The Year Of The Diamond Dog

Last week's post on satanic animation found the specter of David Bowie waiting in the wings, The Thin White Duke serving as model for the rock star villan of Rock & Rule; and as a commentor noted, a sample of Beelzebub from The Devil & Daniel Mouse turns up on the b-side to the Bauhaus "Ziggy Stardust" EP.

As quoth the poet, "Ziggy really sang" so to the horse's mouth we go.

Looking for footage of the Future Legend, stumbled on an entire Youtube channel solely devoted to David Bowie's "Year of The Diamond Dog" -- 1974. The anonymous user had gone to great lengths to digitally rectify and stitch together silent home-movie footage with best-available source audio. A labor of love in ultimate fandom. The June-July Diamond Dogs Tour, stretched through Canada, The Midwest and The South before hot settlements in Philadelphia (band-contentious David Live recording) and NYC (MSG) hauling to every stop three trucks full of stage props. 

The set, designed by Mark Ravitz, the most-expensive of its kind at the time, portrayed an Expressionist city bleeding apart at the seams, but the footage found focuses on human activity, the spotlight strictly on Bowie. Choreographed by Toni Basil, the show has Bowie emerging from hand-shaped mirror box; Bowie in boxing gloves, backed up by curly-haired dudes on congas; Bowie in cape and aviator shades french kissing a skull.

But for all the extravagant trappings, Bowie was really singing his lungs out, like his life depended on it. (And maybe it did.) For all the cocaine lols provided by the BBC Cracked Actor documentary and a sniffy appearance on Dick Cavett, Bowie remained committed to really pushing his vocal performance to the maximum. Don't believe me, take the Young Americans karaoke challenege and you will know failure.

After a Sepember residency at the Universal Ampitheatre in Los Angeles, (video at top) Bowie would ditch the set (and its debts) turn the band over towards a more Soul sound and embark on what came to be known as The Philly Dogs Tour.

"Philly Dog" was an odd Soul meme familar to those denizens of Northern England whose ultimate fandom of the American genre reached such a pitch, it basically colonized the music for their own sub-national identity. (See also reggae, music.)

But which is The Real Philly Dog?.

Comments

[Steve-O]

Hey guys, nice blog.
BTW, what happened to the website? I wanted to play Terre T's latest program on here, but I kept getting a 404.....nothing else seems to come up, either. I do hope nothing really bad happened to the site while I was away......=(

[John Fell Ryan]

Just routine maintenance ... should be back on soon.

[VinceBon]

Mok was modeled after Iggy, not Bowie.

[John Fell Ryan]

Pretty sure Mok Jagger was modelled after Peter Murphy, but did you noticed Bowie's diet of milk and red pepper made the news recently as 99% Riot antidotes to each other. Like the videofilms we saw.