5 - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust

And here it is. The thing that finally made David Bowie a superstar. Does anybody really care if Ziggy Stardust is Jimmy Hendrix? My question is why did it take 5 albums to figure out that actually BEING the character who the album is about would be what people needed to finally get it?

We're in David Bowie's version of Lord Sutch and Alice Cooper theatrics. His running joke during Hunky Dory was that he was "the actor" and all i can say is "duh?." Like any good Barthesian narrative, we get to say "hello saxophone, we look forward to where you'll take us next."

Aside: you've been reading your Barthes, right? This is mandatory narrative logic. His example is a book with a parrot i can't remember the name of at the moment (the book, not the parrot). His point was that there is no room for illogical occurrences in proper narrative. Introducing the existence of a parrot is mandatory if the parrot matters to the plot. If you didn't introduce the parrot, we'd call you a crappy writer.

Anywho, i said i couldn't tell if any of this is intentional or coincidental, and i can't anymore. Elaborate stage costumes and rock theatrics are the norm. Bowie's take on the subject just happens to be spectacular. Now he's a rock genius, and everybody's looking up his back catalogue and saying "holy micky mouse, he's been doing it the whole time." Graven image of a cow? Life On Mars? Bueller? Bueller?

Alien rock star with a message of love in the face of a doomed planet. The complete lack of subtext is driving me absolutely bonkers at this point. Every single thing is so on the nose it's like he just snorted us all up it.

Spoiler alert, he's going to go a little crazy, move to a foreign country for a while, sell out, rebel against that selling out, make weird crap that i personally don't like very much, finally make an album i do like very much, start planning his next project and die. It's like they gave him the script in 1967 and said the part is yours, have at it. Everyone else tried, but didn't have the determination to actually finish the movie.

He had to be making it up as he went, right? It's not logically possible to do all this stuff on purpose is it? Am i the only one who finds it this hard to reconcile? You can't possibly map out your entire 50 year career in advance, you have to just go step by step asking yourself "what's the next logical step?," then doing it.

I'm getting ahead of myself. This album is awesome, but you already knew that. Bowie's first 5 albums is enough work for one day (and yes, i've been doing it all day long with breaks for lunch and dinner and talking to my family, and running to town for grapes). We'll see how many i get through tomorrow....

6 - Aladdin Sane

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more