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Ziggy Stardust 30th Anniversary
jonerik writes "Any short list of influential rock albums of the '70s is likely to include David Bowie's 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,' the story of a futuristic alien rock star and his demise during the Earth's final years. Originally released in June 1972, Ziggy is celebrating his 30th anniversary this year in fine style. First of all, the album is being reissued today in a limited edition 2-CD set. Secondly, the 1983 documentary, 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,' directed by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker ('Don't Look Back,' 'Monterey Pop') is being re-released this month and John Cameron Mitchell has an interesting interview with Pennebaker about the re-release in this week's Village Voice."
How about you buy it?
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
Try this link:
g gy+stardust&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
http://www.google.com/search?q=who+the+fuck+is+zi
ummm, no you dont speak for everyone, please shut up.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Seriously, the guy is awesome.
Congrats David!
Why are influential albums reissued as double CDs? Could it be anything to do with money? We just had 'The Velvet Underground and Nico' released as a double CD so that you can listen to the mono version of the album, or the stereo. Also annoying was the 'Live at Leeds' debacle: First there was a version for CD, then a version with extra tracks (the remaster), then a deluxe double CD version.
Having said that ZSatSFM is a great album. And actually the single version CD seems to be still available.
My other favorite Bowie album: Low.
-Andrew
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
enough said...
Ack! That has got to be the WORST excuse for a double album I've ever heard. But I must admit, if the second disc had anything to recommend it (B-sides, demos, etc) I'd pick it up, as I probably would for any band I really dig. For instance, Rhino's reissues of Elvis Costello's entire catalog as double CD's -- that's cool.
But a mono version? I think I can make my stereo do that, right? :)
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I was four years old when my older siblings played Ziggy Stardust, Alladin Sane, and Space Oddity all day every day. They must have worn out a ton of albums not to mention turntable needles. They also wore out my Dad's patience as I can still hear him yelling at them to "Turn that shit down!"
Now whenever I hear these songs I get that strange deja-vu feeling you get when you hear some childhood lullaby. They're burned into my brain like bits on a ROM.
if you consider /.'s 7-8 year old readers "everyone"
sic transit gloria mundi
Lots of lyrics and song info here:
www.teenagewildlife.com
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"Or have I missed the point too."
I was just being silly, but you are making a good point.
It might be worth downloading one or two of these songs to a.) find out what all this is about (I never heard of Ziggy Stardust) and b.) see if the album is worthwhile to the younger generation.
*Shrug* Maybe my sarcasm wasn't so sarcastic. Heh.
I've been reading that comic strip for years, and I never knew that he was supposed to be a musician.
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He also sells stock in his future albums to finance their production. How cool is that?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
What in God's name are you people talking about? I've been going there for over a year now and I can tell you that it is NOT a porn link.
If someone DOES, through some strange twist of reality, end up at a porn site through this link then please post the IP because that would mean that something is very wrong.
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If you ever feel the urge to replace your old turntable, look into getting a Technics SL-1200. I'm constantly amazed on what a beautiful piece of machinery those are. Listening to records is almost like a ritual to me now. Way different than popping in a CD and having the music "magically" appear.
c-hack.com |
...has nothing to do with News for Nerds here are the lyrics to Savior Machine.
President Joe once had a dream
The world held his hand, gave their pledge
So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine
They called it the Prayer, its answer was law
Its logic stopped war, gave them food
How they adored till it cried in its boredom
'Please don't believe in me, please disagree with me
Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now
or maybe a war, or I may kill you all
Don't let me stay, don't let me stay
My logic says burn so send me away
Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen
You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine
I need you flying, and I'll show that dying
Is living beyond reason, sacred dimension of time
I perceive every sign, I can steal every mind
Don't let me stay, don't let me stay
My logic says burn so send me away
Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen
You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine
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Around here (Seattle) we have a radio station that once a year or so plays "Classic Rock A to Z" and as they say, "It isn't over until Ziggie plays guitar," because "Ziggy Stardust" is the only Classic Rock song that begins with Z.
Seriously, visit the album's page and learn a bit about how, with this album, David invented Glam Rock and turned the music world on its ear.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Plus - it's a reissue isn't it. Surely you can download it already. Or have I missed the point too.
