David Bowie 11/16/1973 London

WHAT IS IT? The very last performance of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars :
"1980 Floor Show" filmed at the Marquee Club in London on Oct. 19 & 20, 1973 and shown on The Midnight Special TV show on Nov. 16, 1973



songs:

1984-dodo/ sorrow/ everything's alright/ space oddity/ 1984(reprise)/ i can't explain/ time/ the jean genie/ i got you babe (with Marianne Faithful)

35 minutes

The first thing that catches your attention here are the truly outlandish Halloween costumes that Bowie has put together for this. He wears more outfits in this program than there are songs and honestly, you can't fault the guy for a lack of individuality. Most people who try too hard to look weird fail miserably. Certainly not the case here.

The next thing that you notice is how Broadway theatrical it all is, people vogue posturing in odd dance numbers that vaguely seem like they are supposed to have some sort of message or something. I have zero appreciation for dance numbers, so I can't really appraise them for you. I will say that they would have been more effective if they had put it on in a bigger room with better camera work and editing. Parts of it come across like high school drama class auditorium.

All of these out-of-touch-with-my-feminine-side type comments aside, I will say that the band weighs in with great rhythm for their version of "I Can't Explain." It trounces the overproduced version on pinups and makes me curious about other live Spiders boots.

(in fact, reviewing this made me go back to take a look at "Moonage Daydream" from the Ziggy film, man is this hitting!)

A more in depth description of this TV special can be found at 5years.com ...an extremely well laid out presentation of the Ziggy Stardust years...If you are looking to satisfy your curiosity for audio boots of Bowie's live career, http://davidbowiealivereview.blogspot.com/ should keep you fairly well busy with the download links....

To sum up: This is a 4am cocaine in the living room kind of DVD, (I got the DVD, you bring the coke!) I gotta warn you, though, I'm gonna hit the mute button once or twice...To really sum up, Marianne Faithful puts on a nun's habit to sing: "I got you babe" with Bowie. Getting that on American TV in 1973 is kinda cool. Way cooler than that Zelig/Bing Crosby rot.

AUDIO AND VIDEO QUALITY:

Man, have I got a shit version of this. It starts up with no menu. There's some high end noise and the brightness has been cranked up so much that a lot of the picture has disappeared.
Besides that, I suspect it isn't even the full broadcast version- could be wrong about that, though.

Stumbling around the internet in order to write this, I discovered that there is a 6 DVD set making the rounds which consists of all of the outtakes from the floorshow. That's a bit much for me, but I did find a torrent for one of them on minniova and had a look at it. It's got a timecode strip, but other than that the sound and picture are broadcast quality. It's interesting to skip through-My own peculiar bent of mind finds it more interesting than the finished show. I've seen some footage of Bowie where he was obviously getting a little delusional with one of his personae. Here, he's just hard at work on a TV show, always laid back in charge and kind of distantly amused at how silly it is. The Troggs do a couple numbers on this outtakes disc.