The platform shoes to-die-for were Frank N. Furter’s in The Rocky Horror Picture Show - those bejeweled white heels made Tim Curry’s first appearance as the sweet transvestite the epitome of glam. And gorgeous he was too.

Elton John may arguably have had the best platform shoes, but his tended to veer into stage props, eventually leading to those sky-high Doctor Marten boots in Ken Russell’s Tommy. And of course, there was David Bowie, Twiggy, and a host of pop stars sashaying around London on pairs of ankle-breakers. Like Oxford bags, bell bottoms, high-waisters, and bomber jackets, the platform shoe epitomized the androgynous nature of seventies fashions. Originally devised as stage shoes in Greek theater, platforms have been in and out of style through the centuries, at various times used by prostitutes to signal their availability and profession (to literally stand out from the crowd), and were popular in the 18th century as shit-steppers, used to avoid effluent on the road. However, their greatest impact was in the 1970s, when they were the boot of choice for seemingly everyone under 30.

I had a pair of 5 inch heels, blue patent leather, divine to walk in, impossible to run in, and not the expected school uniform. This British Pathe featurette takes a look at the trend of platform shoes from 1977.
 

 
Via British Pathe
 

 
Early B&W video footage of Bruce Springsteen performing “Growin’ Up” at Max’s Kansas City on August 10, 1972.
 

 
David Bowie happened to be there that night and this is what he had to say about the then unknown Boss’s performance:

“So this guy is sitting up there with an acoustic guitar doing a complete Dylan thing. My friend and I were about to leave when he started introducing a band who were joining him on stage.”

“The moment they kicked in he was another performer. All the Dylanesque stuff dropped off him and he rocked. I became a major fan that night and picked up Asbury Park immediately.”

In 1973 Bowie recorded “Growin’ Up” as part of the Pin Ups sessions. The song didn’t make the cut, but it would see Bowie record the very first Bruce Springsteen cover. Two years later, during the Young Americans sessions, Bowie laid down a soul version of Springsteen’s “It’s Hard to be a Saint In The City” with the Boss in attendance for the mixdown at Philadelphia recording studio, Sigma Sound.

Below, another song recorded at Max’s that same night (actually the set’s opening number), “Henry Boy.”
 

 
Via Max’s Kansas City

 
OK, enough of the hating between the rockers and the disco-freaks! This ain’t the damn 70s, so why can’t we all just get along? In love, peace and some sweat-drenched bell bottoms? Besides, there is a big crossover between these two supposedly “opposing” genres.

About five or six years ago, at the height of both nu-disco and the Italo revival (and while I was releasing music under the name Trippy Disco), I found myself playing more and more vintage disco records with crashing power-chords and wailing axe solos. Because of the “sell out” accusations that these kind of records attracted at the time (from both camps) it’s a side of disco that’s been neglected, even though I love those sounds. So, I decided to put together an hour’s worth of my favourite disco/rock records, and, lo, the ‘Skool Of Rock’ mix was born.

I decided not to feature anything too “New Wave” or post-punk as the disco influence on those sounds was already very obvious, though I did get to slip in a few acts who would technically be classed as “disco” but who dipped into “rock” now and again (Edwin Starr and Giorgio Moroder, for instance.) And accordingly, there’s also the obligatory disco cash-ins by some of your favourite rock acts (Queen, Bowie, ZZ Top.)  Besides that, there are some real gems here, including the Patrick Cowley remix of Tantra’s “Hills Of Katmandu” which is one the most “fuck yeah!” fist-pumping disco anthems of all time.

So, you might love this mix, you might really hate it, but either way here it is: 
 

 
Tracklist:

ELO “Don’t Bring Me Down (Trippy Disco Re-Edit)”
CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL “Fortunate Son”
ROCKETS “On The Road Again”
EDWIN STARR “The Rock”
CHILLY “For Your Love”
KISS “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”
TANTRA “Hills Of Katmandu (Patrick Cowley Megamix / Automan Edit)”
LED ZEPPELIN “Whole Lotta Love (Acapella)”
MATERIAL “Bustin’ Out”
ZZ TOP “Legs (Metal Mix)”
GIORGIO MORODER “Evolution”
MACHO “Not Tonight (Dimitri From Paris Re-Edit)”
SKATT BROS “Walk The Night (Album Version)”
QUEEN “Another One Bites The Dust”
DAVID BOWIE “Stay”
WINGS “Goodnight Tonight (Trippy Disco Re-Edit)”

You can download the ‘Skool Of Rock’ mix here.

BONUS!

