Customer Reviews

David Bowie: Serious Moonlight

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My first exposure to Bowie was seeing him on MTV in the "Let's Dance" video back in 1983. While I've since acquired just about everything he's ever recorded, and have no trouble identifying the strongest part of his career as coming to an end around 1980, I still have a fondness for the 1983 incarnation of Mr. Jones. I also - truth be told - love horn-laden, synth-heavy, bright rearrangements of much of the older material showcased on the Serious Moonlight tour, like "Star", "Station to Station", "Scary Monsters", etc.

I enjoyed this video back on VHS, and it has transitioned as well as can be excepted to DVD. I am still annoyed at a few of the artistic choices -- especially truncating the beginning of "Station to Station", as well as omitting tour staples like "Modern Love" and "Star", from the video record -- but at 20 songs, I can't accuse the producers of being skimpy. It serves well as a record of an exciting, commercially successful tour -- and one that isn't as artistically bankrupt as critics claim.

The video quality is still somewhat grainy, but the sound is excellent.

Getting the "Ricochet" documentary as a bonus is a real treat.

Finally, for a hidden bonus: I almost bought the revised SOUND & VISION box set back in 2003 just to get the live b-side version of "Modern Love" -- a rarity from the days of vinyl that had previously not made it to CD. I'm glad I didn't, because it's actually hidden away on this DVD, as the soundtrack for the "Gallery" feature!

This is the way old tube cameras recorded things back then in the eighties - lights would smear, and soft focus filters and spotlights shining through smoke just add to the at-time-fuzzy, at-times-glossy look. Don't believe the reviews that say the DVD had bad visual mastering; my criteria for this disc is simple: Does it look and sound the way it did when it aired on HBO those many years ago? It does. That's both relief (the master video could have deteriorated - except for a couple split second breaks, it hasn't) and unfortunate (the sound needs to be remixed/remastered). About that all-important sound: Background hiss exists, but what really bothers me is that the mix doesn't do justice to Carlos Alomar's guitar. A modern mix would bring him out more, but who knows if the unmixed audio tapes from the show even exist anymore? At least the vocals are clear. About the show itself, this was Bowie at his most accessible, with everyone dressed up in shirts & suspenders and proper shoes (except for Earl Slick, who looks and acts like he escaped from an episode of Welcome Back Kotter), and just a few smoke and light effects, with some great performances; Cat People sounding great, and even Fame - which often turns into a laborious affair - is engaging.

I am about as big a David Bowie fan as anybody can realistically claim to be, but even I cannot muster much enjoyment from watching this DVD.

True, several of the interpretations of songs on this disc are classic and highly worth hearing. However, there is no escaping the fact that the disc started with dated media and was remastered sloppily, if at all. The video is in "soft focus" throughout (to put it charitably) and the technical sound quality low.

A vast improvement over the earlier VHS release, thank God. Though the picture and sound are by no means perfect (from what I gather, the concert was filmed on video), they no longer detract from the concert in the way the VHS version (muffled sound, blurry picture) did. For some idea of the quality, check out the Cat People video on The Best of Bowie DVD.

The concert itself is not for everyone, by all means, but even beyond the blonde perm and hammy theatrics, there lurks a solid concert. Its strength lies mainly in the track listing: it's basically the Low through Scary Monsters period with some older material and new songs thrown in. With Carlos Alomar (who features a lot in the concert) and Chic's Tony Thompson, the material has a nice funky edge, something missing in Bowie's current line-up.

The low points are Life on Mars and Space Oddity, which don't work at all well in these settings, the latter seeming to grind to a halt in places. Also, Earl Slick and his red hair band should have been tamed: each time he comes on for a solo it feels like you're watching a Van Halen covers band - it's not ideal. (When Bowie introduces the band towards the end, Slick is greeted by rapturous applause while Alomar just gets a routine clapping, which is simply unfair.).

Also included here is the documentary, Ricochet. Thankfully, Bowie doesn't act in the film. Instead, we see him hob-knobbing with the people of Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong. There are actually some nice shots of these cities, with a particularly nice montage of Bangkok set to the music of Moss Garden. There is also footage of the Hong Kong leg of the tour, where the set is more intimate and a little rougher round the edges.

Two words - classic Bowie! Taken from the Vancouver show of David Bowie's 1983 world tour, this concert is a great representation of the Thin White Duke's career up to that point. Bowie's voice is strong and his performance epitomizes the charisma and energy for which his live shows are known. Although not nearly as theatrical as the Ziggy Stardust through Diamond Dogs era ('72-'74) or the Glass Spider tour ('87), it's a fun concert filled with lots of hits. Except for "Sorrow" and "The Cracked Actor", Bowie performs no Ziggy-era songs, but he does indulge in a Hamlet-esque, show-stopping rendition of the latter. Dressed very dapper in baggy suits, Bowie parades the stage, playing with the audience and giving them their money's worth. His band is one of his strongest - with Earl Slick on lead guitar, Tony Thompson on drums, and the funky saxophone section, The Borneo Horns, to name a few. A masterful performance. In summary: a must for die-hard Bowie-heads and a great way to get started for those not acquainted with the music of the talented David Bowie

David Bowie's Serious Moonlight Tour was a great event in its time back in the early 80s. But this concert video is bound to (and has) drawn mixed responses. Is it an important document? Yes. Is it essential for all Bowie fans? Quite impossible to say. Bowie fans will draw their own conclusions because Bowie is never quite the same whenever we see him.

