Bowie, in particular, in a series of 'camp' incarnations (Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Mr Newton, the thin white duke, and more depressingly the Blond Fuehrer) achieved something of a cult status in the early 70s. He attracted a mass youth (rather than teeny-bopper) audience and set up a number of visual precedents in terms of personal appearance (make-up, dyed hair, etc.) which created a new sexually ambiguous image for those youngsters willing and brave enough to challenge the notoriously pedestrian stereotypes conventionally available to working-class men and women. Every Bowie concert performed in drab provincial cinemas and Victorian town halls attracted a host of startling Bowie lookalikes, self-consciously cool under gangster hats which concealed (at least until the doors were opened) hair rinsed a luminous vermilion, orange, or scarlet streaked with gold and silver.
- Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The meaning of style (1979)
According to Wikipedia, one of those drab provincial cinema gigs was in my manor, just by where I went to secondary school. While I've been into Bowie for quite a long time now, my knowledge of his music comes pretty much entirely from radio play and singles collections - I know almost nothing about the albums, although some of them have excellent reputations.
For Christmas I got a copy of Peter Doggett's recent book The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie and the 1970s, and copies of "The Man Who Sold The World" (1970) and "Hunky Dory" (1971). My plan is to listen to the albums as I read the relevant sections of the book. I may even blog about it here as I do it, although I'm pretty sure people have done that before.
1 comment:
I'd be interested to read it.
I understand that the chap who wrote the bio of Iggy Pop that I liked also has a Bowie one that came out in 2011.
Checking Amazon reveals his name to be Paul Trynka, and the Bowie bio is out in paperback in March. If it's as good as "Open Up and Bleed", it could be worth picking up.
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