Love You Till Tuesday

Love You Till Tuesday is a television show (or “programme”, as those redundant British spellers would have it) produced in 1969 featuring video clips of Bowie’s music. 1969, to those not in the know, is when people actually DID wear what Mike Myers parodies in Austin Powers – the clothes, the hairstyle, the silly cravats – the works.
The music is Bowie’s early materials such as can be found in the David Bowie LP – a bit dated and occasionally childish, but with a bitter or cynical undercurrent that’s still fun. Most videos are glaringly lip-synced and shot in a blindingly white studio, occasionally accompanied by friend John “Hutch” Hutchinson and his then-girlfriend, Hermione “Stonejaw” Farthingale. (They split up during the shoots, rumor has it). Some of the songs are cute (like “When I’m Five”, which I wasn’t familiar with) and some are trite (“Ching-a-ling”, where they all sit on cushions and play acoustic guitars. Bleh).
Featured are a mime piece – “The Mask” – which is rather standard mime fare with a grease-painted bulge-crotched Bowie doing, umm, the thing that mimes do. Never quite got the hang of that. More of that to come, though.
We have a lovely video for Space Oddity, though, which proves that British teeth are really as scary as people say, and that whatever did happen to Major Tom among the stars isn’t, apparently, as bad as we thought.

A Pierrot in Turqouise, or The Looking Glass Murders

Also included on the DVD is a 20-minute mime film by one Lindsay Kemp, Bowie’s dance and mime teacher (and rumored lover). The film itself is rather classic melodrama, featuring the mime/clown Pierrot (Kemp) whose rather scary-looking lover Columbine cheats on him with Harlequin, who appears to be a very gay Teal’c. This evolves (very slowly) into a jealously/vengeance/repentence story, with Bowie generally not doing much except sitting on a ladder and singing.
All in all, rather boring, too artistic, and generally amusing.