The Midnight Special, Hosted By David Bowie🤘

[Old Joad]

 

Edited February 13 by Old Joad

[craigb]

Using that radio under my pillow (see other fred), I remember waiting for a count-down show to get to number one because it was Bowie's Fame.  The ending of that song was so wild for the time!

[Old Joad]

It's still a great song.👍

[Bapu]

Carmen? Where's Mosh?

[Bapu]

35 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Carmen? Where's Mosh?

Starring John Glasc0ck Pedro's alter ego

[Starship Krupa]

I remember well when this was first broadcast.

I was a high school freshman, living in Mississippi. An academic society that I was a member of took a trip to the state capitol of Jackson to attend the state convention. We stayed overnight at a Holiday Inn.

Of course, for any high schooler in those days, you watched Midnight Special religiously, especially if you lived in a cultural backwater like Pascagoula, MS, so a bunch of us gathered in one of the rooms to watch, most not knowing ahead of time what was going to be featured.

Some of us liked Bowie's music well enough, but hadn't been exposed to his stage show, just then at the height of his glammiest and most androgynous.

We were a bunch of kids in Southern Mississippi, although I wasn't born and raised there like most of my classmates. There was no place to buy Rolling Stone from a rack, you had to subscribe to it or you didn't get to read it. The closest place to get it was in the newsstand at the Mobile, AL airport, so that was a treat when my stepfather would take a business trip: it meant the current issue of Rolling Stone.

The show came on, and of course, in order to reinforce our own masculinity we all had to scoff at how effeminate the proceedings were, while also being absolutely freaking Krazy Glued to the screen. And of course the next school day it was all anyone could talk about (with obligatory scoffing about the presentation).

(for more cultural perspective, if you've seen Dazed and Confused, my high school was 2 states over from the one depicted and had a similar hazing tradition, albeit more lighthearted, without the dumping of gross stuff, etc. I would have been the same age as the freshman baseball pitcher kid played by Wiley Wiggins)