David Bowie performing “Stay”, live on Muzikladen, Bremen 1978:
 

 
Age may weary and death may claim, but the ears will not condemn this fine selection of essential listening from Blondie, Joe Strummer, Ian Dury, Sonic Youth, David Bowie, Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen taken from Later with Jools Holland.

01. Blondie - “Heart of Glass” from 1998
02. Joe Strummer - “London Calling” from 2000
03. Ian Dury - “Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll” from 1998
04. Sonic Youth- “Sacred Trickster” from 2009
05. David Bowie - “Ashes to Ashes” from 1999
06. Johnny Cash - “Folsom Prison Blues” from 1994
07. Leonard Cohen - “Dance me to the End of Love” from 1993
 

 
Empire Magazine held a photoshop contest and asked its readers to mash-up David Bowie with recognizable movie posters. The majority of the submissions were bad photoshop jobs, but some were really funny and quite clever. Here are a few that made me smile.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a vintage interview with David Bowie from the BBC that included more footage from his Broadway turn in The Elephant Man than I have ever seen elsewhere. This is a follow-up to that, a personality profile from ABC’s 20/20 shot around the same time.

You don’t tend to think of 20/20 as being so cutting edge today, but this story must’ve been quite a startling thing for some Americans to have beamed into their living rooms 30 years ago. I can vividly recall my parents being very perplexed by this piece and why I thought David Bowie was “cool” in the first place. It just didn’t make sense to them.
 

 
Part II here.

Previously on Dangerous Minds
‘The Elephant Man’: David Bowie on Broadway, 1980

 
As you are no doubt already well aware from multiple postings on your Facebook wall, David Bowie officially became a senior citizen today.

I have to admit that I was saddened by reading what The Guardian’s killjoy, Alexis Petridis, had to say about this milestone:

It’s a cliche when a rock star reaches 65 to mention the time when it didn’t look like they’d make pensionable age, but with David Bowie who marks the milestone on Sunday, it’s almost unavoidable. Look at a picture of him in the mid-70s, when he was ravaged by cocaine, living off a diet of red peppers and milk and so paranoid that he apparently kept his own urine in a fridge lest persons unknown steal it: this is not a man destined to make old bones.

It wasn’t just the drugs: there was something about the intensity with which he worked during that decade - the scarcely-believable ten-year creative streak that begins with the 1970s The Man Who Sold The World and ends with the 1980’s Scary Monsters And Super-Creeps – that suggests an early demise. Someone that burns that brightly probably isn’t going to burn for long.

Under the circumstances, it’s hard to begrudge him his ongoing semi-retirement: he last made an album in 2003, and for the best part of a decade has made only sporadic public appearances, the odd special guest spot here and there. It was precipitated by emergency surgery on a blocked artery, and lurid rumours about the state of his health have abounded ever since.

Ouch. The idea of a world without David Bowie (even if he’s not in the public eye much these days) is something I’ve never really contemplated. Thanks a bunch, Guardian, for ruining my morning!

Well, if you’re in a more celebratory mood, you can trawl through the Bowie-related back items here on Dangerous Minds. I daresay our Bowie posts here gather up some of the very best Bowie-related multi-media you’re going to find out there.

In England—well, in Brixton at least—they’ve put him on the currency, a proper tribute for a local lad (insane).

And here’s an oblique treat, a very different take on “Golden Years” as performed by Peter Glaze and Jan Hunt on the BBC childrens show, Crackerjack, in 1976:
 

 
Thank you Paul Gallagher, for that crazy clip…

 
‘Hello, I’m David Bowie. Make way for the Homo Superior.’

Find similar here.
 

 
Sir Tim Rice interviews David Bowie, on the Friday Night, Saturday Morning program in 1980. Bowie, then on Broadway for his critically acclaimed portrayal of “Elephant Man” John (Joseph) Merrick, discusses the role and can be seen here in more of the play than I have ever seen anywhere else.

A friend of mine’s father went to see The Elephant Man on Broadway and for some reason he asked me what he should see—I was 14, what would I know?—and I recommended that he see this play, which he thought was terrific. He brought me back the Playbill from his trip to New York and I still have it.

For those of you who don’t think that David Bowie can act (and there is certainly some evidence for that position!) these extended clips from The Elephant Man will be a revelation. It seems obvious that they must’ve shot the entire play. If so, where the hell is it?
 

 
A selection of pop’s bold in beautiful in drag.
 

Robert Plant and Roy Harper.
 

Annie Lennox in “Who’s That Girl?”
 
