The Oldest Known Footage of London (1890–1920) Features the City’s Great Landmarks

in History, Television | July 14th, 2023

The City of Lon­don has explod­ed like Blade Run­ner in the last cou­ple of decades with glass and con­crete and shrines to glob­al cap­i­tal­ism like St. Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin) and the Shard (aka the Shard). But has the view from the ground stayed the same? Accord­ing to this charm­ing then vs. now video assem­bled by a com­pa­ny called Yester­Vid, yes.

Trawl­ing through the old­est sur­viv­ing pub­lic domain footage from the ear­ly days of film (1890 — 1920), the video­g­ra­phers have placed old and mod­ern-day shots side by side, match­ing as close as they can cam­era place­ment and lens.

Miss­ing from today: the soot, the filth in the gut­ter, and the free-for-all in the streets as horse-drawn car­riages and ear­ly busses bat­tled it out with pedes­tri­ans. Streets are safer now, with rail­ings to pro­tect cit­i­zens, though the signs of increased secu­ri­ty are also appar­ent, and CCTV cam­eras are most prob­a­bly film­ing the director…somewhere!

St. Paul’s still needs room to breathe, and while the Empire The­atre may not show any more Lumiere Cin­e­matogra­phies, it’s still a cin­e­ma show­ing IMAX films. It didn’t suf­fer the fate of many cin­e­mas out­side of Lon­don after the ‘60s: being turned into bin­go halls or just torn down.

Also: the sea of red pop­pies seen at 4:28 dur­ing the shot of the Tow­er of London’s moat is an instal­la­tion work by artist Paul Cum­mins. Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red was installed between July and Novem­ber of 2014 and, accord­ing to Wikipedia, it con­sist­ed of 888,246 ceram­ic red pop­pies, each intend­ed to rep­re­sent one British or Colo­nial ser­vice­man killed in the Great War.

Final point: the old­est pub in Lon­don, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, still stands, and dur­ing the swel­ter­ing sum­mers pro­vides a cool respite, as most of its drink­ing rooms are under­ground. Cheers!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­ma­tions Visu­al­ize the Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don and New York: From Their Cre­ation to the Present Day

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

Fly Through 17th-Cen­tu­ry London’s Grit­ty Streets with Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tions

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Discover The Plastics, the Influential Japanese New Wave Band from the 1980s

in Music, Television | June 16th, 2023

Bri­an Eno famous­ly said of the Vel­vet Under­ground that, though their debut album did­n’t sell well, every­one who bought a copy start­ed a band. One could, per­haps, make a sim­i­lar remark about a new wave band called The Plas­tics, who formed a decade or so lat­er on the oth­er side of the Pacif­ic. They record­ed for only five years, from the mid-nine­teen-sev­en­ties to the ear­ly eight­ies, but wide swaths of all Japan­ese pop­u­lar music released since bear marks of their influ­ence. Accord­ing to Under­ground, co-founder Toshio Nakan­ishi, who sang and played gui­tar, is “now con­sid­ered one of the most well-known Japan­ese musi­cians of all time.”

“One day in 1976,” writes Neo­japon­is­me’s W. David Marx, the 20-year-old Nakan­ishi “gath­ered his friends at Harajuku’s most famous cafe, Leon, and decid­ed they need­ed to form a band. They did not own any instru­ments, but music seemed an obvi­ous means of expres­sion.” They began by cov­er­ing the likes of Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Par­ty” and Con­nie Fran­cis’ “Vaca­tion” at fash­ion par­ties, but were soon advised by the vis­it­ing David Bowie to write songs of their own; sub­se­quent well-timed encoun­ters with the work of bands like the Sex Pis­tols and Devo gave them an idea of how to do it.

“The Plas­tics’ reliance on the lat­est West­ern musi­cal trends was a com­mon prac­tice in the Tokyo music scene, but unlike their pre­de­ces­sors, the band was able to be in dia­logue with their favorite West­ern artists in real time.”

