Steve Harley & The Cockney Rebel- "Love's a Prima Donna" (1976) "Live" on Top of the Pops

Dramarama- Vinyl (1991) MP3 & FLAC

Chameleon ~ 1991

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Adam and The Ants- Dirk Wears White Sox (1979) / Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980) / Prince Charming (1981) / Peel Sessions (1991) MP3 & FLAC

"You may not like the things we say, what's the difference anyway?"

Adam Ant: "Look, I'm a punk rocker. I always was; I'm not a New Romantic. But I was a punk rocker who wanted to get more than one fuckin' album. The Pistols were great, but they only did one fuckin' album. Not enough! Sorry!"  It's easy to forget how fleeting the original U.K. Punk scene was before the media storm over The Sex Pistols' infamous appearance on Thames Today turned the whole thing into a simultaneously demonized and co-opted caricature of itself. In addition, with its prized rejection of technical proficiency as a criterion for musical expression (a philosophy that opened the scene to virtually anyone with a guitar, something to say and the bollocks to say it), few of the participants in the early Punk movement were interested in thinking about the music in careerist terms, as "no future" was more than just a catch phrase; it was an ethos. However, as many of the original Punk bands began recording albums and developing as musicians as well as song-writers, the aesthetic limitations of the basic Punk sound- three chords played really hard and really fast- became apparent; as a result, bands such as The Clash, The Damned, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Penetration (to name only a few) began experimenting with and integrating other musical elements and influences into their work.

Malcolm McLaren

The new music scene (not yet labeled "punk") began to catch fire in early 1976, and Adam Ant, then known as Stewart Goddard, had recently dropped out of prestigious Hornsby College of Art to pursue a music career, a venture that originally took the form of playing bass in a pub band called Joe and The Bazookas. However, during one of their gigs, an opening band called The Sex Pistols changed everything. Inspired by what he had seen and heard, Goddard soon adopted his famous moniker and made a number of abortive attempts to form his own band. It was during this time that Adam Ant found his way into the orbit of the burgeoning Punk scene's uber-elite, who congregated at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's fashion boutique SEX. Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni: "Without the shop [...] there would have been no punk, no Sex Pistols, just a load of pub bands who would have made no impact on anything. Malcolm is of course a complete liar but what is true is that he invented the punk attitude and made the Pistols act it out for him [....] To ask how important clothes were to the early scene (not called punk, not called anything in fact) is ridiculous. Clothes were the scene. It was not fashion; it was totally anti-fashion to everything that was going on at the time. The scene was tiny and totally hated the outside world [....] It was about telling the world that you weren't what it wanted you to be; you weren't anything except what you wanted to be. And what better way to tell England that you would not accept any of its upper class, lower class, middle class know your place, we are your elders and betters, fucking feudal society than wearing offensive pornographic clothes on the street?"

Adam Ant in his punk phase

Adam Ant's most important connection at SEX was Jordan (Pamela Rooke) who, in addition to being one of the original architects of the now-iconic look of the London punks, served as Ant's manager and occasional vocalist after he formed Adam and The Ants in the spring of 1977. In many ways, this early version of the Ants stood in stark contrast to their Punk scene contemporaries, as they adopted a very theatrical stage presence (something that would also characterize the band's later, more pop-oriented incarnation) and employed explicit sadomasochistic imagery both lyrically and visually. It was these tendencies and Jordan's connections that landed Ant a part in the Derek Jarman film Jubilee, which also featured the band playing a particularly chaotic version of "Plastic Surgery." Due to a number of line-up changes, work on the Jubilee soundtrack, and a dispute with their soon-to-be ex-record label Decca, Adam and The Ants didn't get around to releasing their debut album until the fall of 1979. The self-produced Dirk Wears White Sox is easily the darkest and most divisive album of Adam Ant's career, and while many portray the debut as having little relation to the more polished, energetic, chart-savvy work that followed it, the chaotic blend of Glam excess, Punk minimalism, and Post-Punk melancholy that characterizes songs such as "Cleopatra" and "Tabletalk" does occasionally hint at the direction Adam and a new set of Ants would take a year later on Kings of the Wild Frontier.

Post-Punk Pirate

Despite gaining the band a sizeable cult following, Dirk Wears White Sox was a commercial failure, which greatly disappointed Adam Ant, as chart success was something he had desired all along: "I wanted to be a graphic designer until I saw the Sex Pistols play live. This was 1975. That's when I knew I wanted to be a pop star, and that for me was like being a matador, a boxer." In an effort to change the band's commercial (mis)fortunes, Ant approached Malcolm McLaren about becoming the band's manager, the result of which was McLaren convincing the Ants to jump ship in order to form Bow Wow Wow with 14-year old lead singer Annabella Lwin. It was also around this time that McLaren had given the soon-to-be ex-Ants some world music recordings from which to gain inspiration for their next recording project, including The Royal Drummers of Burundi. When Adam Ant caught wind of his band's planned defection, he reportedly took these recordings with him to utilize with his new band, which, in addition to guitarist Marco Pirroni, also included two drummers. Once the new version of the band had been assembled, they were now in direct competition with Bow Wow Wow to record a batch of songs employing the Burundi-style percussion, a race Adam and The Ants won easily by, irony of all ironies, adopting a McLaren-style media-savvy image (Native-American pirate dandys) and releasing Kings of the Wild Frontier, an album that would make Adam Ant the pop star he so badly wanted to be. 