:P
according to the listing, it is:
a) remastered
b) now a 2 disc set, with the 2nd being 12 demo tracks.
it also comes in a special box & schitt.
i will prolly buy it. but i have all his early albums on LP and CD so
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
It might be worth downloading one or two of these songs to a.) find out what all this is about (I never heard of Ziggy Stardust) and b.) see if the album is worthwhile to the younger generation.
:)
Disclamer: I love mp3's, and spend about 10 hours a day or more listening to them.
But let me be frank - your post underscores everything that's wrong about mp3's. A lot of the great albums (particularly those from the 70's) are albums, things best listened to as a musical whole. Especially with Bowie, who had a fantastic visual aspect, the album cover and artwork is an important part of what makes these albums special.
I'm not saying there aren't some great singles on those albums - the "Ziggy Stardust" song itself is a great single - but with a lot of classic albums, "downloading a couple of singles" to see if you'll like it is like watching a couple of scenes from a movie to see if it's good. You're missing a big part of the experience!
If it's a good album, the songs WILL stand on their own because the music is of course the most important part... just saying that you'd be missing some of the magic that separates a couple of catchy songs from an actual cohesive whole that's greater than the some of its parts.
And don't paint me as an old fart. I'm only 26, and I think some of the best music ever has been produced in the past ten years, though much of it is underground... thanks to the radio sucking so badly.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Yes, folks, I am old enough to remember the shock-horror tone of this seminal piece of British TV about a man who - aargh! - wore make up to play his songs.
Anybody else remember it? Clips are played occassionally on those Channel 4 "top 30/10 list" things.
Okay, I'll bite...
Are you living under a rock? Or perhaps (and the rest of your comment might indicate this) are you stuck in the past? There is at least as much - if not more - interesting and exciting music coming out today than at any time in the past. Just because it doesn't sound like the stuff you grew up with doesn't make it "base beyond measure" and the fact that the best band you can come up with to bash is Linkin Park suggests you might be the one who's "pathetic and lost".
Why don't you go listen to something on Blue Note? (Madeski Martin and Wood or DJ Logic to mention a few of the great new people on this label). There is all sorts of amazing experimental stuff coming out, check out Alien8 Recordings for some pointers. Punk rock has redefined itself and has a modern message and killer sound. Warped Tour (if you've ever heard of it) is one of the best (and cheapest) big shows around. I've had a great time at every show I've gone to.
The current music scene has fragmented and is moving in a thousand directions. I've mentioned only a few of those fragments and I'm sure that anyone who is at all "with it" could add many more references without even thinking about it. Get the hell out of your rut and start listing to stuff that doesn't play on MTV before you go bashing today's music.
but I went to the music store a couple weeks ago, thinking about getting a Bowie CD (like "Low") and noticed there was no official Phillips CD logo. Anyone know if any of his albums have copy-protection?
i have Low on CD and it plays fine in my PC, but I bought mine about 8-9 years ago.
Rykodisc RCD10142. FYI the CD itself has the Compact Disc label, but neither the booklet nor the reverse of the CD case have it.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
I know people who will swear up and down that "Sgt. Pepper's" is way better in mono, but I refuse to believe that.
Same goes for Pet Sounds. There was a stereo release of Pet Sounds a few years ago. I still think the mono sounds much, much better (but that's probably because I heard it first and love it to death).
The same goes for any of Spector's Philles label work.
Of course, the guitarist of the title track was not the fictional Ziggy, nor Bowie himself, but Mick Ronson, one of the greats of the era who sadly died in 1993.
Anybody want a peanut?
"I'm not saying there aren't some great singles on those albums - the "Ziggy Stardust" song itself is a great single - but with a lot of classic albums, "downloading a couple of singles" to see if you'll like it is like watching a couple of scenes from a movie to see if it's good. You're missing a big part of the experience!"
I see what you're saying, but I'm talking about figuring out whether or not the experience is worth the money. I'm not talking about replacing it with MP3s, but using MP3s as a teaser. The "watching a couple of scenes to see if it's good" comment touches on basically what I'm talking about.