Marx quotes Nakan­ishi writ­ing in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy that “YMO’s record label plot­ted to make them inter­na­tion­al, but we forged all of those devel­op­ments our­selves and the label just fol­lowed up.” Those devel­op­ments includ­ed the mem­bers’ asso­ci­a­tions with West­ern musi­cal fig­ures as var­i­ous as Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Bri­an Fer­ry, Bob Mar­ley, and Iggy Pop. When the group’s gui­tarist Hajime Tachibana, who also worked as a graph­ic design­er, cre­at­ed Japan­ese tour pro­grams for Talk­ing Heads, David Byrne end­ed up with a Plas­tics demo tape in hand, which he passed along to the B‑52s, who passed it along to their man­ag­er, who signed them. The height of their expo­sure to West­ern audi­ences came in 1982, when SCTV aired the music video for their song “Top Secret Man” on its “Mid­night Video Spe­cial.”

Clad in checker­board-and-neon retro fash­ions, singing non­sen­si­cal­ly catchy lyrics, and bust­ing extrav­a­gant­ly herky-jerky dance moves against void-like back­drops, the mem­bers of The Plas­tics come off in the “Top Secret Man” as near-par­o­d­ic embod­i­ments of the new wave musi­cal aes­thet­ic. That they also hap­pened to be Japan­ese sure­ly added, for West­ern view­ers those four decades ago, a cer­tain lay­er of cross-cul­tur­al absur­di­ty. “Indeed, is the dis­par­i­ty between the East and West which sets the Plas­tics apart from their con­tem­po­raries,” says Unde­ground, “their lyrics cit­ing Bauhaus and Russ­ian avant-garde, tech­nol­o­gy and Amer­i­can con­sumerism through their remote, Japan­ese lens.” (Marx quotes Byrne’s obser­va­tion that “the very name Plas­tics was a tip off: an iron­ic take on the com­mon West­ern per­cep­tion of Japan­ese prod­ucts being ‘plas­tic,’ and there­fore infe­ri­or copies of bet­ter made West­ern items.”)

Hav­ing spent the decade since the war both absorb­ing West­ern pop­u­lar cul­ture and achiev­ing an almost futur­is­ti­cal­ly advanced lev­el of devel­op­ment, the Japan of the ear­ly eight­ies had actu­al­ly become an ide­al place to devel­op new wave’s sig­na­ture incon­gruity of D.I.Y and high tech. Plas­tics Masahide Saku­ma even worked on the devel­op­ment of Roland’s TR-808, and before that drum machine went on to shape the sound of entire gen­res of music around the world, his band owned the very first mod­el. Alas, Saku­ma and Nakan­ishi both died in the twen­ty-tens, and with them the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a true Plas­tics reunion. But it would be a sur­prise if their three albums — Wel­come Plas­tics, Ori­ga­to Plas­ti­co, and the West-ori­ent­ed set of remakes Wel­come Back — don’t still have more than a few new bands, East­ern or West­ern, to inspire.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Meet Les Ral­lizes Dénudés, the Mys­te­ri­ous Japan­ese Psych-Rock Band Whose Influ­ence Is Every­where

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Ryuichi Sakamo­to, RIP: Watch Him Cre­ate Ground­break­ing Elec­tron­ic Music in 1984

The Roland TR-808, the Drum Machine That Changed Music For­ev­er, Is Back! And It’s Now Afford­able & Com­pact

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Complete Collection Of MTV’s Headbangers Ball: Watch 1,215 Videos from the Heyday of Metal Videos

in Music, Television | June 1st, 2023

Pre­mier­ing in April 1987, MTV’s Head­bangers Ball fea­tured music videos from met­al and hard rock bands of the 80s and 90s–everyone from AC/DC and Möt­ley Crüe, to Ozzy Osbourne, Def Lep­pard and Twist­ed Sis­ter, to Judas Priest, Iron Maid­en and Van Halen. If you’re jonesing to revis­it some met­al clas­sics, you’re in luck. Some enter­pris­ing soul has cre­at­ed a playlist of 1,215 music videos fea­tured on Head­bangers Ball. Watch them above. And all along, keep in mind, that the met­al­head kids who passed their time watch­ing these videos turned out alright in the end, large­ly becom­ing well-adjust­ed adults. Or so that’s what ret­ro­spec­tive sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies show. Enjoy…