Simply put, Kings of the Wild Frontier sounded like nothing else at the time. Displaying the same brand of androgynous swagger that had characterized the best of the Glam scene nine years earlier, employing stripped-down Burundi beats, Duane Eddy riffs, Native American chants, and a mish-mash of historical allusions, the second incarnation of Adam and The Ants managed to tap into the ominousness of the debut album while offering up a great slab of irresistible pop that was as daring as it was derivative, as biting as it was cartoonish. Nowhere is this summed up better than on the lead track "Dog Eat Dog," a song that clearly signals a new day has dawned for Adam and The Ants, as it goes far beyond anything on Dirk Wears White Sox in terms of accessibility. Beginning with a prelude of tribal beats mixed with whistles and howls, Pirroni's dark, spaghetti western guitar twang soon kicks in to set the stage for Adam Ant's defiant opening ultimatum: "You may not like the things we do, only idiots ignore the truth." Despite the tremendous commercial success of Kings of the Wild Frontier, the band only recorded one more LP together, Prince Charming, before Adam Ant embarked on his circuitously ill-fated solo career, and while the album features a few of the Ants' best songs, such as "Stand and Deliver" and the title track, overall it lacks the consistent quality of songcraft that made the previous album so memorable. Ultimately, there is one question that always seems to linger about when trying to re-evaluate Adam and The Ants: vacuous foppish trash by a Punk sell-out hell-bent on becoming a pop star? or a masterful re-imagining of the kind of image manipulation that defined the Glam-era married to an unapologetically post-modern bricolage of disparate cultural signifiers all woven into something daring, entirely disposable and eternally delicious? Can the answer be both?

Adam and The Ants- "Ant Music" Video (1980)

Music's lost its taste so try another flavor- Anyone for some Ant music?

Brian Eno- Here Come the Warm Jets (1973) / The Winkies (Bootleg) MP3 & FLAC

"Oh perfect masters, they thrive on disasters. They all look so harmless 

till they find their way up there."

Brian Eno on the random circumstances leading to his tenure in Roxy Music: "As a result of going into a subway station and meeting Andy [Mackay], I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I'd walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now." Although initially, Eno's role in the band was behind the scenes as "Technical Adviser" due to his lack of experience as a performing musician, it didn't take long for him to join his Roxy Music band-mates on stage where he quickly evolved into one of the most flamboyant figures on the British Glam scene (which was an achievement in itself). Truth be told, Eno was never going to last long as part of the supporting cast for a figure like Bryan Ferry, who was becoming more and more concerned with mainstream success just as Eno was trying to push the band in a more artsy, proggy direction. Eno: "My position in Roxy Music was always half-way between the musical and the theoretical. I was never the sort of person who could sit down at the piano and hammer out a song, or says, 'Here man, play this.' I'm much more interested in talking about the ideas behind the music. Working things out from the aesthetic." Things came to a head immediately following the tour in support of Roxy Music's second album, For Your Pleasure, when Eno as well as several other band members expressed concern over Ferry's increasingly domineering control of the band's direction. What resulted was Eno's June, 1973 departure from Roxy Music and the beginning of one of the most innovative and uncompromising solo careers of the rock era.

Brian Eno: "I'm always prone to do things very quickly, which has distinct advantages- you leave all the mistakes in, and the mistakes always become interesting. The Velvet Underground, for example, are the epitome of mistake-filled music, and it makes the music very subtle and beautiful." As would prove to be his habit throughout the remainder of the seventies, Eno took very little time after exiting Roxy Music to finish his first solo LP, Here Come the Warm Jets. Armed with a highly suggestive title, which, in an infamous NME interview with future-Pretender Chrissie Hynde, Eno hinted might refer to the dreaded "golden shower," the album was all but guaranteed to turn heads, but Eno's time in Roxy Music had also garnered him quite a following among critics; all of this helped make his debut one of the most commercially successful albums of Eno's career. The sessions for Here Come the Warm Jets included Roxy Music sans Ferry, Robert Fripp & John Wetton from King Crimson, as well as members of Hawkwind and Pink Fairies, and aside from taking over lead vocals (for the first time), Eno was apparently content to reprise his Roxy-era role of master sound processor, something which lends the album its uniquely manic feel. While in some ways the album is clearly grounded in the artier margins of the U.K. Glam movement, which had more or less defined the early seventies but by late '73 was beginning to lose steam, in other ways, its avant-garde flourishes and heavily processed sound are anticipatory of the Post-Punk and Shoegaze movements that would respectively punctuate the closing years of the seventies and the eighties. Among the album's many standouts, none is as instantly memorable and confounding as "Dead Finks Don't Talk," a song which Eno has admitted was, at least on an unconscious level, a riposte directed at Ferry. With its military drum beat, darkly humorous lyrics, lovely piano part, heavily distorted guitars, and multitude of vocal effects (including an Elvis impersonation by Eno), it is a tour de force in tension-building and integrating the unexpected. The loveliest song on Here Come the Warm Jets is "Some of Them Are Old," which sounds almost like late-period Beatles with its psychedelic organs and multi-tracked vocals, but what really sets the song apart is the off-kilter Hawaiian-style guitar solo that sounds like it's being played underwater. Eno's early pop-oriented solo albums are often a shock to those who are only familiar with his ambient work; however, they stand as some of the most inventive and prescient records of the Glam-era. Eno: "I'm more of a technologist, manipulating studios and musicians in a funny way. It sounds fantastic but one of the things I tried to do with Warm Jets was to bring musicians together who would normally never play together and to play a music that they couldn't agree upon. The music would come from the chemistry."

