The Spider's Strategem

Borrowing heavily from Marc Bolan's glam rock and the future shock of A Clockwork Orange, David Bowie reached back to the heavy rock of The Man Who Sold the World for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Constructed as a loose concept album about an androgynous alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust, the story falls apart quickly, yet Bowie's fractured, paranoid lyrics are evocative of a decadent, decaying future, and the music echoes an apocalyptic, nuclear dread…

"Of all David Bowie's many distinctive personae, none have done more to lodge this most ingenious of British artists in the world's consciousness than his 1972 amalgam of the alien visitor and Christ-like rock star: Ziggy Stardust. Cheap glamour, spacemen and ambiguous sexuality surface throughout the loosely conceptualised collection that is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. If its premise sounds faintly ludicrous, then inspired and dramatic songs such as "Starman" and "Five Years" dispel all doubts about Bowie's genius, and the theatrically tragic "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" brings the album and it's fictional protagonist to a close. As a cultural and musical signpost, Ziggy Stardust points simultaneously backwards to early rock & roll and forward to the simpler, tougher inclinations of late-1970s punk and New Wave rock. As one of the defining rock albums of the 20th century, its influence is immeasurable."

One of the most important things that any aspiring musician needs to learn about rock’n’roll is that, despite a few anomalous exceptions to the rule, it really isn’t brain surgery. Get the basics right, remembering to add a tiny dash of spice to those delicious, nourishing meat and potatoes every now and then, and there is surprisingly little that anyone with a degree of competence can fuck up…

"Of all David Bowie's many distinctive personae, none have done more to lodge this most ingenious of British artists in the world's consciousness than his 1972 amalgam of the alien visitor and Christ-like rock star: Ziggy Stardust. Cheap glamour, spacemen and ambiguous sexuality surface throughout the loosely conceptualised collection that is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. If its premise sounds faintly ludicrous, then inspired and dramatic songs such as "Starman" and "Five Years" dispel all doubts about Bowie's genius, and the theatrically tragic "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" brings the album and it's fictional protagonist to a close. As a cultural and musical signpost, Ziggy Stardust points simultaneously backwards to early rock & roll and forward to the simpler, tougher inclinations of late-1970s punk and New Wave rock. As one of the defining rock albums of the 20th century, its influence is immeasurable."

Essential: a masterpiece of rock music
WHAM BAM THANK YOU MAM
Deeply inspired by the rise and fall of Vince Taylor (whom Bowie incidentally met in 1971). David/Ziggy will mix this story with science-fiction themes, the atmosphere of the star rock system mixing the whole stuff with his androgynous look. Ziggy will appear as such on stage. Intelligent glam rock? Probably.