P.I.M.P

Declaration of a Palestinian state - why is this good for Israel?

2011-08-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

The wheels keep spinning towards the end of September, when the UN is expected to vote in favor of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. Our government struggles to prevent it, and keeps telling us why such a decision at this time would be bad for us Israelis. Well, I would like to remind us all why this could actually be good for us.

Yes, a Palestinian declaration of independence will cause some problems, but nothing we can't handle. On the other hand, it will have some favorable consequences, which in my opinion far outweigh the unfavorable ones. Here are some of these consequences:

1. Legitimacy for the Palestinians government as the representative of the Palestinian people: one of the biggest problems of the peace process was that we were talking with a body whose legal legitimacy to hold these talks was not at all clear. Say we succeeded in reaching an agreement with Abu Mazen's PA, and withdrawn from the West Bank in exchange for peace. Immediately, this agreement would have been opposed by the fundamentalists, by many of the refugees and by some Israeli-Palestinians, who would have claimed that the PA had no right to sign a deal in their name, and therefore they are continuing the armed struggle. Naturally, this would have immediately been backed by many Western leftist intellectuals, who would have made the legal case for them, claiming that the PA is actually a "puppet regime" formed under Israeli occupation, in an elections that did not involve the refugees or the Israeli-Palestinians, an election it didn't even win. We would have found ourselves in the same war situation, without any territorial assets to bargain with, and with the enemy sitting on the hills overlooking Tel Aviv and almost every other major Israeli city.

On the other hand, global recognition in Abu Mazen's government as the official representative of the Palestinian people will give it the legitimacy it needs. By the time the terms for a final peace deal finally materialize, ten, twenty years from now, there will be no legal grounds to contest it.

2. Strengthening of the two states solution: one of the biggest threats to Israel is the attempt to delegitimize it as the state of the Jewish people. This attempt is driven by a coalition of Arab imperialists, Western leftists and neo-Nazis, and it is gathering strength around the globe. The current Palestinian move, creating a state living side-by-side with Israel, will pull the rug under this coalition's feet. That is why Hamas, for instance, is so displeased with the move.

3. Strengthening the 1967 borders: the legal right of Israel over the lands inside the 1967 borders is not uncontested, a fact we tend to forget because we are so busy arguing about the lands outside them. One of the threats we deal with is the PLO's infamous "stages plan", which is to destroy Israel by gradually peeling it of its territories. According to this plan, once they take over the West Bank, they will immediately start demanding territories inside Israel as well, a demand which will of course be backed by many Western leftists. But the current move sees the Palestinians announcing the borders of their state to be the 1967 borders, and the fact that it happens while Israel is still an occupying force in the West Bank will compel the Palestinians to struggle for years to get it out of there, all the while committing themselves further and further to the 67 borders, to the point where the "stages plan" will become obsolete.

4. Weakening the refugee problem: and of course, the biggest threat to Israel's future is the refugee issue. A Palestinian state will provide a homeland to these refugees, and they will no longer be considered stateless. The Palestinians will of course claim that this is not a just solution, and these refugees deserve to return to the exact plots of land they once lived in, but most of the international community will have no patience for this argument. Do you really think the Arab states will be willing to keep hosting millions of refugees for decades to come, when they have a country to go to? The refugees will start migrating to Palestine and building a life, and the refugee problem will eventually become manageable.

For these reasons, and several lesser ones, I hope the Palestinians go for it, declare sovereignty, and get the world's recognition. The positives I counted are far greater than any negatives. As for the question whether Israel itself should immediately recognize the Palestinian state, that depends on the nature of the new state (for instance: will Palestine recognize Israel?). But that's for another post.

Mission accomplished

2011-05-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

The main importance of Bin Laden's elimination is one that I don't hear being discussed: it means that the US will not lose the war in Afghanistan.