Tones on Tail- Everything! (1998) MP3 & FLAC -For MT-

"And curvy Lorraine always leads the way, admitting her love, it drips and drips. Something you always wanted."

When Bauhaus guitarist Daniel Ash began working on an informal solo-based side project in early 1982, little did he know that within a year, not only would it evolve into a group project called Tones on Tail, but it would also become his main gig, as the recording sessions for Bauhaus' then-swan song, Burning from the Inside, made it apparent that relations between Peter Murphy and the rest of the band were quickly deteriorating. After Murphy bolted to work with Mick Karn on the Dalis Car project  previous to jump-starting his solo career, Ash, along with former art school buddy and ex-Bauhaus roadie Glenn Campling and Bauhaus drummer Kevin Haskins, decided to leave the overt Gothic theatricality of their former band behind, choosing instead to focus on a more eclectic and experimental sound. Ash: "It was a great time, reaching out to something different. It was quite liberating after Bauhaus. In the end, we wanted a different type of music and [Peter Murphy] wanted to go in a more dance direction." Campling describes the early evolution of the band: "Dan was working towards a solo project when we lived in 'digs' during the Bauhaus heydays. I was backline roadie at the time. He was recording "Instrumental" and another track which became "Copper" (featuring both of us laughing our heads off- Dan's first vocal maybe?). He invited me to contribute to an idea which eventually became "A Bigger Splash" and "Means of Escape." The ball rolled on from there. We both enjoyed the distraction." During Tones on Tail's two-year existence, they recorded one LP, Pop, and several EPs, all of which garnered critical praise for their unique and innovative mixture of neo-psych melancholy (something Ash and Haskins would explore further in Love and Rockets) with lighter, more dance-oriented elements. For example, on "Lions," the lead track on Pop, the band establishes a spectral samba effect, which joins Ash's seductively hushed vocals in creating a fine piece of moody pop that proves far more accessible than anything Bauhaus would have committed to tape. Likewise, on "Happiness," with its swinging cocktail-Jazz arrangement and playfully sarcastic lyrics, Tones on Tail prove effective at integrating a wide range of influences into a sound that, while echoing the experimental side of Bauhaus (an extremely under-appreciated aspect of the band, an example of which is the brilliant Dub effect on "Bela Lugosi's Dead"), clearly stakes out its own territory. Another instantly memorable track is "Performance," one of the darker songs on Pop. With its cheesy synth-driven opening bars that somehow manage to set up an atmosphere of dread that pervades the entire song, Campling's nervy bass-lines, and Haskins' adventurous percussion, Ash couldn't have asked for a better back-drop for one of the best, most straightforward vocal performances of his career. While Tones on Tail has never enjoyed the popularity or notoriety of Ash's more psychedelically-inclined work in Love and Rockets, it could be argued that this short-lived band not only drafted the blueprint for the latter band's sound, but did so while managing to sound far more experimental and unprecedented. Ash: " We were a motley crew of individuals who essentially wanted to sound like a band from Venus or Mars!"

Suede- Dog Man Star (1994) Deluxe Edition (Bonus Disc + DVD Audio Rip) MP3 & FLAC

"And oh if you stay, I'll chase the rainblown fields away. We'll shine like the morning

and sin in the sun."

