Some Observations on Gary Numan on Italian Television

 

What would happen dear reader if I were to turn the telescope of my critical awareness onto my own past? Would I see it as I see the future today?

Today I am a delicate creature. I drift from thought to action without aim or reason other than to fill the hours between medication and a kind visitor. Then I was a preening pompous ass of a boy, full of spunk and all-knowing.

This video of Gary Numan at the height of his powers in Italy, elicits a kind of nostalgia I can barely explain. This was like what growing up in a European country that wasn't Britain was like in 1980. I lived for a short snapshot on German TV that would usually be lost in translation and crushed of character. I saw my art through the lens of disbelieving and misunderstanding media. I think that was good training for here and for now.

So here it is. Gary Numan, free of the UK and with a few minutes to do his thing before going to give an equally perumptoty moment elsewhere.

I note that he wears a very, very European leather jacket. Unfortunate. Everyone wore them. Badly. He bought his in a shop in Kensington called Reflections. Italians would make terrible leather jackets and send them there so he could buy them to wear back in Italy.

I note the keyboards on the stage are not the correct synthesisers to make the sounds for this song. That saddens me. They knew the right keyboards. They had them. Instead they use whatever the TV company had available.

The keyboard players look like imposters. Billy Currie from Ultravox should have been there. Was he in some bar, talking to a stranger he met on the plane? Was their manager standing in?

The moment at the end when the hosts caper onstage from a totally different universe is a treasure. Gary Numan's face is a second one. Two treasures.

I note the look. The facial expression. 

I am transported. I looked at the world around me with that face every day in the early 1980s.

I hated myself for loving this song. Rather than admit to my feelings I simply never reviewed it. My absence was a kind of treachery.

I reviewed the songs I felt I should review.

I wish I had the chance to go back and say the words then that I needed to. I cannot say them now because they would be hollow and false.