In Minute 39 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny continue their trip through the music video for “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon,” this time taking a closer look at the Bowie-reference-laden lyrics to the song and Bowie’s taking inspiration from William S. Burroughs in using the “cut-up technique” in his lyrics and performances, the interplay of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in the persons of haughty fop Brian Slade and the serpentine Maxwell Demon, the origins of the blue reptile in the work of both Lindsay Kemp and Leigh Bowery, the legacy of the Club Kids, and Bowie’s tenuous connections to stage magic and illusion.
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