Like The Smiths before them, Suede, in its early and best incarnation, was built around the creative (and increasingly personal) tension between its two principal members: vocalist & lyricist Brett Anderson and guitarist Bernard Butler. Looking to blend the theatricality and subversive sexuality of early seventies British Glam with the dark edginess of Post-Punk as a response to the Shoegaze scene that was profoundly devoid of both, Anderson & Butler were able to run counter to nearly every prevailing early-nineties trend in alternative music while fashioning what was to become one of the most successful debut albums in British music history. The two had become close friends after the exit of Justine Frischmann from the band in 1991 (she had dumped long-time boyfriend Anderson in order to take up with Damon Albarn of Blur); however, it was during the two 1993 American tours in support of their debut album, Suede, that the seeds for the dissolution of Anderson and Butler's working relationship were sown. Butler, grieving the death of his father and increasingly disenchanted with the band's indulgent lifestyle while on tour, became an alienated figure in the band. Even with the success of the ironically titled stand-alone single "Stay Together," tensions between Anderson and Butler only increased once work commenced on Suede's follow-up LP, Dog Man Star, which, despite the overwhelming enmity swirling about during its creation, is justly considered Suede's masterpiece. Battling endlessly with producer Ed Buller and demanding a lengthier, more improvisational approach to many of the songs (for example, "The Asphalt World" was initially 25 minutes long and reportedly included an eight minute guitar solo!), Butler was eventually compelled to quit the band before the completion of the album. In hindsight, Anderson claims Butler's exit was inevitable given the dynamic and volatile nature of their creative partnership: "He's that kind of artist, Bernard. He has to experience tension and strife in order to do what he does. And I guess that's fine because it makes him what he is. But I do think that it was a tragedy, him leaving, because there was still a lot of gas left in the tank. I have no doubt we could have gone on to achieve something quite extraordinary if he'd hung around." Bernard Butler: "I felt I couldn't go any further with it, musically. We were just never in the studio making music; there was so much else going on. I was always on my own, writing stuff that was getting wasted. Brett was too busy partying. When it came to recording [Dog Man Star] there were so many things I wanted to do with these songs I'd spent an awful long time trying to mould, working out ideas and trying to challenge myself and challenge the band, and I just heard too many times, 'No, you can't do that.' I was sick to death of it." While Butler would ultimately disown Dog Man Star, it is hard to argue against the album's brilliance; if it is the product of the band's (or Anderson's) solipsistic withdrawal into its own pathos-drenched interiors, it is a withdrawal sketched in the kind of lush melancholy and artistic excess that hadn't been seen or heard from since the height of the British Glam-Rock movement. While largely eschewing the Glam-crunch that characterized much of the debut album, Dog Man Star is bathed in hazy, almost hallucinogenic, textures that echo Anderson's often oblique lyrics, which were directly inspired by his growing appetite for drug-induced states of altered consciousness: "I was actually having visions of Armageddon and riots in the streets and inventing strange things, living in this surreal world [....] I was kind of aware that everything was getting slightly strange. I was quite into all these people that had visions and were slightly off their nuts, people like Lewis Carroll. I was quite into that whole idea of becoming the recording artist as lunatic. I was quite into that extremity, but I was definitely living it. It was good fun!" The album was greeted with a chorus of critical praise upon its release, but failed miserably at replicating the commercial prowess of its predecessor. As such, Dog Man Star is often described as an unfocused artistic failure, but nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, it just might be the most ambitious and enduring work to come out of the U.K. during the nineties.

Suede- "The Wild Ones" Video (1994)

Here's a taster for what's coming next...

Suede- S/T (1993) Deluxe Edition (Bonus Disc + DVD Audio Rip) MP3 & FLAC

"I was born as a pantomime horse, ugly as the sun when he falls to the floor."

Suede always seemed an odd choice for poster boys of the "Brit-Pop" movement; far more rooted in early-seventies Glam than mid-sixties guitar-pop, far more gloomy Manchester than jingle-jangle "Madchester," few bands had inspired as much hype before releasing their debut album (including being featured on the front cover of Melody Maker), and fewer still had ever delivered on the hype the way Suede did. Quite literally marrying the androgyny & excess of Ziggy-era Bowie to the dark working-class romanticism of The Smiths, Brett Anderson, Bernard Butler & co. couldn't have been more out of step with the music trends dominating London and America during the early-nineties; however, Suede possessed a magnetic stage presence that was rare in an era known for its shoegazing. As one music journalist put it: "They had charm, aggression, and [...] if not exactly eroticism, then something a little bit dangerous and exciting." After parting ways with original member Justine Frischmann who would later resurface as the lead singer of Elastica, Suede issued a slew of successful singles throughout 1992 and early 1993 before releasing its eponymous debut album, which promptly became the most successful debut in British music history (only to be eclipsed by Oasis a year later). Drenched in the same literate nihilism, polymorphous perversity, and theatrical pretensions that made Bowie's early work feel so dangerously compelling, Suede, nevertheless, has a distinctive feel all its own due to the palpable creative tension between Anderson and Butler that is evident throughout the album, a dynamic rivalry, somewhat reminiscent of Morrissey and Johnny Marr, that would result in Butler's acrimonious exit the following year. From brilliant Glam-anthems such as "So Young" and "The Drowners" to the sultry gloom of songs such as "Pantomime Horse" and "Sleeping Pills," Anderson's preening, "mockney" lead vocals intricately intertwine with Butler's lush, molten lava guitar leads, spinning a web of hazy, melancholy decadence that lends the music a certain sense of grandeur dressed up in Punk attitude and Glam-inspired androgyny. Regarding the latter, Anderson, like Bowie before him, sensed the mystique of ambiguity: "Too much music is about a very straightforward sense of sexuality [....] Twisted sexuality is the only kind that interests me. The people that matter in music [...] don't declare their sexuality. Morrissey never has and he's all the more interesting for that."

Iggy Pop- "I'm Bored" (1979) Live on The Old Grey Whistle Test

just found this brilliant clip...

Suede- "So Young" Live (1993) from Love & Poison

In their early incarnation with Bernard Butler on guitar, Suede were one hell of an impressive band.

