{"id":6365,"date":"2009-07-22T13:23:50","date_gmt":"2009-07-22T17:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=6365"},"modified":"2009-07-22T13:23:50","modified_gmt":"2009-07-22T17:23:50","slug":"bubblegum-for-major-tom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=6365","title":{"rendered":"Bubblegum For Major Tom"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Mrs C and me, as \"Let's Dance\" Bowie & Ziggy Bowie<\/div>\n

We saw a Bowie concert from 1973, on VH1 Classic, last night. This was the at peak of his Ziggy Stardust era - and I believe it was the last concert that particular band ever played; at least that's what he told the crowd, at the end of the show.<\/p>\n

Now, I really only know Bowie as someone who made a lot of popular records back in the day, then faded a bit and made a big comeback when I was a teenager (\"Let's Dance\", etc.). I was three when this concert happened, and so I didn't have a clue about Bowie's position in the pantheon of music, as it was happening. And seeing this movie now, I was surprised by one thing: in the crowd shots, all the audience were screaming high school girls - young teenagers. <\/p>\n

So, a question<\/b> to those of you who were around back then: was Bowie simply a teenager bubblegum thing, back in the Ziggy Stardust era ? And, if so, does his status now as an indisputable Rock God seem odd ? <\/p>\n

If not, what was filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker trying to do by making it seem as if all Bowie's fans were 16 year-old girls ?<\/p>\n

Also, there were a couple of covers: Let's Spend The Night Together, White Light White Heat, (both sped-up, Vegas musical review style), and \"All The Young Dudes\" (which Bowie wrote but then gave to Mott The Hoople). That seemed strange, too. And then it struck me: with the costumes, the characters, the posing, the crowd-pleasing covers... he was simply doing a cabaret act, a lounge act, night-club theater with edgy makeup and clothes. Which is not quite as dangerous or revolutionary as the rockumentaries have tried to claim...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mrs C and me, as \"Let's Dance\" Bowie & Ziggy Bowie We saw a Bowie concert from 1973, on VH1 Classic, last night. This was the at peak of his Ziggy Stardust era - and I believe it was the last concert that particular band ever played; at least that's what he told the crowd, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}