Ziggy played for time...



When I woke up today I had the frustrating feeling that I had dreamt all night but
couldn't recall any of the details - Don't you hate that? I did have Lady Stardust by Bowie in my head, so my first task of the day was to locate the CD and listen to it. Superb - better than I remembered. I continued on with the rest of the CD and re-visited an old favourite Ziggy Stardust. If you haven't listened to Ziggy Stardust in a while, do yourself a favour & stick on the CD, tape or record and - as it requests on the back of the album cover - play it at maximum volume. What an eternal sound.

I first heard ZS as a b-side to The Jean Genie. I remember sitting in the kitchen
of our house at Burdiehouse with my Sister's portable record player, listening to both sides over and over again. Sitting there trying to work out the chords to the songs on my Brother's old 30/- guitar. He had given me the guitar when I told him I wanted to learn. First thing I did with it was to spray-paint it green and paint silver stars on it - fuck technique, style was the important thing. So even though it never got to sound like a rock star's guitar, it looked the part. A few years earlier my Brother had tried to make an electric guitar out of one of the solid wooden shelves in the alcove. He got as far as marking the shape on the bottom of the shelf but my Ma caught him before the sawing began. That was the difference between my Brother & I, he would see sense or be rescued before things got out of hand. If I had been making the guitar, Ma would have caught me when I was painting the already cut out guitar shape & I'll bet there would have been paint on the carpet to boot!

It's funny how our perspective changes as we get older; I have had many beautiful &
expensive guitars in the last 20 years, but what I wouldn't give to see my old green painted guitar - which probably went in the bin around 1976. I guess there are things that we leave behind as the years pass. Thankfully, Ziggy Stardust wasn't one of them.

Jiving us that we were Voodoo...