David Bowie- Aylesbury Friars Club 1971 (2006) MP3 & FLAC

"But the key to the city is in the sun that pins the branches to the sky."

David Bowie's September 25th, 1971 appearance at the Friars Club in Aylesbury, England was, for all intents and purposes, the first live appearance of the band that would soon come to be known as The Spiders from Mars (for this show, they were joined by ex-Animal Tom Parker on piano). Bowie had spent the previous summer months appearing at the Glastonbury Fair (in June), completing the recording sessions that would eventually yield Hunky Dory, and traveling to the U.S. to do a publicity tour (he couldn't perform due to not having a union card), during which, while in New York, he entered the orbit of Andy Warhol and Lou Reed. At this point in time, Bowie was still in the process of building a fan base on both sides of the Atlantic despite his brush with success two years earlier with the "Space Oddity" single. However, it was no secret that he had nagging doubts about his ability to ever gain the kind of popularity he desired in the U.K. And legend has it that it was the 1971 Aylesbury gig that convinced him otherwise. As audience member Rick Pearce recalls, "Bowie arrived on stage to a collective "Oooh!" worthy of Frankie Howerd. I'm not sure what some people were expecting. Major Tom, or a drag act or something of both, but he certainly looked different. Wearing huge blue oxford bags, a white satin jacket and the red and black platforms seen on the reissue of the Space Oddity  album, he was light years away from your average beardy, shaggy, muso bloke." Drummer Woody Woodmansey has said that the band spent weeks rehearsing for the Aylesbury show, as it was their first as a group and something of a "coming out" party for Bowie. Interestingly, the show begins tentatively with Bowie and Mick Ronson doing an acoustic set, which includes a couple of Biff Rose covers, Jacques Brel's "Port of Amsterdam," and "Space Oddity," which Bowie self-deprecatingly prefaces by saying, "This is one of my own that we get over with as soon as possible." Eventually the entire band joins Bowie and Ronson on stage for a 10-song set that includes great renditions of "The Supermen," "Oh! You Pretty Things," and an early version of "Queen Bitch" with different lyrics. Aylesbury Friars Club 1971 offers a rare live glimpse of pre-Ziggy era Bowie, alternating between a modest hesitancy and an awareness that he is on the cusp of something great. While the audio source is certainly an audience recording, the sound is quite clear, if not slightly distant. Despite the sonic limitations, this show captures a key moment in Bowie's meteoric rise to fame in the early seventies, and as such, it is nearly as essential as the more famous Santa Monica Civic Auditorium show recorded the following year.

Mick Ronson- Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1974) MP3 & FLAC -For scurfie-

"There I stood like soap on heat, while blood ran thick past both my quaking feet,

into the Street."

Mick Ronson is easily one of the most underrated musicians of the rock era. A first rate arranger and a sublimely talented multi-instrumentalist whose fiery lead-guitar work for David Bowie's Ziggy-era band The Spiders from Mars proved to be a huge influence on both the Punk and Post-Punk movements of the late-seventies and early eighties, Ronson was a rock 'n' roll careerist, who, much like Bowie, had endured many failures before his star finally began to ascend. Before meeting up with Bowie in 1969 toward the end of the recording sessions for the Space Oddity album, Ronson had paid his dues knocking about in several bands in his native city of Hull, most notably, an R&B-influenced outfit called The Rats who had a few minor brushes with success in London before descending again and forever into obscurity. The story goes that when former Rats band-mate John Cambridge made the trek from London back to Hull to recruit his friend to join Bowie's new backing band, The Hype, Ronson was working as a Parks Department gardener. Understandably reluctant after his previous failures, Ronson was finally persuaded to agree and consummated his legendary musical partnership with Bowie only a few days later on the John Peel radio show. In hindsight, Ronson's influence on Bowie's glam-phase is incalculable, as he not only was the architect (along with Tony Visconti) of the darker, harder-edged sound Bowie adopted beginning with The Man Who Sold the World, but he also co-produced, with Bowie, many of the classic Ziggy-era albums. Following Bowie's sudden retirement of his Ziggy Stardust alter-ego in July, 1973, Ronson, at the behest of Bowie's manager, Tony DeFries, recorded his first solo album, which, if nothing else, clearly demonstrates the extent to which Ronson had a hand in Bowie's distinctive sound. Slaughter on 10th Avenue isn't the kind of solo effort you'd expect from a lead guitarist striking out on his own for the first time; rather, it attempts to present Ronson as a viable pop star in his own right, instead of merely giving him a forum to lay down impressive guitar solos. This is evident from the first song, a cover of Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender," which starts out reverentially enough, but soon converts this gentle (or sappy depending on your taste) chestnut into an over-the-top Glam-Rock power ballad, complete with Ronson's histrionic Bowie-esque vocals and dramatic Ziggy-style guitar work. It really should be a mess, but the song is so lovingly executed and sumptuously recorded that it simply works, and works well. Things get even more interesting on the Bowie & Ronson penned "Growing Up and I'm Fine," which listeners will either love or hate depending on their tolerance for (or love of) Glam-Rock excess. A fey take-off on Springsteen, it's the kind of song Bowie excelled at on albums such as Aladdin Sane, and though Ronson does a credible job on vocals, it's impossible not to wonder what Bowie might have done with the song; nonetheless, it's a great, glittery three-minute ride. And then there is "Music Is Lethal," another Bowie-penned tune that starts out sounding a little like "The Port of Amsterdam," but soon develops into a full-fledged Jacques Brel meets Scott Walker meets Bowie Glam-opera. Overall, the production on Slaughter on 10th Avenue is consistently gorgeous and Ronno's guitar-work is spectacular (as usual), and while this is indeed a strange album that ultimately pales in comparison to the Bowie albums it, in many ways, tries to mimic, it still manages to feel like an essential document of a brief but inspired moment when pop hooks and high art could be taken in a single dose.

