For this week’s installment of Vintage Video, we present one of the weirder things you’ll see today: Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Alice In Wonderland”-inspired “Play at Home” special that aired on the U.K.’s Channel 4 in 1983, during the period Robert Smith was in the band.
The 50-minute special, which has since been included on the “Nocturne” DVD, was created by the band itself, and it shows. There’s music by The Banshees, The Creatures and The Glove, and all sorts of odd vignettes, including, as you can see above, Siouxise and the whole band dressed up as Alice.
Watch the whole wonderfully weird thing below (via PPTTCureboy):
Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Play at Home” special
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- ‘The feud is over’: Steven Severin says The Banshees talking again after nearly a decade
- Video: Siouxsie closes 2nd Meltdown gig with Banshees classic ‘Spellbound’
- Siouxsie plays ‘Kaleidoscope’ in full at first concert in 5 years (SETLIST, PHOTOS, VIDEO)
- Siouxsie to play first concert in 5 years this summer as part of Yoko Ono’s Meltdown
- Siouxsie and the Banshees 20-disc ‘mega’ box set with 11 albums, live DVDs in works
- Steven Severin: Siouxsie and the Banshees’ reissue program dumped by Universal Music
Wow. Surprisingly, everyone can act too.
One word sums it up for me, FANTASTIC!!!!
Awesome! Old news, but still very cool!
Ha ha, this is hilarious!
Brilliant stuff! Best part is the Glove’s “A Blues In Drag”! ;)
I had heard about this for a very long time and found a bootleg of it in the early 90’s. The version on the dvd release of Nocturne is so much better! Love it. It’s wacky, cool and sinister in a cheeky way!
I had seen the VHS of NOCTURNE in like 1987, but it never included the “Play At Home” segment. When someone posted that part online, a few years ago, I was especially taken by videos for The Creatures (“Weathercade”), The Glove, (“A Blues In Drag”), and Siouxsie and The Banshees (“Circle” one of their hidden gems); along w/ Sioux’s little story that now seems like the precursor to 1984’s classic song, “Take Me Back”, and the video style of 1988’s “Peek-A-Boo” video. Since watching that Gothic segment, I’ve often wondered if Siouxsie wrote the whole story by herself, or was she doing a dramatized reading of a tale written from The Pan Book of Horror Stories. Yes, Sioux esp. could act. I would love Siouxsie to do another vignette spoken word tale, or reading of an obscure tale set to music on any (or all) of Siouxsie’s upcoming solo albums. I’m sure that it would be one of the great highlights from the albums.
Someone’s written up the monologues: http://www.thebansheesandothercreatures.co.uk/playathomemonologues.htm
I could be wrong, but I think the Mad Hatter is Richard Jobson of the Skids.