6 - Aladdin Sane
Aladdin Sane is, in his own words, "Ziggy goes to America." It was written and recorded in the middle of the Ziggy Stardust tour. Like all the best coincidences, Bowie's brother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, he felt both intrigued and appalled by America in general, he loved playing for thousands of people but hated the bus rides with complete strangers in between gigs. Not surprisingly, the album is a bizarre mixture of classic rock & roll, avant jazz, technological noise. Also not surprisingly, the characters continue to be the casualties of society at large.
I haven't mentioned it before, but there's been an increasing sense that these seemingly incidental characters are actually the superheros, the stars, the real idols. I mention it now because it's right there at the surface. Ziggy Stardust is the famous person, but he's surrounded by people who don't know him, asking a truck driver for his autograph in a seeming post riot Detroit, and directly addressing the clash between the being on stage and the agitation of the endless wait between shows. He's very much the actor, and everything is a movie, but the making of the movie is a very different experience from watching the movie.
I like this album a lot. In part because i love the saxophones and boogie rock juxtaposed with the introspectively incoherent jazz piano, but also because it's a fractured take on a fractured subject. He's found the character, he's doing what that character is supposed to do, it's everything he already said it was going to be, and he's getting increasingly impatient to retire it and move on to the next thing. Art imitating life imitating art.
7 - Diamond Dogs
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