London — When did the modern era begin? With the Renaissance? With Elvis Presley?
For a generation of music-loving Britons, it started on July 6, 1972, when David Bowie performed the song "Starman" on the TV show "Top of the Pops."
Viewers had never seen anything like the androgynous orange-haired figure in a jumpsuit, singing about aliens while draping his arm teasingly around guitarist Mick Ronson and offering a lyrical benediction – "let all the children boogie."
Lonely teenagers in suburban bedrooms across the land were entranced, and, in many cases, inspired.
The ripples from that moment help explain why a major new multimedia exhibition about Bowie at London's Victoria and Albert Museum is the fastest seller in the institution's history, with 50,000 advance tickets sold – and why Bowie is topping music charts once again at the age of 66.
The "David Bowie Is" exhibition, which opens Saturday, marks the first time Britain's leading museum of...
For a generation of music-loving Britons, it started on July 6, 1972, when David Bowie performed the song "Starman" on the TV show "Top of the Pops."
Viewers had never seen anything like the androgynous orange-haired figure in a jumpsuit, singing about aliens while draping his arm teasingly around guitarist Mick Ronson and offering a lyrical benediction – "let all the children boogie."
Lonely teenagers in suburban bedrooms across the land were entranced, and, in many cases, inspired.
The ripples from that moment help explain why a major new multimedia exhibition about Bowie at London's Victoria and Albert Museum is the fastest seller in the institution's history, with 50,000 advance tickets sold – and why Bowie is topping music charts once again at the age of 66.
The "David Bowie Is" exhibition, which opens Saturday, marks the first time Britain's leading museum of...
- 3/20/2013
- by AP
- Huffington Post
Top Gun, the Smiths, The A-Team … popular culture reached its height in the 1980s – didn't it? Toby Litt on a decade he hated at the time, but is reluctantly starting to admire
There's a fantastically annoying ad on Spotify at the moment for yet another Hits of the 80s compilation CD. Voiceover man hails "the decade that just won't die" – which is true, even though, along with a large number of like-minded people, I spent most of the 80s doing my best to kill them. But with shoulder pads and bad prints being the order of the day summer-fashion-wise, with Wire magazine championing a genre of music they call "hypnagogic pop" ("it refashions 80s chart pop-rock into a hazy, psychedelic drone") and with the release of two blockbusting remakes on the same day – The Karate Kid and The A-Team – it seems that the 80s zombie everpresence is being reaffirmed, in pop culture and,...
There's a fantastically annoying ad on Spotify at the moment for yet another Hits of the 80s compilation CD. Voiceover man hails "the decade that just won't die" – which is true, even though, along with a large number of like-minded people, I spent most of the 80s doing my best to kill them. But with shoulder pads and bad prints being the order of the day summer-fashion-wise, with Wire magazine championing a genre of music they call "hypnagogic pop" ("it refashions 80s chart pop-rock into a hazy, psychedelic drone") and with the release of two blockbusting remakes on the same day – The Karate Kid and The A-Team – it seems that the 80s zombie everpresence is being reaffirmed, in pop culture and,...
- 7/30/2010
- by Toby Litt
- The Guardian - Film News
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