I think you make a really good point, though, that MP3s do not devalue an album. The RIAA should know this by now. There is plenty of reason to buy a CD even if you have MP3s of all the music. When those guys figure that out, Mp3s will be given away freely to encourage CD purchase, just like songs are played freely on the radio.
Chumbawumba knows this. They have some of their songs available for free on their site, I think it's chumba.com. If you've never heard their music (or anything besides the 'I get knocked down' song that wasy played to death), go check it out. You may wanna buy an album at that point.
Music for mass consumption has always sucked. Once in a great while this is untrue (U2, Beatles, Elvis, Duke Ellington, Nirvana, etc), but for 95% of the time, most everything on the charts is shite because it's generalized for mass consumption. For example, in the 70s you had Leif Garrett, The Osmonds, David Cassidy, and the like. Artists like David Bowie (and Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and The Pixies and New Order and The Cure ...) were ignored by the mainstream media. This happened in the 60s as well, just take a look at the productized crap that was filling the charts along with the Beatles.
People seeking substance ususally have to dig a little to find music with real feeling.
Your problem is that you're judging the current music crop soley based on the mainstream outlets. That's like judging the late 60s by Lawerence Welk or Dick Clark's show.
Go to a non-chain local music store and talk to some of the people who work there. They will help you find better music...and in a few years when one of these mostly unknown but great bands is considered an influencial legend someone will complain that 'nobody makes music like that anymore.'
There is so much great music out there right now it's scarey. The productized music crap should be largely ignored. Find the real artists...and BTW, hiphop is alive and well, just check out The Roots.
PS: There's nothing wrong with listening to old music. When I was in high school in the mid-80s, I was listening from everything from Depeche Mode to Jaco Pastorius to Bach to AC/DC to Linton Kwesi Johnson.
My only regret is not finding the Pixies until after they'd broken up:(
-- topher71
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
"We just had 'The Velvet Underground and Nico' released as a double CD so that you can listen to the mono version of the album, or the stereo."
??????
I've got the original CD of that. It's very very short. You could fit mono and stereo on one CD I would think. Greed at work I suppose. PS: Nico was no great artist but she did capure that spaced out Astrud Gilberto quality.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I started listening to music from the 90s, and I still do - stuff like Tool, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden. That led me to study their influences (Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Cure, The Pixies, in no particular order) which led me to study THEIR influences (Like the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Doors etc.) I find the whole evolution of Rock music fascinating, but my fascination doesn't go back past the late 60s because before that it wasn't really "rock" in the current sense at all. I find this "last-generation" music is still very relevant and actually increases my appreciation for current artists. I agree that we should promote our own generational culture, but we should also accept that it has a foundation in the one previous, and there is lots to be learned from it.
Jeremy
The best albums of the era were Concept Albums, a unified product, each track set up the next song. Some of the Albums were a Musical story, with each song as a chapter of the story. You could buy singles that had a hit song from the album, but few people wanted the single, because the rest of the album enhanced that song making it part of the experance.
One area that CDs can't compete with those old LPs is the cover art. The covers were huge compared to the size of a jewel case and the graphic artists took advantage of size creating covers that were works of art capable of standing on their own, apart from the album.
This is something the idiots at the RIAA need to get through their thick skulls. It is possible to create Albums (or CDs) that are so good that people won't give a shit about a pale imitation like a single in 1972 or a couple of MP3 tracks in 2002.
Before about 1967 albums were just a collection of songs of assorted quality. Then the Bands introduced the concept album, and these albums damn near destroyed the market for Rock singles.
Now we have returned to the style that existed prior to 1967. Most CDs are just a collection of songs with no unifiying theme, and often the quality is so spotty that there is only a track or two worth listening to. Now that the concept albums of the late 60s early 70s are dead the market for the singles that they killed has revived, this time in the form of MP3s.
