I leaned back on my radio Some cat was layin’ down some rock ‘n’ roll ‘lotta soul, he said Then the loud sound did seem to fade Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase That weren’t no D.J. that was hazy cosmic jive.
– Starman
Ziggy the glam androgynous alien messiah fell to Earth, he changed Bowie from a prodigy to a superstar who transformed music forever. His impact still lingers after 42 years and will continue to do so as long as there is music. No less.
My favourite Bowie album is Hunky Dory, but Ziggy sure comes close.
The record company begged Bowie not to release Low, but it became a surprise hit and holds up today as one of his most intense and influential albums, inspiring two excellent Berlin trilogy sequels, Heroes (1977) and the insanely underrated Lodger (1979).
~Rob Sheffield (rollingstone.com)
—
Following through with the avant-garde inclinations of Station to Station, yet explicitly breaking with David Bowie’s past, Low is a dense, challenging album that confirmed his place at rock’s cutting edge. Driven by dissonant synthesizers and electronics, Low is divided between brief, angular songs and atmospheric instrumentals.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)
“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” – David Bowie
David Robert Jones (born 8 January 1947), known by his stage name David Bowie, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator. He is known for his distinctive voice as well as the intellectual depth and considerable eclecticism of his work.
“I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human. I felt very puny as a human. I thought, “Fuck that. I want to be a superhuman.” ― David Bowie
Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song “Space Oddity” reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single “Starman” and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowie’s impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, “challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day” and “created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture.”
Ziggy Stardust:
The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.
Great new video with Gary Oldman and Marie Cottilard brings a religious feast to a halt in this, kind of not safe for work, video.
Bowie as a Christ like figure sings from a stage in a church while women without too many clothes dance around – until one of them, played by Marie Cotillard, develops stigmata.
Throughout the album, there are hints that he’s tired with the Ziggy formula, particularly in the disco underpinning of “Candidate” and his cut-and-paste lyrics. However, it’s not enough to make Diamond Dogs a step forward, and without Mick Ronson to lead the band, the rockers are too stiff to make an impact. Ironically, the one exception is one of Bowie’s very best songs — the tight, sexy “Rebel Rebel.”
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)
When this came out in 1974, it was roundly dismissed as Ziggy Stardust’s last strangled gasp. In hindsight, Diamond Dogs is marginally more worthwhile; its resigned nihilism inspired interesting gloom and doom from later goth and industrial acts such as Bauhaus and Nine Inch Nails.
~Mark Kemp (rollingstone.com in 2004)
#2 – Diamond Dogs:
Well.. most the critics dismissed (and still – in hindsight – dismisses) this album. I’ve always liked it. Best to play it all through in one sitting…
Wikipedia:
Released
24 April 1974
Recorded
October 1973 – February 1974 at Olympic Studios and Island Studios, London, and Ludolf Studios, Hilversum, Netherlands
Genre
Rock, glam rock
Length
38:25
Label
RCA
Producer
David Bowie
Diamond Dogs is a concept album by David Bowie, originally released in 1974 on RCA Records, his eighth album. Thematically, it was a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie’s own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Bowie had wanted to make a theatrical production of Orwell’s book and began writing material after completing sessions for his 1973 album Pin Ups, but the late author’s estate denied the rights. The songs wound up on the second half of Diamond Dogs instead where, as the titles indicated, the Nineteen Eighty-Four theme was prominent.
#6 – Rebel Rebel:
Although Diamond Dogs was the first Bowie album since 1969 to not feature any of the ‘Spiders from Mars’, the backing band made famous by Ziggy Stardust, many of the arrangements were already worked out and played on tour with Mick Ronson prior to the studio recordings, including “1984” and “Rebel Rebel”.
In the studio, however, Herbie Flowers played bass with drums being shared between Aynsley Dunbar and Tony Newman. In a move that surprised some commentators, Bowie himself took on the lead guitar role previously held by Mick Ronson, producing what NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murraydescribed as a “scratchy, raucous, semi-amateurish sound that gave the album much of its characteristic flavour”. Diamond Dogs was also a milestone in Bowie’s career as it reunited him with Tony Visconti, who provided string arrangements and helped mix the album at his own Good Earth Studios in London, on a Trident B-range console, brand new from Trident at the time. Visconti would go on to co-produce much of Bowie’s work for the rest of the decade.
#7 – Rock’n Roll With Me:
The record was Bowie’s glam swansong; according to author David Buckley, “In the sort of move which would come to define his career, Bowie jumped the glam-rock ship just in time, before it drifted into a blank parody of itself”. At the time of its release Bowie described Diamond Dogsas “a very political album. My protest … more me than anything I’ve done previously”.
Diamond Dogs’ raw guitar style and visions of urban chaos, scavenging children and nihilistic lovers (“We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band / And jump in the river holding hands”) have been credited with anticipating the punk revolution that would take place in the following years.
Track Listing:
All songs written by David Bowie, except where noted.[14]
“Future Legend” – 1:05
“Diamond Dogs” – 5:56
“Sweet Thing” – 3:39
“Candidate” – 2:40
“Sweet Thing (Reprise)” – 2:31
“Rebel Rebel” – 4:30
“Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me” (lyrics: Bowie; music: Bowie, Warren Peace) – 4:00
“We Are the Dead” – 4:58
“1984” – 3:27
“Big Brother” – 3:21
“Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family” – 2:00
