Begin­ning scoot­er rid­ers can find a ver­i­ta­ble biker’s break­fast of point­ers on the Inter­net. One could cob­ble them togeth­er to make a con­tem­po­rary own­ers man­u­al, cov­er­ing such cru­cial top­ics as brak­ing, throt­tling, steer­ing, and stay­ing upright. But some­times one craves some­thing a bit more elu­sive, a bit more spir­i­tu­al. Is there a youtube equiv­a­lent of Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance?

Not real­ly, but there are these ear­ly 80s ads for Hon­da scoot­ers, fea­tur­ing some of the era’s most icon­o­clas­tic acts.

They put Adam Ant’s dash­ing post-punk appeal to the test by con­fin­ing him in close quar­ters with Grace Jones. Grace, above, dom­i­nat­ed, with all the con­fi­dence and ease of a tiger caged up with a pea­cock.

The prize? Can’t speak for Adam, but Grace got to film anoth­er spot. Her co-stars this time were a grid of infants, whose moth­ers must’ve been relieved that the alien diva queen nev­er actu­al­ly inter­act­ed with them. Can you imag­ine if Hug­gies had shared Hon­da’s adven­tur­ous adver­tis­ing sen­si­bil­i­ties?

Jazz great musi­cian Miles Davis did­n’t have to do much to lend an air of cool to that scoot­er. Even the card­board box­es scat­tered in the back­ground of his garage ben­e­fit from his pres­ence. The Prince of Dark­ness’ rep­u­ta­tion was nev­er an 80’s-spe­cif­ic phe­nom­e­non, but he looks the part, kit­ted out like the Road War­rior. 

Synth-pop super­stars Devo urged begin­ning rid­ers to adopt their extreme­ly uncon­ven­tion­al brand of con­for­mi­ty, sug­gest­ing that the band’s uni­form of cov­er­alls and, uh, shoes was the per­fect thing to wear while rid­ing that Hon­da. Those who want­ed to hang on to some sem­blance of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty could do so via scoot­er col­or.

Iron­ic though it may have been, their will­ing­ness to be seen sport­ing, nay, pro­mot­ing hel­mets makes Devo’s ad my per­son­al favorite.

To see Lou Reed’s con­tri­bu­tion to Hon­da’s series of ads, see our pre­vi­ous post: Sell­ing Cool: Lou Reed’s Clas­sic Hon­da Scoot­er Com­mer­cial, 1984

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

Watch Lau­rence Olivi­er, Liv Ull­mann and Christo­pher Plummer’s Clas­sic Polaroid Ads

Klaus Nomi’s Ad for Jäger­meis­ter (Cir­ca 1980)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

1979 was a strange year in music. A year of end­ings, in a way. Sid Vicious died, Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sab­bath… an old guard fad­ed away. On the oth­er hand, U2 went into the stu­dio for their debut, Kate Bush went on her first tour, and new wave emerged from punk’s end. It was also the year, notably or not, that Berlin/New York cabaret per­former Klaus Nomi broke, sort of. Nomi had been per­form­ing Wag­n­er and Vaude­ville in New York, and David Bowie, always on the make for unusu­al trav­el­ing com­pan­ions, invit­ed him to appear as a back­up singer on Sat­ur­day Night Live. Bowie him­self was in tran­si­tion, leav­ing behind his high con­cept work with Bri­an Eno on his Berlin Tril­o­gy (Low, ”Heroes,” and Lodger) and enter­ing anoth­er high pop phase. It was an abrupt, but nat­ur­al, shift for Bowie; tap­ping into Nomi’s art-pop affec­ta­tions may have seemed a per­fect way to bridge the two.

Bowie, Nomi, and flam­boy­ant New York per­for­mance artist Joey Arias do three songs, reach­ing back to Bowie’s folki­er times for “The Man Who Sold the World.” Bowie launch­es next into Sta­tion to Sta­tion’s “TVC 15” in a skirt and heels, while Nomi and Arias drag around a pink plas­tic poo­dle. For the last num­ber, Lodger’s “When You’re a Boy,” Bowie per­haps invents the look of 80s new wave videos to come—from Peter Gabriel to the Pet Shop Boys—while wear­ing a life-size mar­i­onette cos­tume. Some amaz­ing mech­a­nism, pup­peteers off­stage or Bowie him­self, oper­ates the over­sized arms, and the whole thing takes SNL musi­cal per­for­mances to a place they’d nev­er been. Nomi was so impressed with the cos­tum­ing that he adopt­ed the huge plas­tic tuxe­do Bowie wears dur­ing the first song as his own, wear­ing one on the cov­er of his first album and per­form­ing in it until his death from AIDS in 1983. The broad­cast above took place on Decem­ber 15, 1979.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Klaus Nomi: The Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

Klaus Nomi’s Ad for Jäger­meis­ter (Cir­ca 1980)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Gilmour & David Bowie Sing “Com­fort­ably Numb” Live (2006)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness