Dianthus

Feeling a wee bit more like writing again. Here's the beginning of something that could be a bit longer - like a series of short stories.

Ziggy Stardust
He called himself Ziggy Stardust. He and his band seemed to appear out of nowhere, they weren’t there, and then they were. He and his band had one thing in common, they had no names. He was Ziggy Stardust, and they were the Spiders, and that was it. Many journalists tried to track them down, and to find people who had known them before, with absolutely no success whatever. It was as if they had never existed. They were in many ways a strange group of individuals, many labels had tried to sign them up and were rejected out of hand. Ziggy maintained that they were a band that did what they wanted not what others wanted them to do. This was very much reflected in their gigs, no two were ever the same. For that matter the same track was never the same twice running.

Musically it was impossible to place them into any one category of music. There was a sort of fluidity about them which ranged across all genres from rock to the operatic, visiting the many other genres along the way. Ziggy played guitar, but like very few others he played left handed, and he was very obviously the driving force. On seeing them play it soon became very plain that there was no pre-planned structure to the gig. It seemed like there was some sort of telepathic connection between Ziggy and the Spiders. He would start a piece, and it was as if he was transmitting it to their heads, down their arms to their hands, and thus to their individual instruments. The weird thing was that both visually and musically they appeared to be not of this world. They were something never seen or heard before, and very likely never to be seen or heard again in the future.

The music was both powerful and all encompassing, at the same time being quietly inspirational and inspiring as a Debussy tone poem. The riffs and licks could be built around chord progressions worthy of the best blues musicians, or arpeggios worthy of classical composers. Often there would be a chord which would lift you from the ground, spin you around and dump you unceremoniously back where you started feeling that your head was about to explode. Then you would get an arpeggio that defied time, that seemed to take time and bend it, twist it, then wring it until it screamed for mercy as it ceased to exist. This was the extent of engagement with the audience, the music spoke Ziggy didn’t, and if you expected any such engagement you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Author's Note
I realise that I am showing my age here. I had the idea of taking Ziggy and thinking about how Bowie might have developed him.