T. Rex- Electric Warrior (1971) 30th Anniversary Edition / Electric Warrior Sessions (1999) MP3 & FLAC

"I danced myself right out the womb. Is it strange to dance so soon?"

Music scenes rarely originate with the release of a single album, and in the case of Glam-Rock, there had certainly been some earlier indications that something new and distinctive was on the horizon, most notably in the form of two Tony Visconti-produced albums released in 1970: T. Rex's self-titled  entry into the arena of electric rock and David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World. According to Visconti, "Glam-rock was a name invented by the press to describe what artists and producers had already created. It was a crazy period musically and dressing up and wearing make-up was a great form of self-expression. David Bowie and Marc Bolan were the first artists to create the music and the dress code."  However, it wasn't until  T. Rex's Electric Warrior appeared in September 1971 that the U.K. Glam scene "came out of the closet" if you will, functioning as a flamboyantly subversive antidote to the dwindling relevance of psychedelia and the painfully non-ironic pretentiousness of the Prog-Rock movement. The first glimmer of the "T. Rextasy" phenomenon that would sweep the U.K. the following year was the unanticipated smash success of the single "Hot Love," which Bolan and percussionist Mickey Finn had recorded with a number of studio musicians filling in as a backing band in order to further develop T. Rex's newly-minted electric sound. With a number-one record now in his pocket, Bolan took this band back into the studio (actually, several studios) to record what would eventually become Electric Warrior. Much as he had done for Bowie (with significant help from Mick Ronson) the previous year, Visconti set about creating a heavier, fuller, sultrier sound for T. Rex, employing strings (which he himself composed), multi-tracked and back-masked guitar solos, and the peerless backing vocals of ex-Turtles Flo & Eddie. The album's iconic cover, designed by Hipgnosis (who would later do the artwork for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon), features Bolan in dark silhouette, standing in front of an amp stack while blissfully bending a note on his Les Paul, everything emanating an aura of gold-dust. The cover could not have been more indicative of the music etched in the record's grooves or more prescient of the success that lay ahead for the band. Previous to Electric Warrior, Bolan's work often had an overriding escapist feel to it (this is also true of Bowie's early work), and while the album does carry over certain aspects of the trippy acoustic aesthetic of Tyrannosaurus Rex, it is, overall, a much darker affair than anything Bolan had previously recorded. This new sound was more or less created during the recording of the album's lead single "Get It On," which begins like a slow-motion Chuck Berry number, complete with a piano glissando contributed by Rick Wakeman. Visconti's slightly fuzzy production lends the song a sweaty sexuality that, despite the occasional nonsensicality of the lyrics, renders it as a timeless paean to the joys of shagging. What should also be mentioned is the beautifully understated groove that comprises the song; Bolan's short, sharp guitar bursts and seductive, whispery vocals belie the fact that "Get It On" is a rocker at heart. "Cosmic Dancer," on the other hand, is, in some ways, a throwback to A Beard of Stars-era Tyrannosaurus Rex, but with some significant differences, such as Bolan's vocals, which are much more subtle and emotionally raw than what is found in his earlier work. Also, Visconti's addition of strings gives the song a grandiose effect that borders dangerously on cheese at times, but Bolan's wistful acoustic strumming ultimately keeps it centered. One of the most overlooked songs on Electric Warrior but one that certainly presages the D.I.Y. music revolution that would descend on the U.K. in the late seventies is "Rip Off." Featuring an uncharacteristically aggressive vocal performance from Bolan, in which he angrily (and often nonsensically) sings through a laundry-list of stream-of-consciousness grievances, this isn't a song that operates so much on message as it does on the energy with which the lyrics are delivered. While the arrangement is far too polished for what would later be termed Punk-Rock, there is little doubt that T. Rex was a key influence on bands such as The Ramones and their progeny. While T. Rex's next album, The Slider, may be the best distillation of their early-seventies sound, Electric Warrior crackles with the energy of a new-found vision and the significance of having given birth to one of the most influential movements of the rock era.

T. Rex- "Get It On" (1971) Live (sort of) on Top of the Pops

Amazing video quality, this. Christmas 1971 was looking pretty good:

David Bowie- Space Oddity (1969) 40th Anniversary Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"I'm the cream of the great utopia dream, and you're the gleam in depths of your

banker's spleen."

