Pretty great, but it's a notch down from the heights of Ziggy, Aladdin Sane and StationToStation. I also prefer Young Americans.
I just read some of the story of it - apparently they wanted to photograph this huge dog lounging at Bowie's feet, when all of a sudden the dog stood up to its full height of SIX FEET and started barking like crazy! And everybody freaked out except Bowie. He just sat there like, "Oh well, it's Tuesday and I've got a killer dog by the leash."
My ranking of the DD tracks: 1. Rebel Rebel 2. Diamond Dogs 3. 1984 4. Rock 'n' Roll with Me 5. Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise) 6. Big Brother 7. We Are the Dead 8. Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family 9. Future Legend
Love that song, it's like "Teenage Dream" (by T.Rex), the great 1974 glamrock "the game's up but what the heck here is one more, one last" anthem. It's the sound of an empty dancefloor at 5am with one or two people pretending that the evening was still young. Well... somewhat.
It's absolutely essential IMO. It's nearly impossible for me to pick one Bowie album and say "this is my favorite", but this happens to be the one I play the most. I think it's just brilliant from start to finish. Absolutely perfect sequencing too.
Often this has been my all time favourite, although that changes a lot. I like the dirty feedback guitar (similar to on The Idiot by Iggy even though it's not clear how much was played by Bowie on that) and the gothic horror dystopian theme. It's hard to see a way out of Glam Rock. Punk was one way, Diamond Dogs was another. Rebel Rebel was archetypal Glam, but you can see the embryo of Young Americans growing on this album. One thing I have to add is that the album/UK version of Rebel destroys the US single version remix. I don't understand anyone disliking Rock N Roll With Me - I think it's an amazing song really well sung - one of his most passionate vocals - very beautiful guitar & piano/Hammond organ. I love the ending where the repeated guitar phrase hangs in the air. Bowie produced this himself which is a great achievement IMO. Listen to the arrangement on Big Brother - so inventive - it's Bowie's Paranoid Android. and another astonishing vocal - love Bowie's saxophone on this and the BVs. "Please saviour, saviour show us, Hear me I'm graphically yoouuuurrrs"
Probably worth posting some quality critiques from my favorite blogger... Big Brother Big Brother. Big Brother (live, 1974). Big Brother (live, 1987.) A love song to submission, a fascist and a cocaine hymn, “Big Brother” was possibly intended to close Bowie’s Nineteen Eighty-Four adaptation, as little could top it dramatically. Opening in apprehension with a moaning synthetic choir and “trumpet” reveille via Mellotron, after two B minor verses where Bowie sings despairing, fifth-sinking phrases (“a-sylum,” “of mayhem”), “Big Brother” gave itself over to power. The conversion starts in the first bridge—“please savior, savior show us!” Bowie now jumping up a fifth—and crests in the shining D major refrains, where Bowie rises an octave to hit a high A on “shame us!” Each subsequent refrain offers further bribes—skittish handclaps, a considered tambourine, a counter-melody via Alan Parker’s guitar, a spasmodic snare fill by Tony Newman that predicts Mick Fleetwood’s snare break on “Tusk.” “Big Brother” was built like a flowchart: beyond a certain point you can’t go back (after the first bridge, there are no more verses). A pair of saxophones keep things in line. The tenor saxophone sweetens verses with bar-length notes, a baritone saxophone prods you along like a warder. Only the four-bar second bridge, with its scrappily-strummed acoustic guitar and its shaky octave-doubled vocal, is a last moment of doubt. It’s the voice of some Arts Lab hippie about to be packed off to Orwell’s Correction Room. “You know, you think you’re awful square, but you’ve made everyone and you’ve been everywhere,” Bowie chirps in admiration. The squares—the bankers, the landlords, the promoters, the Mr. Joneses of the world—are the real revolutionaries, making the decadence of Bowie’s earlier songs seem played out (“don’t talk of dust and roses,” or spare us the claptrap of Aladdin Sane). The squares (Momus: “brave Apollos to the subcultural Dionysians”), liberated by the freedoms that the counterculture fought to give them, will inherit the earth. They were the homo superior all along; by the end of the century their rule would be secure (see “Alternative Candidate”). Are there any signs of resistance? Bowie’s 12-string acoustic guitar, running underground for much of the track? His vocal, with a more resonant voice shadowed by a lower-pitched one like a bad conscience? The grin beneath the erotic ode to power? As Nicholas Pegg noted, an ancestor to “Big Brother” is the Bonzo Dog Band’s 1969 parody of Charles Atlas ads, “Mr. Apollo”. (“He’s the stronnnnngest maaan/ the worrrrld has ever seeeen…follow! Mr. Apollo!). It’s Bowie worshiping a cult leader as if he was some fascist bodybuilder. Submitting to a higher power—a dictator, a president (the chorus promises that the divine ruler will be “someone to fool us, someone like you“, a conceit that soon reappears in “Somebody Up There Likes Me”), even a line of coke—can be a beautiful thing. It ends with a simply-sung “we want you Big Brother,” segueing without pause into the tribal celebration of “Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family.” It’s a broken man brought to his feet and made to dance. Recorded: 14-15 January 1974 (basic tracks) ca. late January-early February 1974 (overdubs). A set regular during the 1974 tour; revived for the Glass Spider tour of 1987. Top: Augusto Pinochet and friends, Santiago, Chile, ca. September 1973. Diamond Dogs: 1974 | Pushing Ahead of the Dame
Amazing, amazing record. Can't convey what a complete mind blower this was upon first listen back in the 70's. When you can get a bunch of testosterone filled high school jocks rocking out to the likes of 'Sweet Thing', you know you've made an impact.
