those sounds out of an acoustic guitar?
The strings could have come from the keyboard.
It’s a 12 string. They have a particular sound as opposed to a six string.
I always liked this song.
I’m a musician.
The 12-string has the full sound and is used on the album.
This appears to be a mix of live vocals (not lip synched) with the music overlayed. Obviously the strings.
Sounds systems were crap back then. Was very risky for a band to play live on tv. So they’d lip synch. You can see some acts goof off as they lip synch or switch instruments etc.
At the end of this track the outtro to the song you can here the “La La La La lie” but going on when Bowie is nowhere near the mic. So the vocals were mixed as well. They likely did several tales and mixed them together.
Roz showing up to sing is how the vocals are clearly live. Too well times and casual to be a sych. Great guitarist, btw, and there’s a documentary out there about him.
Culturally interesting that (David Jones) Bowie was such a freak at the time. Today he looks like a Secretary of Defense.
“Today he looks like a Secretary of Defense.”
That’s hilarious.
I really like Bowie too - especially with Stevie Ray Vaughn. Watching the vid for China Girl took me to Iggy Pop’s version which is incredible. I liked music much better before videos when it was all left to my imagination.
More like the Secretary of Health
Growing up in a blue collar town during the 1970s, it was mostly considered "uncool" to be a Bowie fan. It was called "fag" music and Bowie himself looked like a space alien dropped to Earth, which was actually the premise of the "Ziggy Stardust" album. In retrospect, he was a genius ahead of his time. A half century later, his music still sounds fresh and cutting edge. Not dated in the slightest. I have been re-discovering his late 1970s albums like "Low", "Heroes" and "Lodger" that I overlooked when they first came out and if those albums were released today for the first time, many of those tracks would fit right into the playlists on today's alternative and indie stations.
The "Top of the Pops" clip here is also culturally interesting. It was a bizarre juxtaposition to have those clean cut kids (dressed like the Brady Bunch) robotically dancing behind Bowie and his band. I can only surmise that the people running that show were old men that didn't know what to make of Bowie and his crew. They probably thought they were getting just another pop band that people would forget about a few years later. "Kids these days and the stuff they listen to..."
OMG... all those teen Brit kids are my age now.
I happened to be in the audience for a taping of his Top of the Pops performances in 2002, when the Heathen album came out. It was taped in Astoria, Queens, and they moved us normal looking folks out of sight from the cameras and filled the front row with ‘cool people’ extras. The music was performed live at that taping.
The music for these old appearances were recorded at BBC studios, London, then ‘played to’ for the broadcasts. Vocals are mostly live. Strings are real strings, but pre-recorded with the music. There was a boxed set of all those recordings released in 2000 or so.
Great tune. David Bowie was unique — nothing else like him.
I miss Bowie. Was a huge fan from the time I saw him on the Bing Crosby Christmas special when I was a kid. His death hit me hard. Still blast the Ziggy Stardust album on long, solo road trips where I can sing every word at the top of my lungs!
Same type of town, I grew up in. I remember a neighbor girl wearing the first of the fancy 70's t-shirts with Bowie on it.
She was laughed and mocked. A year later, I'm on a four hour car trip to my father's hardware convention and my brother had Ziggy on the 8-track and the music literally blew my mind.
Most times you can’t hear ‘em talk
Other times you can
All the same old cliches
“Is that a woman or a man?”
And you always seem outnumbered
You don’t dare make a stand
Bowie went commercial with China Doll and the Lee’s Dance era. Can’t blame him. They all do. Even Major Tom got modern.
Recently Sirius/XM had a special station for Bowie and that is what set me to exploring his 70s catalog a little deeper aside from the hits you heard on the radio back then like "Young Americans" and "Sound And Vision." A lot of amazing music that I'm sad I didn't appreciate more back in the day.
Bowie in that video looks like the stereotypical super geek.
He probably, if he were alive, would look back at that video and would shiver in shame.
I just took it at as Bowie constantly re-inventing his persona. Let's Dance came out at the height of the MTV music video era and he adapted to it very well. I think his "Serious Moonlight" tour was the last rock concert I attended.
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