grantss Decent capture of David Bowie at his creative, flamboyant best. Good concert, and it's not all about Bowie. Mick Ronson's guitaring almost steals the show. Interesting behind-the-scenes footage adds a new, more personal, aspect to the live concert genre. Could have done with more of that though, as the behind-the-scenes stuff is fleeting, and sometimes seems token. Maybe some footage of practices and sound checks, or interviews with Bowie, would have been in order. Not perfect though. Production quality is quite raw and rough. Sound quality is variable. A must-see for all David Bowie fans.

jc-osms D A Pennebaker had already filmed icons like Dylan and Lennon before getting the gig to film David Bowie's "farewell" concert at London Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973. Bowie was huge in Britain at the time but had yet to break America which makes me tend to think the assignment came to him rather than the other way round.Actually as a great fan of glam rock back in the day (being 13 at the time of the movie's shooting date, how could I not be, 1972-73, being glam's heyday here), I do remember the fuss about this being Bowie's last show, giving the concert great curiosity, not to mention envy value at the time to fans in the sticks like me. To discover that this historic show was captured in full was a great and welcome surprise to me.That said, the film-maker's approach to the concert is pretty conservative actually as we get a little bit of pre-show scene-setting, with Bowie getting made-up in his dressing room, chatting to his wife Angie, while cutting in scenes of his adoring, often lookalike fans outside. Without too much delay, however, the show's on and Bowie and his band, the latter brilliantly led by Mick Ronson on lead guitar, tear into a great set, culminating in the famous, if misleading "This is our last show" quote and the bathetic euphoria which greets final song "Rock and Roll Suicide".In between, we get four costume changes, a goodly selection of numbers from his just-released "Aladdin Sane" album (but no "Jean Genie" sadly!), plenty, naturally from the "Ziggy Stardust" album but also tracks from some of his earlier albums. Unlike other rock-movies by the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, Bowie and the band are on fine form, with confidence exuding from the singer's every phrase and move.Yes, some tracks go on too long, it was a shame that two of his best tunes ("All The Young Dudes" and "Oh! You Pretty Things) get rather thrown away in a medley, but against that there are great covers of Jacques Brel's "My Death" and the Velvets' "White Light White Heat", although I'm still undecided at what to make of the somewhat ridiculous mine-sequence during an almost never-ending version of "Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud". Pennebaker's editing is adequate if, as I say, unimaginative, making the most of the no doubt limited camera numbers available to him, but thereafter just cutting from Bowie and Ronson (you barely see the rest of the band) to the ecstatic audience. Somehow Ringo Starr, director of Bowie friend and rival Marc Bolan's "Born To Boogie" movie the previous year, appears in Bowie's dressing room between songs casting an envious eye no doubt on a missed opportunity behind the lens again.Anyway, I was rapt by this exciting glimpse of a top artist on top form, masterminding his destiny to a "T", delivering a great rock and roll show in the process.What of course differentiates this show to contemporary rock concerts is that Bowie treats the performance itself as musical theatre, quite literally, a performance artist if ever there was one.

Anonymou-4 I still love David Bowie, and still very much would have loved to see one of his Ziggy Stardust shows... but this video is a cruel teaser. I couldn't understand why a videotape book I saw called it "practically unwatchable, and unlistenable"--now I know why. Bowie does his best to put on a good performance, but that's not the problem here--the problem is that this may very well be the WORST filming of a concert ever made. The cameras, obviously handheld, are constantly refocusing themselves and forgetting their places, they are shaky, the quality is no better than your typical home movie, they all too often focus on the audience for far too long when we wish we could see the changes going on on stage in the show instead, the sound quality is hideous, and worst of all, we only get an IDEA of what the concert was like (I still have no idea what even the full STAGE looks!). If it weren't for the fact that this is a legitimate release, I would swear that it was an illegally-filmed movie made by a group of fans who snuck cameras into the concert. It's THAT bad. It's really terrible when the cameras are so set on awful closeups and are so shaky and unsteady that you can't even understand most of what's supposed to be going on on stage. After watching it, I felt like I had only been given a hint of what one of those Ziggy-era shows was like... and I still have no more of a full idea of what the experience was like than I did before sitting down to watch this. It's terribly, terribly sad that this is apparently the only footage shot of one of those shows--because we Bowie fans who weren't there would STILL love to see the show in its entirety.

lefty-11 Bowie is clearly enjoying himself here, although today he claims to find this record of the Spiders final show unwatchable. The costuming IS spectacularly dated and Ziggy's antics do more to camp up a storm than forewarn of an imminent apocalypse. Aside from the music though, there is more going on here than silly, decadent posturing. Backstage musings by Bowie are suggestive of why he is not merely a relic from a past era: there is inherent tension between the public persona and the demand to discover the "real" Bowie. Rock music has since split into 2 positions along these lines: for the most part, the English traditions of camp and irony have served as a distancing device from the demands of an "authentic" self which can impose on others in an intrusive way- Jewel's folk music/"Knight Without Armor" is merely the latest manifestation of the latter tendency (also, despite the hatred of hippies, Nirvana ironically shared their "no hang ups" philosophy in their "Come As You Are" period). Ziggy was, at the time, the most extreme movement away from the "authenticity" of Woodstock Nation in which there was nothing separating the performer and the audience...been an "alien being" also guaranteed a spectacular show for record buyers who may otherwise have had little interest in live music given the high fidelity improvements in recording technology and home sound systems which were starting to become available. It is the irresolvable tension between these two tendencies toward camp/authentic which helps generate the excitement of the audience captured in this film, and which can still inspire interest and enjoyment today.