PS For those who want to re-expe­ri­ence anoth­er MTV show, vis­it this: All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Brook­lyn Veg­an

Relat­ed Con­tent 

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

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Watch Young David Attenborough Encounter Animals in Their Natural Habitats: Video from the 1950s and 1960s

in Biology, Nature, Television | May 15th, 2023

Expe­ri­ence long ago con­ferred the man­tle of author­i­ty on broad­cast­er, biol­o­gist, nat­ur­al his­to­ri­an and author David Atten­bor­ough, age 97.

In his late 20s, he land­ed at the BBC, pro­duc­ing live stu­dio broad­casts that ran the gamut from children’s shows, bal­let per­for­mances and arche­o­log­i­cal quizzes to pro­grams focused on cook­ing, reli­gion and pol­i­tics.

When an edu­ca­tion­al show star­ring ani­mals from the Lon­don Zoo became a hit with view­ers, the pow­ers that be built on its pop­u­lar­i­ty with a fresh take — a show that sent the intre­pid young Atten­bor­ough around the world, seek­ing ani­mals in their native habi­tats. He was accom­pa­nied by cam­era­man Charles Lagus and two zool­o­gists, whom he quick­ly sup­plant­ed as host.

It made for thrilling view­ing in an era when wildlife tourism was avail­able to a very few.

The New York Times notes that many of the crea­tures who cropped up onscreen in these ear­ly Zoo Quest episodes were shipped back to Lon­don Zoo:

It is not the kind of mis­sion we approve of nowa­days, but with­out it the West might nev­er have got­ten inter­est­ed in wildlife to begin with. We start­ed by shoot­ing exot­ic species for their skins and bones and trap­ping them for our zoos, and only recent­ly moved to wor­ry­ing about their sur­vival in the wild and the health of the plan­et in gen­er­al. This his­to­ry is sym­bol­ized by the trans­for­ma­tion of Atten­bor­ough him­self from a talk­ing and writ­ing croc­o­dile hunter to the great­est liv­ing advo­cate of the glob­al ecosys­tem.

In Bor­neo in 1956, in search for Komo­do drag­ons, he paused for an encounter with an orang­utan, above, and also a big whiff of duri­an, the spiky, odif­er­ous fruit whose aro­ma famous­ly got it banned from Singapore’s ele­gant Raf­fles Hotel, with taxis, planes, sub­ways, and fer­ries fol­low­ing suit.

Soon there­after, the six-episode hunt for the Komo­do drag­on finds Atten­bor­ough in Java, mask­ing his nerves as he uses a cut­lass, a will­ing­ness to climb trees, and a cloth sack to get the bet­ter of a ful­ly grown python.

(Once the ser­pent was set­tled at the Lon­don Zoo, he made the trek to the BBC for an in-stu­dio appear­ance.)

You’ll note that this episode is in col­or.

Although Zoo Quest filmed in col­or, it aired ten years before col­or broad­casts were avail­able to UK view­ers, so most of the folks watch­ing at home assumed it had been shot in black and white.

In 1960, Atten­bor­ough used the lat­est — now severe­ly out­mod­ed-look­ing– tech­nol­o­gy to cap­ture the first audio record­ing of the indri, Madagascar’s largest lemur for Attenborough’s Won­der of Song.

This audio vic­to­ry led him to won­der if he could be the first to film an indri.

Frus­trat­ed by the thick canopy over­head, Atten­bor­ough resort­ed to play­back, suc­cess­ful­ly tempt­ing the ani­mals to not only come clos­er, but do so while vocal­iz­ing.

Mat­ing calls?

