Space Oddities: Major Tom's Adventures

I suppose most EasyTV viewers know Major Tom, the character David Bowie invented for one of his first hit singles, Space Oddity. The song tells the story of poor Major Tom, lost in space after leaving his capsule. It was influenced by Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", and the song title can therefore be viewed as a pun on the movie title. Well, one odd thing about this song is that there's two official videos circulating for that song. The reason being that the song was initially included in an early album that wasn't very successful. Then the song was re-recorded (and that's the version we know) and played during the moon landing on English TV. That's when the song took off, if you pardon the pun. Americans didn't care much for the song initially, but a re-release a few years later also eventually broke through there (tedious details of releases and re-releases courtesy of Wikipedia). Anyway, first we have the recording we all know:



But there is an earlier video, recorded when the song was initially released as part of a promotional film called Love You Till Tuesday. The song reflects Bowie's earlier sound and folk influences. The video is pretty funny, in my opinion:



Major Tom resurfaces in 1980, in Ashes to Ashes, Bowie's fantastic hit single off his Scary Monsters album. This is where Bowie admits that "Major Tom's a junkie", and that his take off, floating and loss in Space Oddity were all a metaphor for heroin consumption. The video made a big impression on me at the time:



And then, something peculiar happens. Major Tom ditches heroin for something more conducive to dancing. Peter Schilling (who is indeed related to Curt Schilling the baseball pitcher, by the way), releases a electro-pop song called "Major Tom", and he tells us Major Tom, contrary to popular belief, is alive and coming home! It's a miracle, but based on the video I wonder if he landed ok:



Major Tom's resurrection and his new taste for dancing were regrettable. Bowie recycled him one more time for "Hallo Spaceboy", from his 1995 Outside album, and Pet Shop Boys took care of the dance remix (Neil Tennant can be heard on the chorus).

Here's the official video of the remix, in case you care:



If you're really curious, here's the original version (i.e. non remix) from the album:



But I want to leave you on a good note, so here's a haunting take on Space Oddity by a kid's choir, as part of the Langley Schools Music Project, recorded in 1976 but mostly known due to its re-release in 2001.



Big thanks to The Straight Dope for some valuable information.

Madchester Obscurities

The Manchester scene in the late 80s and early 90s created perhaps the only kind of music that really makes me want to dance. Fuelled by acid and ecstasy, the blend of new beats with 60s influences and psychedelic guitar effects was just irresistible. Now I'm pretty sure most EasyTV viewers are familiar with names like Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and Charlatans, so today we're going to take a look at some more minor bands who had some accordingly minor hits.

Intastella was an oddity of Madchester in that it had a female lead singer (I can only think of Saint Etienne as the other prominent example). It didn't hurt that the singer was quite attractive, and so maybe Intastella should have had bigger success than what they had. Truth be told though, I just don't think they had a good enough line-up of songs, and there just were too many better bands around at that time. Nevertheless, let's have a peek at one of their better singles, which I think is still pretty groovy:



Maybe the song that typified best the Madchester sound and spirit was this hit by Northside. If you don't dance to this, you must be dead:



It's songs like the above that made everyone wish they could "take a trip" to the Hacienda club and be part of the craziness of the nascent rave culture. Living outside of England, it was difficult to find similar scenes or at least hear the hits on the radio, as consolidation and extreme commercialization were taking care of the nice diversity of musical offerings that could once be enjoyed through "free" FM radio in the early to mid-80s.

Luckily we now have the internet and we can retroactively and nostalgically discover songs such as this one by World of Twist:



The guy sings very much like Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream, I wonder who copied who?

I have made myself a nice little compilation of hit singles from that era, and we should one day throw a party somewhere and dance to this stuff. Who's in?

Antonioni Rocks!

First post of 2011! Let's start with a bang, with one of my favorite film directors of all time, and his dealings with pop music. Michelangelo Antonioni's introspective, often quiet, sometimes impenetrable movies have moved me, challenged me, annoyed me. In 1996, Antonioni decides to finally get out of Italy to make his next movie, and goes to England to capture the spirit of the 60's. Blow Up became a cult movie for everyone nostalgic of that era. He had managed to capture the insouciance, the aesthetics, and the collective aspirations of the youth, which Antonioni likens to a hallucination, a mirage. But a mirage can be real if everyone can see it, and reality is worthless if no one perceives it... A great example of the theme is the scene during the Yarbirds concert:



Public, private and intrinsic value: a lesson in economy and game theory by the Maestro!

After the critical success of Blow Up, Antonioni gets more ambitious, obtains a big budget for a movie to be shot in the US. Again, his goal is to capture the ideals of the youth, this time in America, with their illusions and delusions. Of course he goes way over budget, and his perfectionism annoys the hell out of the producers, the actors and everyone else involved. In particular, he made Jerry Garcia play the theme to the Love Scene tens of times, while giving him very vague indications and reasons why he wasn't quite happy. I don't know if he was finally satisfied with the result or just took pity on Garcia, but the result plays an integral part in the most moving love scene in cinema history, if you ask me (ignore the initial dubbed dialogue, and forgive me that it's cut a bit too short at the end, but that's all I could find) :



(Daria Halprin, who I believe only ever made this one movie, just makes me melt)

There's another great scene in Zabriskie Point with music by Pink Floyd, but it would give away too much of the movie, and I just want you to go rent it now.

I think the excerpt above convinced you that Antonioni would have made a great music video director, and, well, it's not common knowledge that he indeed made one in the 80's! It's a song by Italian pop star Gianna Nannini, which, even though it has dated a bit, still packs an emotional punch in my opinion. Gianna is very cute with that boyish 80's look, the beret and the suspenders, and there's something in the lyrics that makes you want to sing the song out loud (borrowed from David Saul Rosenfeld's fantastic online book on l'Eclisse):

Questo amore è una camera a gas (This love is a gas chamber)
è un palazzo che brucia in città (it’s a building that is burning in the city)
Questo amore è una lama sottile (This love is a thin razor blade)
è una scena al rallentatore (it’s a scene in slow motion)
Questo amore è una (This love is a)
bomba all’hotel (bomb in a hotel)
Questo amore è una (This love is a)
finta sul ring (fake move in the boxing ring)
è una fiamma (it’s a flame that)
che esplode nel cielo (explodes in the sky)

And here's the song:



It may look like any other video from that era, but Antonioni said that, unlike other videos of the time, he used his patented long shots, and that's because he wanted the video to tell a little story. Don't you dare vote "kitsch"! ;)