David Bowie (aka David Jones) had been struggling for years to achieve some semblance of commercial and artistic success as a musician, a journey that included stints as a blues-singer for mod-rock groups such as The King Bees and The Mannish Boys, a campy dance-hall dandy with a taste for Anthony Newley, and a Dylan-esque folksinger. While all of these musical incarnations failed miserably, it was, strangely enough, Bowie's participation in an avante-garde mime troupe that put him on the pathway to the kind of success he so badly craved. In 1968, now a solo mime artist, Bowie opened a show for Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex, and in the process, crossed paths with Bolan's producer Tony Visconti. This was, of course, a fortuitous meeting because Visconti would prove to be instrumental in shaping the careers of both Bolan and Bowie, as well as helping to foster the birth of the Glam-Rock movement that would make them both superstars by 1972. Bowie had recorded a self-titled debut album for Deram in 1967, but when it failed to chart, his days at the label were numbered, and he was unceremoniously dropped in early 1968. Despite this turn of events, he had written a good deal of new material by the time he entered the studio in 1969 on Mercury Records' dime to record his second album, now with Visconti as his producer. Among the new songs was "Space Oddity," which was obviously influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the impending Apollo moon landing. Bowie had originally written and recorded the song for a promotional film called Love You Till Tuesday, which ended up staying in the can until 1984.

While the song was deemed worthy (or timely) enough to be chosen, previous to the Mercury recording sessions, as the lead-single for the new album, Visconti reportedly hated the song and had no interest in producing it, which is why his assistant, Gus Dudgeon, who would later become Elton John's producer, was pressed into service. The Dudgeon-produced version is a dark, lush, and dramatic epic that quickly transcended the initial impression by critics that it was a novelty song. Central to the song's success are the haunting "space" effects provided by a mellotron and a pocket electronic organ called a stylophone, Bowie's now-iconic vocal performance, and the distinctive prog-folk arrangement. Not only was "Space Oddity" Bowie's first hit (top five in the U.K.), but it also, in many ways, provided the blueprint for his Ziggy Stardust persona and his ongoing thematic preoccupation with social outcasts and aliens. Originally titled David Bowie in the U.K. (inviting confusion with his identically-titled Deram debut), Man of Words / Man of Music in the U.S. and renamed Space Oddity for its re-issue in 1972, Bowie's second album is an edgy dystopian artistic breakthrough, which, though suffering a bit from a lack of stylistic cohesion, offers several glimpses of the genius Bowie would demonstrate in his work throughout the seventies. The approach to recording the album was a bit haphazard, but proved to be a valuable learning experience for all involved; as Visconti recalls, "we had no idea what we were doing. It was all over the map. But we met Mick Ronson at the very end of making that album and allowed him to educate us." In addition to the title track, Space Oddity features several gems, including "Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed," a proto-Glam kiss-off (both stylistically and lyrically) to what Bowie took to be the "lock-step" mentality hiding beneath the surface of various late-sixties counter-cultural ideologies. At the outset, the song sounds as though it might be an idealistic ballad, as Bowie strums his acoustic 12-string and, with a heavily reverbed voice, sings to a pretty girl in a window. However, when the bass and drums join the mix, things turn dark, as the song transforms into a snarling indictment of class from the perspective of a social outcast. The album concludes with another epic, "Memory of a Free Festival," which, in effect, closes the door on the last traces of the hippie-influenced utopianism that had preoccupied much of Bowie's earlier work. While the song recounts, in beautifully idealized terms, his first appearance at Glastonbury Festival, it maintains a funereal tone until the cathartic fade/chorus of "The sun machine is coming down / And we're gonna have a party" brings the song to a powerfully ironic conclusion. Upon its release, Space Oddity garnered a number of ecstatic reviews, but, in the eyes of Mercury, the album failed to deliver on the promise of its lead single, as the tracks recorded with Visconti are far from accessible and quite gloomy in tone. As a result, they failed to properly promote the album, so Bowie's commercial fortunes once again took a tumble.  It was to be on the next album, The Man Who Sold the World, that Bowie, Visconti and Ronson would craft the sound that helped change the face of rock music in the seventies.

Iggy Pop- "Lust for Life" (1977) Live in Manchester

The original punk: Mr. Osterberg in a sublimely wrecked state post-Stooges

T. Rex- S/T (1970) MP3 & FLAC

"A shape that was golden and crimson extended a claw to my frame. I sunk in the sand like an infant. I screamed but my tongue was lame."

