Diamond Dogs

Ziggy Stardust didn’t really die in 1973. He just changed his name to ‘Halloween Jack’ and got a part in a Broadway adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. Or as near as makes no difference.

The well warn story goes that after publically retiring Ziggy and sacking his Spiders from Mars backing band, ol’ D.B. wanted to do a musical adaptation of 1984. He got a few songs together (would they be ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’ by any chance?) but he never did manage to get the rights. Not one to sit on his hands, Dave’oh used the material he’d written to pad out his latest character driven glam rock concept album: ‘Ziggys twin brother wakes up in a nightmare vision of the future’, or Diamond Dogs to give it it’s official title.

What’s Good about it?
Everything.
‘Diamond Dogs’ is everything you could want from a David Bowie album. I didn’t even miss Mick Ronson and the Spiders. Apparently Bowie plays most of the guitar on the album himself and a lovely, scratchey, dirty, rocked out job he makes of it too. The album starts with a great little spoken word intro that sets the pace for a conceptual narrative that is a lot more central to the album then it was on ‘Ziggy’. Stand out tracks ‘Diamond Dogs’ ‘Rebel Rebel’ and ‘Rock n Roll with me’ are all thumping great pop songs. Most of the first side is taken up by ‘Sweet thing’ ‘Candidate’ and ‘Sweet thing (reprise)’ , essentially one long song, which takes the Bow-ster back to the same epic territory as ‘Unwashed and Some What Slightly Dazed’ and ‘Width of a Circle’. And very welcome it is too.

What’s bad?
‘We are the Dead’ is YET ANOTHER song along the lines of ‘Quicksand’ and ‘Time’. It’s a bit less dull then those two and sits better in the general flow of the album, but it’s nothing to get excited about.

How many good songs?
10 out of 11. But really there are only 7 songs on the album, so maybe that should be 6 out of 7.

Bowie-o-meter: I give it 85 Ziggys!

‘Diamond Dogs’ betrays it’s origins and sounds more like a distopian sci fi musical then a rock n roll album. But if west end shows sounded like this I for one would go!