Ziggy is one of the better concept albums from that era. Try it and you'll see how the the RIAA could cut into their "Piracy" problem, by releasing an album that is so damn good that it's still worth buying 30 years after it was recorded.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
I was going to ask the same question, but I would just get modded down some more...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I realize I'm coming in late in the game (and I don't know whether this has been mentioned yet), but this is some rather hideous marketing on EMI's part. To elaborate:
a) This album has been released countless times on CD. The RCA issue, the original Rykodisc, the Rykodisc "Collector's Edition," the gold Rykodisc edition, the "regular" Virgin version, and now this.
b) Apparently, the bonus tracks are mostly stuff that has been out before. On the above mentioned Rykodisc versions, most of David's albums came with bonus tracks that were cut for the recent Virgin reissues. Apparently, these "new" Ziggy bonuses are mostly comprised of those tracks, with a few things from the Sound and Vision boxed-set thrown in. There might be a few new items, but I doubt that they're many.
c) Another remastering? The regular Virgin issue isn't all that hot (no-noised, and subjected to the Prism noise-shaping system, which I've always felt adds an odd "texture" to the sound), so I can't imagine what they've done with this one. Possibly brutalized it and re-recorded the bass and drums (yeah, I'm talking to you, Ozzy).
-D
That's a wise decision in most cases, although I am also of the opinion that if you don't listen to some of those classic albums in their entirety, or at the very least a side at a time, you are not really experincing them in the ideal manner. Sampling singles could slightly diminish your enjoyment.
Personally, I consider the times I bought and listened to an album, only to be badly disapointed (the Yes album "Big Generator" comes to mind, as does ELP's "Black Moon") to be money well spent, because without risking the occational dud, I would have not experienced the joy of encountering great albums like "Ziggy Stardust" or Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick" in their entirety on first encounter. I consider the discovery of a new treasuered album to be every bit as memorable as seeing a great movie on the big screen
However, unless you already are familiar with the artist in question, buying an album without sampling it first can be quite a gamble. I reccomend asking for informed opinions from people who you know and respect. Everybody knows at least one album junkie... go talk to that guy, and one or two others. Hell, maybe they will even loan (or burn) you a copy of "Ziggy Stardust" (and perhaps Lou Reed's "Transformer" & Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" while they're at it). While you can sometimes find some interesting bands by grabbing an MP3 or two from an indie band that has a lot of buzz at the moment, IMHO you will miss out on a great deal of awesome pre-1990 rock, blues, jazz, etc. if you solely rely on what the Kazaa Kiddies decide to put in their file-sharing menu.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Uh, no.
In 1997 he sold $55mm of asset-backed bonds secured by 300 of his previously released songs.
Actually, the lack of depth in albums has always been a problem in dance music, as well as some rock. Two pre-selected songs are carefully produced and groomed as singles, and anything else that good is shelved for the next album because two singles are enough to drive album sales. Then you quickly record a lot of filler.
However, it was not MP3 that killed the concept album, but MTV. The expense of putting out video's resulted in greater pressure on AOR bands to select a couple of "radio friendly" singles and put 90% of their effort into perfecting them (and executives didn't give a crap about the other 30 minutes on the album). David Bowie, champion of the LP that he is, attempted to buck this trend when his band, Tin Machine, released a video of a medley that contained all the songs on their first album. It hardly ever got played though.... First of all, it was over 10 minutes, which MTV hated. Secondly, a medley doesn't grind musical themes into the listener's heads the way the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus song does. Most importantly, the world was simply not ready to hear the dance-pop titan (who recorded "Let's Dance" a few years earlier) playing speed-punk with a bizarrely atonal melodic guitar player and a rhythm section made up of Soupy Sales's two sons.
Prince also tried to defy the single-pushing machine the MTV had created, by releasing the entire album "Lovesexy" on one 40-minute CD track. All that did was piss off his fans. Besides, he had not really done a concept album that stayed on-concept since "Controversy", which was before anybody outside of Minneapolis knew who the hell he was. These days TAFKATAFKAP (The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince) is an internet-only musician, still making piles of money even though he sells fewer albums, because these days he keeps it all.
Bowie, meanwhile, continues to crank out cool and interesting music, even though nobody is listening any more. Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that he has not gone platinum with an album since the mid 80's. (unless you count greatest hits collections).
As it turns out, The Buggles were quite prophetic. Video really did the radio star... and MP3 burried it. Rest In Peace, Ziggy.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The surviving spiders, 2 members from Def Leppard, and a keyboardist tour occasionally as the Cybernauts.
The band is a tribute to Bowie and to Mick Ronson. They basically do covers from all the albums that the spiders were involved in, which obviously includes Ziggy.
