August Day Off #2

Ah, a quiet day at home in between show days . . . and then an easy week from Tuesday to Friday of one show a night, all shows now running smoothly and beautifully (and needing bigger houses . . .).

I continue to be SO proud of this group of shows I can't tell you. And they just get better and better, for the most part (notes are still, of course, occasionally needed). Maybe we'll get the houses we deserve this week, maybe finally the next and last week. Whatever, we are at least getting enough people to always make them worth doing, and I'm pleased with the audience reaction, so I'm, for once, happy with the work and glad to have it going.

But now, what to do with this day? Music? I'm almost done with my chronological listen to Steely Dan 1972-1980, which has been terrific morning relaxation music this last week. Berit and I generally listen to more "caffeinated" or "speedy" kinds of music - we generally like music that makes you edgy and jumpy and you grind your teeth and want to MOVE - so some "downer surrealism," as Zappa referred to Dan, has been a more pleasant, quaalude-y way to ease into the day; smooth, but with still enough of an edge and levels of irony to be listenable. Maybe some movies, or all the episodes of some TV show? Dunno. Not going out, that's for sure.

In any case, B's still sleeping, and I'm relaxed.

Oh, and here's a nice find of the morning, some videos of David Bowie's 1979 appearance on Saturday Night Live that I've wanted to see for YEARS and YEARS - where he's backed up vocally by Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias, thanks to Ian Zamboni over at Zamboni Soundtracks (and remember, if you're reading this in the Facebook repost, you won't see the videos and will have to check the original post for them). Here's the first number, "The Man Who Sold the World":

And here's the later two songs from the same show -- and DAMMIT, I've had to put them behind a cut (sorry), as I can't turn off the autoplay on the video. I've been wanting to see this disturbing blue-screen version of "Boys Keep Swinging" for over 20 years, since I first heard about it, and whoa, here it is . . .

( Bowie, Nomi, Arias do 'TVC15' & 'Boys Keep Swinging' )

And for fun, here's the original video of "Boys Keep Swinging" that caused the song, which had been rising up the charts as a single in the UK, to suddenly drop down those same charts the day after it aired on British TV, as the bitter irony of the song was made a little more clear to the audience, which had been taking the lyrics of the song at face value . . .

(for Bowie fanatics -- the clearer, non-embeddable, official EMI YouTube of the video is HERE and a cool alternate version of Bowie doing the song live on the same Kenny Everett Video Show set, without the drag sections, is HERE)

Okay, time for the leftover bread from yesterday's Little Piece with some cloudberry and gooseberry jam. A nice day.