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Film footage of The Rolling Stones in drag from 1966

 
More beautiful people after the jump…
 

Above, the future Mrs. David Johansen—and later, the ex-Mrs. Steven Tyler—super groupie Cyrinda Foxe with another of her paramours, during the shooting of the “Jean Genie” promo video by Mick Rock.

Christmas is coming early for Bowie fans… tonight in the UK (and soon after on YouTube and torrent trackers for the rest of us). From the NME:

Rare footage of David Bowie performing on Top Of The Pops is to be broadcast on BBC 2 tonight (December 21).

The footage, which sees the singer play “The Jean Genie’” had been lost until last week, when retired TV cameraman John Henshall came forward with a copy of the performance. It was previously believed that every copy of the UK Number 2 hit had been destroyed.

The four-minute clip will now be included in tonight’s Top Of The Pops Christmas Special at 7.30pm (GMT).

Executive producer of Top Of The Pops 2 Mark Cooper told BBC News:

“Bowie singing ‘The Jean Genie’ is electric and the kind of piece of archive that not only brings back how brilliant Top Of The Pops could be, but also how a piece of archive can speak to us down the years.”

Speaking of rare Bowie footage, did you clock that picture of him performing with the Buzz that I posted here yesterday?  Notice the video cameras? It looks like they were on Ready, Steady, Go! Where’s this footage? It would be amazing if that survived somehow.

UPDATE: Here it is!
 

 
Thank you, Mark Hedden, Barry Cartwright, Spencer Kansa

 
A young David Bowie—soon after changing his name—interviewed at the height of his Anthony Newley fixation and a performance of “Over the Wall We Go” a seldom heard track (that I happen to love).

YouTube poster, “Eclipse1501” writes:

In London in 1966 at the Marquee Club David Bowie did a Sunday afternoon show, The Bowie Showboat, from April 10th to June 12th. At the second Bowie Showboat concert he met his soon to be manager, Ken Pitt. This recording is almost 45 years old so forgive the period live sound quality but enjoy a young entertainer. There is an audio break in the middle but stick with it!

The break occurs at 2:08 and resumes at 3:10.
 

 
Below, “Moss Garden” from Heroes:
 

 
Remember what I was saying recently about how there is this seemingly never-ending supply of David Bowie rarities? Well, here’s another, quite astonishing, glimpse of the future superstar, from a mid-60s home movie shot in London’s Soho district

The fellow who posted it on YouTube, Joe Salama writes:

“This exceptional cine footage was taken by my late father on a trip up to the West End of London totally unaware that David Bowie was the young dude that smiles graciously at the camera.

Even when I showed him what he had filmed he was none the wiser and couldn’t remember why he focussed on this particular chap. The face fleetingly seen behind Bowie is that of my mother. Roughly dated to 1968.”

The Mrs. Tsk* Tumblr blog investigated further and found that the home movie, in fact, dated to 1965, by comparing not only Bowie’s hairstyle at the time, but also from a Davie Jones & The Lower Third handbill which had caricatures of the group members that were actually drawn by Jones/Bowie himself. In this self-portrait, he’s wearing the same-rounded collar he’s seen sporting in the film. Mrs Tsk also figured out what Soho block this was shot on, and surmises that the future rockstar was heading into the La Gioconda cafe.

Somebody in the comments points out that it’s more likely to be 1966 or 1965. I’m able to confirm that this is spring 1965. Bigfoot — I mean Bowie, or rather Davie Jones, as he’s still called at this point — is seen walking in a westerly direction along the south side of Denmark Street, London’s Tin Pan Alley, where in May 1965 he recorded a demo with his new band The Lower Third (Tea-Cup, Death and Les, who resemble the three bowl-headed lads seen walking through the arcade) at Central Sound Studio.

—snip—

Central Sound Studio was right next to the La Gioconda cafe, famous as the place where Bowie met The Lower Third and also schizo-rocker Vince Taylor, later to serve as the inspiration for Ziggy Stardust. In fact, I’m pretty sure La Gioconda is where Davie, after flashing his charming smile at the unknown cinematographer, is heading.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Best photo of David Bowie that you will ever see: First night in the USA, 1971
 
Via Spencer Kansa/Adam Peters

 
Fashion designer Michael Fish created some of the most memorable outfits of the 1960s and 1970s, most famously the “men’s dress” as worn by Mick Jagger and David Bowie. His designs were also graced the films Modesty Blaise and Performance.

Here is Mr Fish as he introduces a brief taster of his 1969 collection, from German TV’s Aktuell.
 

 
With thanks to Maria Salavessa Hormigo Guimil