by Steve Morris

Created on: March 30, 2008

Ziggy Stardust came down to save the World using naught but the power of his haughty voice and glam rock guitar styling. In his quest to save us all, he was aided by the Spiders From Mars, a backing group of fellow aliens who more than equal his ability to rock. Yes, we're in David Bowie territory here, exploring an album that consistently ranks highly in those lists you read of the top albums of all time. "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars" is as intriguing an album as the title suggests, with Bowie dressing up in outrageously odd and elaborate costumes and dying his hair bright red/orange, taking on the title role in this bizarre space opera he's created. At the point in his career Bowie was comfortable, but still pushing himself for new tricks. His previous work had given him a decent grounding, and he was known by the general public, but this here is the album which pushed him along on the first few steps to World Domination.

The reason I bought this album, even though I'm not much for glam rock or psychedelic folk (contrary to popular belief), was twofold. For one, this is an album that everyone says is brilliant. Even my dad, fan of Bob Marley as he is, accepts the greatness of this album. Secondly, and this is what interested me most - it's about aliens. "Ziggy" is a concept album about the appearance of an alien on earth who makes "crazy cosmic jazz" Bowie's words, not mine and becomes a massive hit amongst the humans. He then goes too far, gets addicted to drugs, and is then killed by his own crazed fans. It's probably more than fair to say that Bowie was a little high when he wrote much of this. He's accompanied during this mock-epic by Mick Ronson, the guitarist with the mostest, and it's a compelling mixture of odd-rock and off-pop, mixed together into a generally cohesive whole.

I have to start my review by pointing to "Five Years", which acts as a sort of meta-prologue before the story' unfolds in the other songs. It happens to be, if we ignore the story entirely (which I, uh, plan to do during this review, because I've only got a limited attention span), one of the more fascinating opening to an album that you will hear, as Bowie immediately declares that the end of the world is coming after the five years of the title have passed. The song is quite low key, as many songs surprisingly are during the course of the album, fading in on a quiet drumbeat which provides the main emphasis of the song. Well, until Bowie starts

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