What I will say is that there are some nice moments in here - and as someone pointed out, Bowie is at his most accessible. Clips from previous 70s tours show him as being relatively colder (though that represented his image at the time). The highlights of this particular show for me were "Look Back in Anger"; "Cracked Actor"; "White Light White Heat" and "Fame". "Ashes to Ashes" and "Space Oddity" aren't bad either.

Bowie's slightly past his vocal peak here though. Songs like "Young Americans" get a rough treatment, so don't expect every song to sound as pristine. Do however, appreciate the moments of Bowie's theatricality and have fun. It's hard to know what to expect from a concert video sometimes, but don't expect too much and you will enjoy this.

Serious Moonlight is a lot better than Bowie's Glass Spider tour, and worth watching, even though it's less than perfect!

If we take a look at Bowie's career so far(1964-2003), a lot of fans will say the 1969-1980 period was by far the best. It's true. But I would extend it from 1967 to 1984 (going to 1986 if we include the enjoyable Labyrinth soundtrack). According to me, The Serious Moonlight Tour was the best ever for Bowie, despite the fact that Bowie himself said its worst period was 1983-1984... Let's say he doesn't like fame, but enjoy the money !!! The interpretation of songs like «Life on mars», «Rebel Rebel», «Young Americans», «Fame», «Space Oddity» and «Cat People» are close to perfection, better than the LPS.

The presentation of the songs, the crowd, the technical aspects makes this video one of the best I have ever seen. I only hope that one day, Bowie will admit that the Let's Dance period was as good artistically as the amazing Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke periods, completing a trilogy of eccentricity, coolness and fame...

The Serious Moonlight Tour was a brilliant concert tour. I was at the Singapore performance and enjoyed it tremendously. However, the picture and sound quality on this disc fails to do credit to DVD technology.

I have to say I wasn't expecting much from this DVD- recorded at the very moment that Bowie's career was teetering on the brink of the critical abyss (this concert was recorded just a year before the release of his low-point "Tonight"), you might expect this concert to reveal everything that was bad about the "branded Bowie" of the 80s. But no! It's a thoroughly enjoyable concert- the band playing is solid throughout, Bowie's voice is great and the reworkings of classic tracks work rather well (at the very least they're perversely enjoyable- especially the cover of White-Light/White Heat- more on that in a minute).

The set-list is a fairly judicious balance- its more or less a greatest hits package with some Let's Dance songs thrown in, although the emphasis is more on the late seventies stuff, albeit with the experimental dissonance jettisoned in favour of a commercial 80s sound, which was clearly aimed at garnering acceptance from the kind of people who were buying Phil Collins records at the time(!) It's true that Bowie was "thinking about his pension" at this point (and why not? He spent the seventies being financially shafted by RCA), but remarkably, this doesn't detract from the concert at all. With such a solid backing band (Slick, Alomar, the drummer from Chic) how could you possibly mess up songs like Heroes, Golden Years, Ashes to Ashes and Young Americans? No amount of tinkering with the arrangements alters these indubitable classics.

Further, I think its a mistake to criticise Bowie for ditching the artiness of his late 70s phase in favour of a more commercial approach here. The fact is, that Bowie's music has always been quite theatrical and camp, so the hammy theatrics on show here not only don't detract from the songs, they sometimes enhance them. Cracked Actor, for instance, sees Bowie dressed in Shakespearian garb with Yorick's skull, while the arrangement ditches the original's fuzzy, amped-up guitar lead for cheesy synth-stabs, accompanied by a slinky bass groove. Its a camped-up treat, one of the show's highlights. My other fave is the cover of White Light/White Heat, which makes something of a mockery of the original, turning its pretentious artiness into a campy treat, topped off by the bandana-ed Earl Slick's preposterous 3-minute guitar solo, a brazen display of 80s excess. Ive always thought the Velvet's original was over-rated anyway, and seeing it revamped in this way gave me a great deal of perverse pleasure.

But its not all camped-up, hammy pseudery. (Nor are the pleasures on offer purely those of a perverse nature...) There's a solid performance underneath the cheesiness, and, I said above, don't be fooled into thinking that this concert ought to be forgotten along with Bowie's underwhelming studio output from the same period.

This how a David Bowie concert is meant to be: the songs are delivered the way they sound on record as precise and better; the musicians and singer can ad lib without being self-indulgent; and having more than 20 songs on the set within that durations gives you the concert goer your moneys worth. I have been to a Bowie concert myself and I really enjoy watching it live and this dvd shows how it really looks like live.