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1980 ➤ Life on Mars as you’ve never heard Bowie before!

Posted on 7 Sep 2020 | Leave a comment

40
YEARS
ON

Just watch this long-lost footage from the Johnny Carson show. Bowie utterly sensational on both tracks, the second being Ashes to Ashes. But this powerful version of Life on Mars has to be yet *another* definitive one!!!

➢ Posted at YouTube by Nacho Video:
“ Here’s my new clean-up of the classic David Bowie 1980 performance on The Tonight Show – recorded at NBC Studios in Burbank, Los Angeles on September 3rd 1980. It was broadcast forty years ago on the 5th of September 1980.

Performing with Bowie on the Tonight Show was a one-off band. Bowie’s regular musical right-hand man, Carlos Alomar was leading the band of young up and coming musicians, who were playing with Bowie for the first, and as it turned out, the only time.

The Tonight Show performance is unique in other ways. It was Bowie’s only live appearance of 1980, and the only time any Scary Monsters material was performed live, in its day. And the Tonight Show was one of only two live appearances he made (the other SNL, 1979) in the five-year period between the ISOLAR II 1978 tour and the Serious Moonlight tour in 1983.

The Tonight Show performance is great! Bowie is in fine voice and the band are full of spirit. I love Bowie and Alomar’s big smiles, as it becomes clear that the performance is a success. For me, this performance has always been frustratingly good, because it is a tantalizing glimpse of what a Scary Monsters tour could have been like. . .” / Continued at Nacho Video/Youtube

David Bowie, Tonight Show, live TV, 1980, pop music

Unique live lineup for The Tonight Show, 1980: Bowie sings Life on Mars in James Dean rebel mode with Carlos Alomar on guitar at left

➢ Previously at Shapers of the 80s:
1980, Why Bowie came recruiting Blitz Kids
for his Ashes to Ashes video

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➤ Fire up the Lada! Gene Hunt is off to Moscow in British TV exports boom

Posted on 3 Oct 2011 | Leave a comment

Life on Mars, Philip Glenister , Gene Hunt , John Sim, television series,UK TV exports,

The original UK version of the 70s-set British police series Life on Mars: Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt and John Sim as Sam Tyler, right (BBC)

➢ Today’s Guardian reports that the British TV export industry now brings in more than £1.4bn annually…

NUMBER CRUNCHER
❚ Last year sales of UK programmes and format ideas generated revenues of £1.4bn, up from £1.3bn in 2009
❚ North America represented 42% of total UK export revenue in 2010, with Europe 31% and the rest of the world 27%
❚ Sales to Canada rose from £61m to £73m in the year to 2010, a 20% increase
❚ Revenue from ready-to-screen TV sold abroad in 2010 raised £657m, up 15%
[UK Television Exports Survey]

“ THE CATCHPHRASE ‘Fire up the Lada’ could soon be sweeping Russia. The BBC has licensed the hit TV series Life on Mars, which turned actor Philip Glenister’s politically incorrect DCI Gene Hunt into one of the nation’s best loved characters, to be set in the former Soviet Union and the action relocated from 1970s Manchester to communist Moscow.

“ The BBC’s announcement comes as figures from the UK Television Exports Survey show that the world’s appetite for British television is booming. The success of formats such as Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor, as well as the dramas Downton Abbey and Sherlock, have led to a 13% rise in export revenues to more than £1.4bn in the past year…” /continued at Guardian online

Life on Mars, Jason O’Mara , Harvey Keitel, US TV series,

Next stop, Moscow: The US version of Life on Mars, starred Jason O’Mara as Sam Tyler and Harvey Keitel as a quieter Gene Hunt (photography: FX)

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