I like it more than Aladdin Sane, which is a bit hit or miss, IMO. My favorite Bowies: 01. Ziggy Stardust 02. Low 03. Station To Station 04. Hunky Dory 05. Scary Monsters 06. Diamond Dogs 07. Heroes 08. Outside.1 09. Let's Dance 10. Blackstar
Once again, I'm recycling my comments from a previous thread. There's a lot I could say about Diamond Dogs, an album that got me through a bit of a rough patch (summer of 2010). Where do I start? I could begin with Guy Pellaert's beautiful gate fold artwork, which marks the last appearance of Ziggy (at least until Pennebaker's mushy, red-tinged documentary of the last show was released in 1983). I could also mention this album could really be called A Tale of Two Cities as side one takes place in a post-apocalyptic Manhattan rechristened "Hunger City" and side two is Airstrip One. Where I will begin is with a riff. According to this tab I found online, it goes: D E |----0------------|-------------------| |----5---3---2-0.-|0-----0-2p0--------| |-------(2)--2-1.-|1-----------1------| |--------------2.-|2-------------2-0-let ring |-----------------|hold---------------| |-----------------|-------------------| "Rebel Rebel" may just be that riff (and the single mix really tries to make it funky) but it does work as Ziggy's final farewell to his fans. The title track is a slightly stiff Rolling Stones pastiche and the epic "Sweet Thing/Candidate" is Burroughs in execution (the cut-up method) but its soul is Springsteen (not too far fetched considering Bowie saw rock 'n' roll's future at Max's Kansas City the year before and a cover of "Growin' Up" dates from these sessions) Speaking of soul, it pops up for the first time on side two; plastic on "Rock 'n' Roll with Me" and ironic on "1984". "We Are the Dead" is another Burroughs/Springsteen mashup and a surprising return (albeit ironic) of folkie Bowie on "Big Brother". "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" ? Well, its ending fits. Diamond Dogs is a favorite of mine. I don't know if it's essential Bowie but it's a classic nevertheless.
i think it's an essential 70's Rock album as much as it is an essential Bowie album. Many may point to Ziggy but i feel it's DD which is *the* Bowie album that needs to be listened as a whole in order to be fully appreciated. This especially applies for the whole of side one in which much of the music isn't prone being extracted from the overall musical context OF that side. The title track and Rebel Rebel can surely be singled out as great individual tracks...but everything inbetween is much more atmospheric and cinematic in nature...enigmatic in its' own way but works best as part of the whole.
Diamond Dogs is the first Bowie album that I ever bought. I thought about buying Bowie albums before this came out but this is the one that made me stop resisting and take the plunge. I really liked what I was hearing on the radio. The US single of Rebel Rebel, 1984, and Diamond Dogs (song) were getting a lot of airplay. I was a little disappointed that the LP version of Rebel Rebel wasn’t the single version that I was hearing, but I got used to the LP version and now of course I love it. Diamond Dogs made me work backwards and buy all of Bowie’s earlier LPs. I’ve been a Bowie fan (obsessive?) ever since. I think Bowie worked really hard on Diamond Dogs, he plays practically everything except the bass and drums on it. I think it was his first LP to chart well in the US, so it probably was the first Bowie album for a lot of his US fans. The name David didn’t appear anywhere on the record as it initially came out and he is only referred to as Bowie – kind of like how Eno referred to himself at the time.
Brilliant. Love it to bits. Bowie made better albums but not a bad second on this. Sweet Thing is one of the greatest moments in rock history.
I never liked it as much as his other work from 1971-1981, but I can't deny it's a quality album. I do really like "Rebel Rebel"
