Searching for LifeI decided to take a look over on You Tube for recordings of David Bowie's song "Life On Mars?", and I came up with a few performances I wanted to collect in one spot.
First is a 1973 video, a lip-synched affair that suffers both from the overdone makeup and the minimal visual repertoire of the director. More disturbing for me, though, is that the powder blue suit he's wearing is uncomfortably similar to the one I wore to a prom six years later.
Nothing like that on the makeup front, though, happily, and my pupils usually more or less match, too.
Next is a performance from over 30 years later. A very different performance (including somewhat different lyrics), with what is at times an Anthony Newly-ish delivery and less on the high end of the scale. Still, it grew on me despite some of the keyboard flourishes.
Then there's an MTv Storyteller's performance -- significantly briefer, but with its own charms as Bowie is far more relaxed and natural, which is a significant point because I know from interviews that he hates performing old songs live, tending to only come on stage when he needs to do it to keep the finances going. He'd much prefer to be moving forward, working on new music in the studio.
Finally, though it's merely a cover of the same song with no Bowie in view or earshot, I wanted to include this version by Brazilian guitarist & singer Seu Jorge, whose work I hadn't been aware of prior to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Perhaps I couldn't resist including this, too, because I've not had Brazil come up so many times in my life within a few days before.
Tags: David Bowie, Life on Mars?, Seu Jorge
Comments
I am totally marking this page!
Thanks for sharing!!
Heh. Another synchronous sweep, as I hadn't even remembered to look for the new Venture Bros. episode before Sunday evening and was surprised to find Bowie there, too. (Along with Iggy Pop, split into two characters.)
Do they have a class or something? I've wondered how to do that, as I generally have had to cut and paste it from one post to another and then delete the original. Not horrid, but a pain in the butt nonetheless.
Also, wondering about putting pics in the title area on blogger. Any tips?
As it was superior to having to "Blog this", come back over to Blogger to quickly turn it from a post into a Draft, and then rework it. It was enough of a step up for me to consider it to be a victory.
I did a brief pass on trying to play with images up in the main page title area months ago, but with mixed and unsatisfactory results. Sometimes it takes a half hour or so of playing around and failing to lay the ground work.
When I try it next I'll probably fool around with a new blog (something I'll end up deleting) and starting with one of the blog templates that has an image in the header -- like the one I chose for my seldom-used poli-blog. Then it's into the template to look through the html for where the header image is decided... and play with it.
I know from looking at some of the blogs that there's a great deal of customization possible. I simply haven't taken the time to dig into available hacks.