Has anyone seen these? Fred Armisen talked about his experience watching them live in 1979 on this last Saturday's SNL. I was curious so I watched them all. It was some pretty interesting stuff, especially when I got to "Boys Keep Swinging." It starts off with a close up of Bowie's face, then it switches to another camera, and you notice something is off. Bowie is wearing a green screen suit and has a marionette style puppet strapped to his body. His head looks huge compared to the body and the way he moves the puppet is just so bizarre. Toward the end the puppet exposes himself a few times, and at the very end Bowie whips it out, which aired on live TV but SNL doesn't show it on the replays. Rumors say he may have done this because they censored some lyrics.

Just imagine watching this in 1979...I would have been so confused (and still today, I was) at how he was able to do this type of act. It's pretty remarkable, considering the time period.

Anyway, if you haven't seen these, enjoy!

Rolling Stone Article with Videos

This post was edited on 1/19/16 at 9:31 am

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Posted by RockAndRollDetective

Baton Rouge

Member since Mar 2014

4506 posts

Posted on 1/19/16 at 10:34 am to SUB

I saw those performances on the original airings when I was a kid. They're really out there but back then SNL was amazingly adept at booking the most cutting edge, fringe music of the period. I remember thinking at the time that Bowie might have been trying to glom onto the whole new wave/alt rock thing that was creating notoriety (and no, alt rock wasn't really a thing back then; that's what it was, they just hadn't found a good name for it yet).

I didn't know much about Bowie back then other than his radio hits and I didn't realize there was this whole other side to him that was actually a precursor to new wave and all. But that stuff was right in line with the country's first exposures to Devo, the B-52s, Talking Heads, etc. I was a rock and roll kid at the time and the stuff on SNL from the early days was a very important influence on how my particular musical preferences developed.

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Posted by SUB

Member since Jan 2001

Member since Jan 2009

20689 posts

Posted on 1/19/16 at 10:49 am to RockAndRollDetective