They have a privately released CD that will quit being sold sometime this year. It's a 2 disc set. One live disk and one studio disk. The live stuff is about 5 years old now, but the studio stuff is fairly recent. They quality is excellent and so are the performances. There are audio samples on the website.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
The Beatles were notorious for the use of "Popcorn Stereo" (a term used for when an entire instrument is layed directly onto the left or right signal only... the result of which is that, rather than a realistic stereo illusion of sound coming from one side of a performace stage, you hear it coming directly from the center of your loudspeaker). In the case of "Sgt. Pepper's", I would argue that The Beatles were not trying to create correct stereo imaging, and were intentionally using popcorn stereo for dramatic, cartoony effect. (They also recorded violins using headphones as microphones, and did a lot of other weird crap, like multiple layers of the same orchestra recording to make the string section sound bigger than it was, messing with tape speeds, etc. John Lennon wanted to do a lot of stuff different just to be different when they were making that album.)
The best rock album that I know of for good use of stereo sound was not intended to be stereo, but quadrophonic. Those cash sounds at the beginning of "Money" on Pink Floyd's "Dar Side of the Moon" were supposed to surround you. While the band was still working on recording "Dark Side" as a quad record, the quadrophonic fad fizzled out. Alan Parsons and the other engineers took the original material (which was intened to go to four tracks), and did their best to create a similar feel on two tracks. The result was probably the most meticulous stereo imaging you will ever hear on a rock album, and it's the reason why I include track 1: "Breathe" with my list of material I insist on using to test out speakers that I am thinking of buying.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
John Lennon & Paul McCartney both dug 40's showtunes like Rogers & Hammerstein. They also were heavy into depression-era blues like Robert Johnson and Elmore James.
70's glam-rock like David Bowie and Lou Reed was positively dripping with jazz influences. This makes your comment "The truth is, the 20 year olds of today should not be listening to Ziggy Stardust. Its as relevant to them as Fats Waller was to listeners of the Velvet Underground in the 1960's" particularilly funny. Listen to some Fats Waller, then listent to "Goodnight Ladies", the last track on Lou Reed's "Transformer". Then come back and tell us how poorly informed you really were.
It was almost impossible to find a bio of the 80's band XTC that did not contain the words "Beatle-based pop".
Nearly every musician who has ever played a solo worth a shit will count Louis Armstrong as one of his main influences.
To put it bluntly, you are unlikely to ever do anything that matters as an artist unless you have knowledge and command of what has been before.
It is a sad indication of how pathetic these 20 somethings are, that they have to look back to music made ten years before they were born.
This has always been the case. A band called "10 Years After", who played decade-old covers, performed at Woodstock fer crisakes!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Allow me to advise you towards a satisfying path to continue your musical odyssey. Look towards the mid-50's recordings by Muddy Waters. I think that there you will find the true river of inspiration behind what Jimmys Page and Hendrix were doing. While you are at it, check out the team of Junior Wells and Buddy Guy (one of many great spin-offs from Muddy's band), and the early-50's recordings of Ray Charles (basically anything before "Modern Sounds In Country Music, which was his "cross-over" album to get cracker DJ's to play his stuff). These men, and not the Ricky Nelsons and Bill Haleys of the world, were the pre-"British Invasion" bearers of the sound you are looking for.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It's been years since I've seen his film "The Man Who Fell to Earth" even in the second run theaters. It's a good scifi film and relevent to parts of the tech sector.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The album is being reissued today in a limited edition 2-CD set.
[humour]
I guess the first one is the music and the second has a writer's commentary voiceover.
[/humour]
I am a Karma Library.
I was waiting for that one. I loved that movie, but I haven't seen anything else of Pennebaker's. Now I've GOT to see the treatment he gives Ziggy.
The Concepts were far harder to produce, It was always harder to make a quality product that was 40 minutes long (LP play time) than a couple of 3 to 4 minute tracks. The Longer play time of a CD made it even harder.
Concepts gobbled studio time. Songs were recirded over and over seeking just the right sound to get the sound that was needed for that smooth transition from one song to the next. Concept CDs would have required even more time.