When the US invaded Iraq, I said, basically: great, now they made themselves vulnerable to the fundamentalists, who will do to them what the Vietcong did. And then it will spread to Afghanistan as well. In the end, the Americans will run away, and we will be left with a much stronger Jihadi movement, invigorated by the fact that they defeated the almighty America. Nice going, Uncle Sam.

For a long while, it seemed my fears were coming true. But now, no one will be able to say that the Americans were defeated in Afghanistan, or Iraq. Primary objectives - getting Bin Laden and Saddam - have been achieved.

After the invasion into Afghanistan, aimed at going after Al Qaeda, President Bush became more ambitious, and set a new primary objective, a much bolder one: to bring democracy to the Middle East, and thus dry the swamps that breed terrorists. That was the main reason he invaded Iraq, but the logic was all wrong. He was right in identifying the source of terrorism, but his belief that the US is strong enough to make this change was ridiculous.

But then, a miracle happened. What took place in the past six months is the best thing you could hope for. The Arab people themselves have risen, and demand freedom. We are still many years away from seeing real democracy in the Arab world, but the first and all-important step has been made. Also, this has completely invalidated the ideology of Al Qaeda, which claims that the only way for the Muslims to win back their honor is by violence. Even before Bin Laden's death, the Al Qaeda ideology was a dead horse.

The past few months vindicate Bush to a large extent. The idea that you can enforce democracy on people was foolish, and the invasion of Iraq was impetuous and dangerous. But the Bush administration did other things as well, smarter things, which helped advance the liberal forces in the Arab world. The credit for the revolution goes to the Arabs themselves, but the US helped.

Al Qaeda is defeated. Saddam in defeated. Democratic movement in the Arab world has been initiated. The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq are fairly functioning. The wars against the Taliban and Iran are undecided. That's a pretty good score.

So, eight years after Bush did, it is finally time to say: mission accomplished. Bring the boys back home.

After Mubarak: an Israeli perspective

2011-02-12T06:30:00.000-08:00

So Mubarak is gone. I didn't think it would happen so soon, but it was obvious he was going - after all, he was preparing to quit even before the demonstrations began. Let's hope he saw to it that there would be no chaos after he's gone.

Mubarak was no friend of Israel. He was an important ally, who shared some interests with us, but in some respects he was bad for us. his departure opens up dangers, but also hopes.

So what happens now? Here is my prediction, based on what I see and read.

I believe the Egyptians will eventually (after much haggling and some violence) manage to draft a new constitution, and will have democratic elections. The Muslim Brotherhood will keep a low profile for now, will not run a presidential candidate, will win about 20% of the seats in the Parliament, and sit in the opposition. There will emerge a relatively secular and moderate government, which will obviously have to deal with massive problems.

The peace with Israel will not be annulled, but the relationship will be cold and hostile (not much change there, then), and the discussions will be held on a military level. The Egyptian people don't like Israel, but they will not be happy about going to war with it, so the new government will have an interest to maintain the peace. Same goes for the army, that is dependent on American money.

In Gaza, our situation will change for better and worse. Mubarak played a cynical game, closed the border with Gaza, and lay all responsibility for it on Israel. The new Egyptian government will not be able to do so. They will open up the border (which will take pressure off Israel), and form political and financial ties with Gaza. The Israeli wish of breaking away from Gaza will finally come true.

The Muslim Brotherhood, in the meantime, will be in the opposition, and allow the Egyptian people to get tired of their government. When it suits them, they will use Hamas to provoke Israel, thus creating a wave of anti-Israeli sentiment in the streets, and ride it to gain more popularity. The eventual goal is of course to take over Egypt, and the fundamentalists know that they hold the stronger hand, so they can play it patient.

But we can find answers to that as well. If Egypt develops a stronger connection with Gaza, we can use diplomatic means to get it to restrain Hamas. Israel will have to develop a less aggressive and more diplomatic strategy against Gaza, and that's basically good. We must remember that one of Israel's biggest fears was that if we let Hamas succeed more than the Arab armies did, it will prompt the Egyptian masses to overthrow Mubarak, put the Muslim Brotherhood in power, and open war. That is why Israel felt compelled to be over-aggressive against Hamas, to give it absolutely no victories. But if Egypt now has a government that is more acceptable to its people, we don't have to be so anxious about not allowing Hamas any victories.

