"Ziggy Played Guitar..."

Last week’s entry focused on Marc Bolan, the man who set the tone for glam rock in the early 70s. Today we’ll look at tge man that took Bolan’s glam rock foundation to a stellar level.



Rocker Profile: David Jones, later relabelled David “Bowie”, first entered the music scene at a young age. Like Bolan, Bowie first began to make a name for himself writing and performing psychedelic folk tunes for an underground audience. One of these tracks, recorded in 1969 for a self-titled album, was the popular “Space Oddity”. This song was recorded to coincide with the moon landing and it quickly climbed the UK charts. It was soon after Bowie’s first tastes of artistic and commercial success that he teamed with the most influential collaborator of his glitter phase, Mick Ronson. Ronson contributed to five Bowie albums in the seventies, including the popular “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” and “A Lad Insane”, two records which unified a space-aged glitter sound with astronomical visuals. The Ronson albums became well-known for Bowie’s experimentally androgynous stageshow . He dawned layers of sparkling makeup, platform heals, and tight lycra jumpsuits onstage. David focused on creating a visual personification of the flashy and weird glam rock sounds of the 70s and he became extremely successful because of it.


Glamtastic Review: We’re going to have a brief look at Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars”. The album begins with the apocalyptic “5 years”, a slow, piano driven track that lays the groundwork for the album. The song successfully introduces bizarre imagery; the world is close to an end and everyone seems to be learning to cope with the dark atmosphere. It’s a fantastically ear-tugging opener. The album boasts many chugging, distorted tracks like “Suffragette City” and “Star”. The track “Hang Onto Yourself”, with its clap track and frantically simple bass, sounds as though it would fit in perfectly with any early "Ramones" record. I think the most prominent gems on the album are the slower tracks, though. Songs like “Starman”, “Rock and Roll Suicide” and “Ziggy Stardust” take their time with simple melodies which frame Bowie’s interesting and energetic voice. Bowie has an absolutely stunning range, his highs are practically feminine on the record. “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” is a fantastic concept album, it jumps from different ideas in a near apocalyptic world inhabited by spaced out rockers. This album IS "glitter". Listen to it a couple times.


"Starman" live

Bowie black and white from: http://www.rollingstone.de/momente/files/david_bowie_10_getty.jpg
Album artwork from : www.cduniverse.com

It Came From...Everywhere?

Glitter, flamboyance, fashion, freedom, sexuality, surrealism, emotion, sound, expression, colour, confidence, art, rhythm, glam, glam, glam.

Welcome to glam rock, a strange, sense-encompassing musical movement popularized in the mid 70s. Also known as “glitter rock”, glam music takes pinches of popular culture and presses them together firmly in one happily-odd art.

Glitter rock’s revolutionary rise to mainstream popularity was short but powerful. The movement, arguably a transitional phase, ushered the rise of many talented musicians. Pioneering glam rockers took influences like blues, country, Motown, doo-wop, rock and roll and the dream-like tunes of the post-hippie movement and used them to create something radically new, setting the foundation for generations of musicians.

This blog focuses on the brave men and women behind the boas: the history, the music, the albums and the musicians they inspired.


Rocker Profile: The first prominent figure in the world of glitter rock was a corkscrew curled boy from Hackney, London. Marc Feld, later relabelled“Marc Bolan”, found moderate musical success in the London underground as a folk artist. It was after he shed his Dylan-esque image and worked an electric guitar into his act that his band, “Tyrannosaurus Rex”, began steadily appearing in the UK charts. After rearranging the group’s line-up and shortening their title to “T.Rex”, Bolan began working with producer Tony Visconti. Bolan and Visconti collaborated on several of T.Rex’s more commercially successful albums: “Electric Warrior” in ’71, “The Slider” in ’72, and “Tanx” in ’73.



Glamtastic Review: Today we’ll have a look at the album that started it all, “Electric Warrior”, Bolan’s first full-length venture into electric rock. The album was a risky move for a once thriving folk artist. Electric warrior consists of sixteen tracks that display Bolan’s diverse musical interests. The album opens with “Mambo Sun” a track which incorporates a deeply metallic, bouncing rhythm guitar with Bolan’s imagery-focused, dream-like lyrics. Bolan playfully dives into takes on his blues and rock influences in many of the tracks including “Lean woman blues”, “Jeepster”, “The Motivator” and the popular “Bang a Gong (Get it it on)”. These tracks explode with a sort of energetically playful freedom, almost a boastful exhale for the once unplugged musician. That isn’t to say that there aren’t nods to Bolan’s folk roots in Electric Warrior. The musician smoothly blends his new sound with the steady pulsing strums of his classic folky ballads. Across the record, songs like “Life’s a Gas” or “Girl” pay tribute to his musical past. “Cosmic Dancer” an existential folk tune is punctuated with crooning moans and the whispers of a fine string arrangement which displays the marriage of Bolan’s old ideas with a new sound in a fresh way. This album was all about change for the artist and it is a fantastically well rounded sampling of meandering musical ideas. If you have a chance, do yourself a favour and check it out.

That's it for "RMWB" for today. Tune in next time for a spaced out guitarist and his out-of-this-world arachnids... untill then, check out the "Random Glam Clip of the Day":

David Bowie and Marc Bolan perform, Marc tumbles offstage. This was Bolan's last appearance, he died only nine days later in a car accident.

* all album artwork from www.cduniverse.com