The RIAA opted for a cheaper product (their costs, not yours) and to spend the money on marketing like MTV videos and payola. Quality gave the bands too much control over the product, marketing gives the RIAA control.
So now we have heavly marketed CDs that are little more than a single with a lot of filler tracks, and formula bands where you have a dozen sound a likes recording a "Rap" formula CD or a "Heavy Metal" formula CD, or a whatever the hell else formula the RIAA's market research tells them might be hot.
Meanwhile the fans are saying "fuck this shit", and the RIAA is blaming MP3s instead of realizing that their marketing scam is falling apart.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
The mono version was often a remix, with different instrumental/vocal tracks. That is, it wasn't just the stereo version remixed to mono, but different cuts of the tracks.
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Actually, the mono versions of these discs are quite interesting, because they are in no way 'Left + Right speakers sticked together' versions.
Remember the LP's albums from the late 60's were the first to use the stereo technology. As many new technologies, this technology was at firtst misused and misunderstood: nobody knew how to use it well and often did an awful work with it (think: the drums left, all the other tracks right).
Take for instance Jefferson Airplane's masterpiece 'Surrealistic Pillow' (1967): the new, remastered edition comes with both mixes (on only one CD, though). You can hear that the mono mix is by far superior to the stereo mix, because, as stated in the sleeve notes, the sound engineer completely misunderstood what stereo was about. He added tons of flanger and 'cool' effects to the music, which just sounded awful in stereo. Errors he didn't make on the mono mix.
Another exemple is The Beatles's 'Sgt. Pepper's' (1967, too): the mono mix was made by the Beatles themselves and the stereo mix was left to some obscure sound engineer: so, the mono mix is really the way the artists intended it to be heard !
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
Write the Record company (Is it capitol or RCA?).
I got a David Bowie Live 2 album set back in the day, the album had a bad skip.
They sent me a new copy with a request that I send the old one back for quality control inspection.
The new set had the same skip... I wrote them back and let them know.
They recalled the entire run.
And sometimes better, as early stereo mixes were often full of gimmicky "stereo effects" which distracted from, rather than enhancing, the music itself.
Just like modern DTS and DVD-Audio music, which end up using the surround channels for gimmicks and sticking instruments back there instead of using them to enhance the feeling of being at a live performance. Maybe this, too, will pass, and future surround music will be decent.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Screw SACD. Don't you know what it really stands for? Sony's Anti-Consumer Device. It's not about greater sound quality, it's about obsoleting the standards-based CD and moving consumers to a controlled format. Note also that you can't digitally copy a SACD, the only way to make copies is cumbersome analog recording. I don't foresee this changing any time soon: Sony has learned from the mistakes of the CD, and they're not going to let the genie out of the bottle this time. Since they control the SACD format, they can make sure no one else does, either.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
David didn't exactly invent glam rock...
The New York Dolls were using glitter by the pound before other people. Marc Bolan of T-Rex is probably the best person to claim actual invention of the glam rock style and sound, though you could say that it really begins with the sex-rock androgeny of Mick Jagger. But like anything else in music, glam evolved and wasn't really invented by any one person at any one time.
David of course was Glam's biggest icon and most public face. He also wrote some *damn* fine music.
(retreats to music-nerd hole)
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
It should also be noted that just about any popular album from the 70s can be found in a $1 vinyl bin. Of course this requires you venturing beyond Sam Goody for music.
There is so much AOR floating around out there, it isn't even funny.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
For fans and skeptics of concept albums, I'd like to make a reccomendation:
1997's "In The Aeroplane over the Sea" by indie/folk art rockers Neutral Milk Hotel
it isn't exactly a concept album. concept albums were made by 70s bands and marilyn manson, and they're all thinnly veiled allegorical stories about rock star christ figgures (Tommy and Ziggy being the most blatantly obvious example) except for the Kinks, who made concept albums about urban renewal.
Aeroplane is more a theme album, dealing with recurring images of life and death, loss of innocence and an intense organic sexuality, using the Anne Frank story as it's central narrative focus (I'm not making this up, and it actually works and doesn't come off as pretentious nonsense. well it's more pretentious than Louie Louie, but far less than say... Tales from Topographic Oceans, or any later Pink Floyd album)
download "Two Headed Boy" to start yourself off.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!