Marc Bolan's decision to pick up the electric guitar may not have been as momentous as Bob Dylan's similar decision five years earlier, but in its own way, it created a ripple effect that was felt well into the seventies and beyond. More specifically, Bolan's re-invention of his sound, from the baroque freak-folk of Tyrannosaurus Rex to the harder, sex-drenched re-interpretation of early rock conventions that characterized T. Rex, is often credited as the true progenitor of the British Glam movement, which makes sense given that Glam is firmly grounded in the psychedelic and Art-Rock trends of the late sixties while also representing an overt rejection of the utopian tendencies of the era's counter-culture. Bolan is also credited with lending Glam its taste for musical theatrics, its androgynous sexuality, and its penchant for satin and glitter, all of which coalesced in T. Rex's legendary performance of the single "Hot Love" on Top of the Pops in 1971:

The seeds of Bolan's transformation can be traced back to a disastrous U.S. tour to promote Tyrannosaurus Rex's third album, Unicorn, during which his relationship with the other member of the duo, percussionist Steve Peregrine Took, suffered irreparably. The story goes that Took's replacement on the next album, Mickey Finn, lacked Took's backing-vocal abilities, which forced Bolan to double-track his own vocals, and in doing so, he stumbled on another element of the band's new sound. T. Rex, like its predecessor, Beard of Stars, is a transitional album through and through; however, unlike its predecessor, T. Rex bears some unmistakable signs pointing to the artistic heights Bolan would hit on the next three T. Rex albums. "Jewel" is a perfect example of this. At first glance, it sounds very much in the vein of the early Tyrannosaurus Rex albums with Bolan inhabiting his "bopping elf" persona and Finn providing some minimalist bongo accompaniment; however, just beneath the surface, the song burns along as an intense, bluesy rocker until the midway point, when Bolan offers a glimpse of the sound that would soon make him an icon. On "Diamond Meadows," the band utilizes what sounds like a string quartet to amp up the drama and beauty of the song, and while it does echo Bolan's earlier work to some degree, it sounds bigger and more fully formed in terms of melody and impact. One of the lesser-known gems found on T. Rex is "Seagull Woman," which has the distinction of being the first time Bolan worked with ex-Turtles Flo & Eddie, whose back-up vocals would play a major role in the success of Electric Warrior a year later. The song features one of Bolan's most beautifully understated vocals and a striking melody. Some characterize this album as little more than an an inferior warm-up for the classic albums that followed it, but T. Rex, in its own subtly prescient ways, is a worthy precursor to those albums.

Mott the Hoople- "Roll Away the Stone" (1973) Top of the Pops

Wombles, Ian Hunter singing over himself, and Thunderthighs: what more could you want?

David Bowie- The Man Who Sold the World (1970) Ryko Au20 Edition (Gold Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"'Cause I'd rather stay here with all the madmen than perish with the sad men
roaming free."

Although David Bowie's star had finally begun to ascend by 1970 thanks to the breakthrough success of his "Space Oddity" single the year before, it was not until the recording of his third album, The Man Who Sold the World, that he began to fully explore the rawer, darker, highly theatrical and sexually amorphous approach (both musically and thematically) that eventually made him (and his Ziggy Stardust persona) an iconic figure of the 1970s. In doing so, Bowie temporarily left behind the uniquely dystopian folk that characterized his previous album, Man of Words / Man of Music (later re-named Space Oddity) by relying heavily on two key collaborators who would help create the shape of things to come. The first, Tony Visconti, whose production credits at the time included Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex and an early incarnation of Badfinger called The Iveys, had been playing bass in Bowie's touring band The Hype. For the new album, Bowie tabbed Visconti for production duties in addition to playing bass, and in doing so, initiated a creative partnership that would continue off and on for decades. The other, and perhaps even more significant, collaborator was guitarist Mick Ronson, who had also been recruited to play in The Hype, after having previously spent time in a Hull band called The Rats. According to Visconti, it was Ronson who provided the impetus for Bowie's first steps into the Glam-Rock arena: " We were scratching our heads, thinking, 'How do we get a big "rock" sound for David?' David felt very awkward up to that point. He hadn't worked with serious rock musicians. Mick was the first person we met who had dedicated his life to being a 'rock' guitarist." During the recording sessions for The Man Who Sold the World, Bowie, newly married, was preoccupied with family, which left the lion's share of the music arranging to Visconti and Ronson. As the infamous album cover suggests, Bowie's new direction was meant to be fearlessly provocative and musically incendiary, and by all accounts, Visconti and Ronson accomplished this goal. The overall sound of the album is muddy, fuzzy, grungy, off-kilter, and, in places, even approaches the proto-metal of bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. On the epic opener, "The Width of a Circle," things start off with some ominous guitar feedback quickly dissolving into a languorously seductive guitar melody provided by Ronson that soon kicks into second gear when the rhythm section joins in. Bowie's high-pitched Cockney vocals, displaying a new-found confidence and a defiant sense of self-conscious camp, cut through the mix like a razor-blade, and in doing so, bring to life the song's dark, apocalyptic imagery. One of the less heralded gems on the album is the T. Rex tribute "Black Country Rock," which contains some the best guitar riffing- Glam or otherwise- you're likely to hear, but unlike some of Ronson's better-known contemporaries, he understood the beauty of subtlety. The Man Who Sold the World concludes with "The Supermen," whose Nietzschean themes and strange background choral effects lend the song an eerie darkness, which sets the stage for one of Bowie's most exaggerated and effective performances on the album. This is probably Bowie's most under-appreciated album, especially since it plays such a foundational role in his discography. As Visconti has stated, "The Man Who Sold the World became the blueprint for the rest of David's career. Virtually everything he's done since, you can trace back to something on that album."