No. Atten­bor­ough deduced that they were the indris’ “bat­tle songs”, issued as a warn­ing to the per­ceived threat of unfa­mil­iar indris.

In 2011, Atten­bor­ough returned to Mada­gas­car, lis­ten­ing respect­ful­ly to Joseph, a local hunter turned con­ser­va­tion­ist, who explains how the local pop­u­lace no longer think of indri as a food source, but rather a sym­bol of their com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing the nat­ur­al world around them. Joseph’s rela­tion­ship with the indri affords Sir David a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty, as the indri feed from his hand:

Fifty years ago, I spent days and days and days search­ing through the for­est, with these fir­ing their noise over­head but now this group is so accus­tomed to see­ing peo­ple around that I have been right close up to them, some­thing I nev­er believed could have be pos­si­ble. 

Read more about David Atten­bor­ough’s Zoo Quest expe­ri­ences in his mem­oir, Adven­tures of a Young Nat­u­ral­ist, and watch a playlist of doc­u­men­taries for the BBC here.

via TheKidsShould­SeeThis

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Net­flix Makes Doc­u­men­taries Free to Stream: Design, Pol­i­tics, Sports, Sir David Atten­bor­ough & More

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Bowie Performs “Life on Mars?” and “Ashes to Ashes” on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” (1980)

in Music, Television | May 12th, 2023

On Sep­tem­ber 5, 1980, David Bowie per­formed for a delight­ed stu­dio audi­ence on The Tonight Show Star­ring John­ny Car­son. First came “Life on Mars?”, and then his new­ly-released song, “Ash­es to Ash­es.” As his web­site (DavidBowie.com) describes it, the musi­cian cob­bled togeth­er a one-off band for the per­for­mance, ran through sev­er­al rehearsals, and then taped the show at NBC Stu­dios in LA. All of this came days before the release of his 14th stu­dio album Scary Mon­sters (and Super Creeps), and Bowie’s tri­umphant debut in The Ele­phant Man on Broad­way. Enjoy!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

8 Hours of David Bowie’s His­toric 1980 Floor Show: Com­plete & Uncut Footage

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

Watch David Bowie’s Final Per­for­mance as Zig­gy Star­dust, Singing “I Got You Babe” with Mar­i­anne Faith­full, on The Mid­night Spe­cial (1973)

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Take Virtual Tours of Every Star Trek Enterprise Bridge: A New Interactive Web Portal Created by The Roddenberry Archive

in Sci Fi, Television | May 8th, 2023

It’s a rare young Star Trek fan indeed who does­n’t fan­ta­size about sit­ting on the bridge of the star­ship Enter­prise. That has gone for every gen­er­a­tion of fan, every Star Trek series, and every Enter­prise, whose bridges you can see in the new video above from the Rod­den­ber­ry Archive. It begins, nat­u­ral­ly, with the orig­i­nal Star Trek, the show with which cre­ator Gene Rod­den­ber­ry start­ed it all — and for which art direc­tor Matt Jef­feries designed a bridge that would become a mod­el not just for all sub­se­quent Enter­pris­es, but real-life com­mand cen­ters as well. As the nar­ra­tor says, “Jef­feries’ bridge made such an impres­sion that engi­neers from NASA, the U.S. Navy, and pri­vate indus­try have stud­ied it as a mod­el for an advanced, effi­cient con­trol room.”

That nar­ra­tor hap­pens to be John de Lan­cie, whom view­ers of Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion and sub­se­quent series will know as the all-pow­er­ful extra-dimen­sion­al being Q. He’s not the only famil­iar per­former to par­tic­i­pate in this ret­ro­spec­tive project: in the video above appears a cer­tain William Shat­ner, who as James Tiberius Kirk occu­pied the cap­tain’s chair of the very first Enter­prise.

Even those who pre­fer the lat­er, more com­plex Star Treks have sure­ly won­dered what that posi­tion would feel like, and now they can get a vir­tu­al sense of it at the Rod­den­bery Archive’s web site, which is now offer­ing vir­tu­al tours of the bridge of every series’ cen­tral ship.

