In 1984, David Byrne helped put together a TV special on the Talking Heads for U.K. TV’s Channel 4, a 68-minute mix of live material filmed at Wembley Arena, interviews, TV news clips, commercials and found footage and sound — sort of a visual version of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts set to live music.
The Pet Shop Boys today debuted the video for Electric single “Vocal,” and it’s a bit of a time warp: The Joost Vandeburg-directed clip — which you can see below — is comprised of “authentic amateur film footage shot at various raves in the late ’80s” as well as images from the Hacienda club in Manchester.
While we’ve already posted copious video from Siouxsie’s first concert in five years this past Saturday, it is worth sharing one key piece of footage from tonight’s reprise at the Yoko Ono-curated Meltdown festival, namely the one song on Saturday night’s setlist that got dropped from that show: “Spellbound.”
Tuesday marks the 25th anniversary of Depeche Mode’s iconic “Concert For the Masses,” a daylong show at the 100,000-seat Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., that also featured performances by Wire, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Thomas Dolby — and was, of course, filmed and recorded for ’101.’
Siouxsie returned to the concert stage for the first time in five years tonight in London, performing the first of two nights at the Yoko Ono-curated Meltdown festival with a 20-song set that included a full reading of 1980′s Kaleidoscope plus Banshees favorites like “Cities in Dust” and “Israel” as well as tracks off MantaRay.
For this week’s “120 Minutes” Rewind, we offer up a 13-minute reel from the April 17, 1988, episode, which finds eternally glib host Kevin Seal broadcasting from the Scrap Bar in New York. There, he sings fake reggae songs with the patrons, then hangs out first with Joe Strummer and then chats with Zodiac Mindwarp.
In honor of last weekend’s passing of Ramones artistic director Arturo Vega, we’ll use this week’s Vintage Video to dig up a choice concert from the New York punk legends. This performance from Sept. 13, 1978, in Bremen, Germany, finds the band ripping through 25 songs in just about 50 minutes flat.
Last month, the BBC program “Culture Show” ran a special on The Smiths tied to the 30th anniversary of the release of “Hand in Glove,” a half-hour examination of the band’s ever-growing legacy through “the look, the lyrics, the issues and the riffs.” You can now watch the entire special via uploader hipsterdisco2.
When The Ocean Blue was in Seattle this past February, the band’s frontman, David Schelzel, stopped by radio station KEXP (90.3 FM) for an on-air set and interview, performing new single “Sad Night, Where Is Morning,” classic track “Drifting, Falling” and a cover of Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face.”
First International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield recorded a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in space, and now Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is joining in the pop-music fun, jumping on stage this week at a Smithsonian Magazine conference to perform “She Blinded Me With Science” with Thomas Dolby.
As we noted over the weekend, the former members of R.E.M. seemed to go out of their way to avoid staging a full reunion Saturday night at Peter Buck’s wedding in Portland, Ore., as all four ex-bandmates took the stage to perform at the Wonder Ballroom at one point or another — just never all at once.
With a handful of U.K. concert appearances coming up this month, Johnny Marr stopped by BBC Two’s “Later… With Jools Holland” this week, with the program airing a pair of tunes (“The Right Thing Right” off The Messenger and The Smiths’ “Bigmouth Strikes Again”).
Thirty years ago tonight, U2 braved a cold Colorado rainstorm to perform at the fabled Red Rocks Amphitheatre just west of Denver, a concert on the band’s War tour that was filmed and released on video as “Under a Blood Red Sky,” cementing Bono and Co.’s reputation as live act.
Since reuniting last year, The Stone Roses have been somewhat consistent in their setlists, sticking to a core group of songs based, not surprisingly, around their classic 1989 debut. But in Paris last night, the band played 1988′s “Elephant Stone” and “Made of Stone” B-side “Going Down” for the first time since 1990.
For this week’s “120 Minutes” Rewind, we revisit the very early days of the program, for an Alan Hunter-hosted “120 X-Ray” segment on New Order that ran during the show’s first year on the air. The clip features Bernard Sumner talking about how the band brought on Gillian Gilbert.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark wrapped up a U.K. tour this month in support of their second post-reunion album, English Electric, and this week stopped by “Later… with Jools Holland” for a pair of broadcast performances, including the record’s new single, “Dresden,” and the band’s classic hit “Enola Gay.”
Britain’s BBC Two last weekend aired a new, 90-minute documentary by Francis Whatley called “David Bowie: Five Years” that, as its title suggests, examines five key years in the Thin White Duke’s career (the years in question all fall between 1971 to 1983. Watch the whole thing thanks to Videodrome Discothèque.
Finland indie-pop outfit The Saturnettes — aka singer-songwriter Jann Wilde — this week released the lead single from the group’s forthcoming second album, an infectious number called “Bob From The Cure,” that, yes, is about the song’s protagonist bearing a certain resemblance to one Robert Smith.
Barcelona’s Primavera Sound is underway this weekend in Spain, and one of Friday’s highlights was an appearance by The Jesus and Mary Chain, who brought My Bloody Valentine singer/guitarist Bilinda Butcher up on stage to sing backing vocals on the classic “Just Like Honey.”
