Aug 012010
I never put that much personal stock in anything Bowie’s done, but recently I came across this clip of The Pretty Things lip-synching one of my favorite songs from S.F. Sorrow, the proto-Jethro Tull number, “Private Sorrow.”
That’s the legendary English psych drummer Twink, of Tomorrow and, later, Pink Fairies fame miming the part of Private Sorrow. He joined The Pretty Things between these two bands. I had no idea, until now, that he brought mime chops to the band along with his drum sticks. Too bad. This mime routine may forever cure me of my attraction to this song’s charms. With his curly locks and screen presence, however, Twink would be more successful in setting the stage for the top hat in rock.
does the guitarist from the sensational alex harvey band qualify? i’m not sure if he ever acted it out.
Gotta say as much as miming Bowie bugged (especially the first one with the VPL) Twink just seemed sort of adorable. He didn’t bug me at all.
I hope Leo Sayer’s mime period didn’t turn you off to You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.
BigSteve, “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” packed too much power to be threatened by mime or Sayer’s proto-Richard Simmons Look.
I always enjoyed that puppet body Bowie performance on SNL (& the drag thing for the other song he did that night). I thought of it more as using the television medium to do something a little different. And it moves. The rest of those clips, though? YAAAAWWWWNNN! Even The Pretty Things, but I prefer their earlier, more straight-ahead rock & roll stuff to the twee psych Pretties, so the miming doesn’t really matter much one way or the other to me.