The Not Quite Daily Bowie - #72 - "Moonage Daydream"

The Not Quite Daily Bowie - #72 - "Moonage Daydream"

Hey there. So, I renamed this feature. I considered The Weekly Bowie, but since this will be the second this week, I am going with "The Not Quite So Daily Bowie." Probably now that I have renamed the feature, I will run out a bunch of dailies just to prove myself wrong.

"Moonage Daydream" was not the first song to capture my heart from THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS, one of the greatest rock albums of all time (on various lists either 35th -- Rolling Stone; 20th, Brit survey; or 24th, Q Magazine). I rank it in the top ten. Other songs demanded my attention, but over the years, "Moonage Daydream" has become the one song from this album that I have returned to over and over as a single. Don't get me wrong. I love the whole album. But there's something about "Moonage Daydream," something about the lyrics and the punch of the music.

Often I try to pick a line or two of lyrics to feature at the top of the post and then use as a tag line in my social media blasts. But I find that I cannot remove a line. Well, I can, but then I want the next line, too, and then the next. And... Freak out, far out, in out.

It's all one thing.

FROM - PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME - "Moonage Daydream" -  "So “Moonage Daydream” can stand for all of Ziggy Stardust, a vaguely conceptual rock LP about a fake rock star whose songs both parody and subsume rock & roll. As Ziggy is pop music about pop music, so the lyric of “Moonage Daydream” is fused from old rock & roll phrases—“I’m an alligator” come from “See you later alligator,” all the “far outs” and “freak outs” are pilfered from the hippie LPs, while a bizarre line like “you’re squawking like a pink monkey bird” sounds like it was lifted from a lost novelty hit of 1960 (as the solo was, see below). It also could be the pseudo-Russian pop music of Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, or a botched translation—as if an extra-terrestrial who had been monitoring our radio and TV broadcasts had fashioned an imitation of what it took to be our national musics. Bowie later claimed that was the idea all along.

From its inception, the song was meant to serve as entrance music, a character piece for a fraudulent character, whether impostor pop idol (the Corns’ non-singer Freddi Buretti) or plastic rock star (Ziggy Stardust, who Bowie would later claim on stage was the song’s author).

By the time of the Spiders’ last concert at the Hammersmith in July 1973, teenage girls and boys in the audience were singing along to every word of “Moonage Daydream,” holding their hands to their faces while they sang the chorus, falling in love with themselves as much as they were with Ziggy. Using the strength and delusion of adolescence, the belief that the world somehow has been left open for you, they took the lie and made it sing to them.

"Every night you knew that “Moonage Daydream” was going to be the one that really lifted them. Then we’d go and follow on from there to the end." - Trevor Bolder, 1976."

Read the full and excellent blog entry at PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME - "Moonage Daydream".

What else can really be said? Needs to be said?

Other LINKABLES

"Moonage Daydream"

THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS

David Bowie

"Moonage Daydream" -  from THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS - 1972


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"Moonage Daydream"

I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa coming for you

I'm the space invader, I'll be a rock 'n' rollin' bitch for you

Keep your mouth shut, you're squawking like a pink monkey bird

And I'm busting up my brains for the words

Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream oh yeah

Don't fake it baby, lay the real thing on me

The church of man, love, is such a holy place to be

Make me baby, make me know you really care

Make me jump into the air

Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream oh yeah

Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream oh yeah

Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream oh yeah

Freak out, far out, in out

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Rest in peace, David. We miss you.

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1606.09 -  7:00

NOTE ON WHY THE DAILY BOWIE IS NO LONGER DAILY: For 53 days, I completed daily Bowie posts. My schedule is too demanding to make a post every day, so this will now be a feature that is called The Daily Bowie, but it will not be daily. I will post as I can. I will post often. But if I miss a day, I will skip it. Otherwise, I get in the position of making five Bowie posts all in one day, and that's a lot of Bowie for people to swallow all at once... (yeah, leaving that badly phrased, innuendo packed statement. I bet Bowie would have laughed at it).