“The site fea­tures 360-degree, 3D mod­els of the var­i­ous ver­sions of the Enter­prise, as well as a time­line of the ship’s evo­lu­tion through­out the franchise’s his­to­ry,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Sarah Kuta. “Fans of the show can also read detailed infor­ma­tion about each ver­sion of the ship’s design, its sig­nif­i­cance to the Star Trek sto­ry­line and its pro­duc­tion back­sto­ry.” All this comes online to mark the end of Star Trek: Picard, the recent series built around Patrick Stew­art’s Enter­prise cap­tain from The Next Gen­er­a­tion, whose final episode went up last month on the stream­ing ser­vice Para­mount+. For that grand finale, pro­duc­tion design­er Dave Blass “recre­at­ed the bridge of the Enter­prise D,” and “Picard’s tri­umphant return to his beloved ship brought nos­tal­gic tears to the eyes of more than a few fans,” no doubt regard­less of gen­er­a­tion. Take the vir­tu­al tours here.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Star Trek Con­tin­ues: The Crit­i­cal­ly-Acclaimed, Fan-Made Sequel to the Orig­i­nal TV Series

Watch Star Trek: New Voy­ages: The Orig­i­nal Fan-Made Sequel to the 1960s TV Series

How Isaac Asi­mov Went from Star Trek Crit­ic to Star Trek Fan & Advi­sor

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Star Trek: World-Build­ing Over Gen­er­a­tions — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #42

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Wes Anderson Re-Creates The Truman Show, Armageddon & Out of Sight as Stage Plays Performed by the Cast of Rushmore (1999)

in Comedy, Film, Television | April 18th, 2023

Nom­i­nees of the 1999 MTV Movie Awards includ­ed Adam San­dler, Liv Tyler, Chris Tuck­er, and Jen­nifer Love Hewitt to men­tion just a few of the names in a ver­i­ta­ble who’s-who of turn-of-the-mil­len­ni­um Amer­i­can pop cul­ture. But for the teenage cinephiles watch­ing that night, the high­light of the broad­cast was sure­ly a set of brief skits per­formed by “the Max Fis­ch­er Play­ers.” Direct­ed by Wes Ander­son, who had been named Best New Film­mak­er dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny of three years before, they present low-bud­get but high-spir­it­ed inter­pre­ta­tions of three of the motion pic­tures up for hon­ors: Out of Sight, The Tru­man Show, and Armaged­don.

Hav­ing been a teenage cinephile myself at the time, I can tell you that none of those movies made as much an impact on me as Ander­son­’s own Rush­more, which intro­duced the hyper-ambi­tious young slack­er Max Fis­ch­er to the world. In it, Max and his play­ers adapt Sid­ney Lumet’s Ser­pico, and lat­er put on an elab­o­rate (and explo­sive) pas­tiche of var­i­ous Viet­nam War pic­tures.

Twen­ty-five years ago, few of us had iden­ti­fied in the painstak­ing­ly ram­shackle look and feel of these pro­duc­tions the seed of what would grow into Ander­son­’s sig­na­ture aes­thet­ic. But it was clear that, if the Max Fis­ch­er Play­ers method were applied to the Hol­ly­wood block­busters of the day, amus­ing incon­gruity would result.

These skits promi­nent­ly fea­ture Mason Gam­ble and Sara Tana­ka, both of whom retired from act­ing a few years after giv­ing their mem­o­rable per­for­mances in Rush­more. But Jason Schwartz­man, who will no doubt for­ev­er be iden­ti­fied with Max Fis­ch­er, has remained an active mem­ber of Ander­son­’s own group of play­ers, and even plays a star­ring role once again in Ander­son­’s new film Aster­oid City, which comes out this sum­mer. The Max Fish­er Play­ers’ par­o­dies were includ­ed on the DVD of Rush­more released by the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion — an hon­or still denied, one might add, to the recip­i­ent of the 1999 MTV Movie Award for Best Movie, There’s Some­thing About Mary. (But not to Armaged­don, which just goes to show how unpre­dictable the favor of cinephil­ia can be.)

via Red­dit

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s Break­through Film Rush­more Revis­it­ed in Five Video Essays: It Came Out 20 Years Ago Today

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

Wes Anderson’s Shorts Films & Com­mer­cials: A Playlist of 8 Short Ander­son­ian Works

Wes Ander­son Goes Sci-Fi in 1950s Amer­i­ca: Watch the Trail­er for His New Film Aster­oid City

Why Do Wes Ander­son Movies Look Like That?

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch David Bowie’s Final Performance as Ziggy Stardust, Singing “I Got You Babe” with Marianne Faithfull, on The Midnight Special (1973)

in Music, Television | April 5th, 2023

If you had to choose a liv­ing cul­tur­al fig­ure to rep­re­sent nine­teen-sev­en­ties Amer­i­ca, you could do much worse than Burt Sug­ar­man. He made his name as a tele­vi­sion impre­sario with The Mid­night Spe­cial, which put on NBC’s air­waves per­for­mances by every­one from ABBA to AC/DC, REO Speed­wag­on to Roxy Music, and War to Weath­er Report. Break­ing with com­mon prac­tice at the time, the show allowed these acts to per­form live rather than lip-sync against pre-record­ed tracks. Thus, even view­ers who tuned in to The Mid­night Spe­cial to see their favorite bands were guar­an­teed to hear some­thing they’d nev­er heard before.

They stayed up quite late to do so: The Mid­night Spe­cial fol­lowed The Tonight Show Star­ring John­ny Car­son, which meant that it aired at mid­night in the Cen­tral and Moun­tain time zones, and 1:00 in East­ern and Pacif­ic. In 1972, the notion of putting on a music show at that hour was unfa­mil­iar enough that Sug­ar­man had trou­ble sell­ing it.

He ulti­mate­ly had to buy the air­time him­self in order to con­vince NBC to pick the show up, which it did soon there­after. (For the net­work, the prospect of extend­ing their pro­gram­ming sched­ule would have been sweet­ened by the pre­vi­ous year’s Pub­lic Health Cig­a­rette Smok­ing Act, which had banned the once-lucra­tive air­ing of tobac­co adver­tise­ments on tele­vi­sion.)

Now, more than half a cen­tu­ry after its debut, The Mid­night Spe­cial has reap­peared in the form of a Youtube chan­nel, which fea­tures high-qual­i­ty videos of the show’s orig­i­nal per­for­mances. Those uploaded so far have been orga­nized into artist playlists ded­i­cat­ed to acts like the Bee Gees, Fleet­wood Mac, Tina Turn­er, and David Bowie. That last includes Bowie’s ren­di­tion of  “I Got You Babe” with Mar­i­anne Faith­full, seen at the top of this post, as well as his ver­sion of The Who’s “I Can’t Explain” above, part of his final per­for­mance as his space-alien alter ego Zig­gy Star­dust — itself orig­i­nal­ly shot for The 1980 Floor Show in Lon­don, which despite its name took place in 1973. The Mid­night Spe­cial itself would run until 1981, which means that a great deal of music remains to be brought out of Sug­ar­man’s archives for us to enjoy here in the twen­ty-twen­ties. You can watch Bowie’s com­plete 1973 per­for­mance on The Mid­night Spe­cial below.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie Became Zig­gy Star­dust 48 Years Ago This Week: Watch Orig­i­nal Footage

8 Hours of David Bowie’s His­toric 1980 Floor Show: Com­plete & Uncut Footage

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

Beat Club, the 1960s TV Show That Brought Rock Music to 70 Mil­lion Kids in Ger­many, Hun­gary, Thai­land, Tan­za­nia & Beyond

Watch an Episode of TV-CBGB, the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Sit­com Ever Aired on Cable TV (1981)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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