Like I said, the Muslim Brotherhood holds the stronger hand. The Egyptian people are religious, uneducated (one third of the population is illiterate), economically undeveloped, and have no democratic tradition - not the traits that would enable the rise of a thriving democracy. It is also highly Antisemitic, afraid of Israel and hates the West, other things that the Muslim Brotherhood can exploit. But on the other hand, even the small amount of freedom is a taste that is hard to erase, and if the Egyptian people get to experience it, they can get addicted. When the Brotherhood finally make their grand bid, they might be shocked to find out that they no longer hold the better hand. And if they do manage to take over some years from now, we will be facing an enemy, but we are strong enough to contend, and wait until the Egyptian people rise again, to regain their lost freedom.

The game in the Middle East has changed. It is now an inner struggle in the Muslim world, between the forces of democracy and the forces of fundamentalism. It is already going on in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Tunisia and Egypt, and it will spread further. In the other countries there are still dictators who are holding these two forces down, but they are going to fall as well. Looks like Algeria might be next.

All of this demands of Israel to change its strategy. No longer to try to reach peace deals with Arab dictatorships, but to think in longer terms. Our goal should be strengthening the forces of democracy, and weakening the forces of fundamentalism. In the long run, this is our only chance to have a normal existence.

Here we go gaga, again

2011-02-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

Here it comes. Lady Gaga just released the leading single off her upcoming album (no video yet), and we are once again going to be subjected to a blitz of sounds and visions from out of this world.

It is also the title track of the album: 'Born this Way'. Some call it a gay anthem, as the lady has become a loud advocate of gay rights in the past year and a half. But it isn't, it's broader than that. It is an anthem for anyone who feels different and weird (and who doesn't when they're young?), encouraging them to be proud of who they are. And of course, it will surely become one of Gaga's biggest personal anthems.

Judging by initial listening, it isn't genius, but it is a massive hit. It some place it invokes Madonna's 'Express Yourself', and this could be intentional, since both records carry a similar message. And "Don't be a drag, just be a queen" is one of her best lines.

And I LOVE this photo. Did she pull a Peter Gabriel, and shaved her forehead? If so, it is going to be her most bizarre look to date.

Sharif don't like it...

2011-01-30T02:00:00.000-08:00

The Arab world keeps on rocking. Today there's a demonstration planned in Khartoum, and on Saturday in Damascus.

I have mixed feelings about an Egyptian revolution, but Sudan and Syria are among the world's worst regimes, and I'd be very happy to see them go. The Sudanese government announced its intent to implement Sharia laws in the state, so in their case we don't even have to be afraid that the Islamists will take over - they are already there anyway.

But here lies the big question: can what has happened in Tunisia and is happening in Egypt can also happen in countries like Sudan and Syria?

The regimes of Egypt and Tunisia were connected to the West, and that restrained their ability to crush the demonstrations. The regimes of Sudan and Syria, on the other hand, don't give a damn (maybe the Sudanese regime cares a little more, but not much). They will come down hard.

Can the power of the people, and the encouragement they got from the successful uprising in Tunisia, overcome even repressive regimes such as those?

As we've learned in the past couple of weeks, everything is possible. In the meantime, what is happening kinda makes me want to dance.

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Egyptian plages

2011-01-28T12:32:00.000-08:00

No internet in Egypt today, and no SMSes. Dictators learn fast.

And yet, they have riots on an unprecedented scale. Mubarak's regime is wobbling.

After today, I can't see things going back to the way they were. Either Mubarak's regime falls, or it is forced to make large-scale reforms, or it really clamps down on the citizens, and rules with an iron fist. Either way, it won't last long.

What happens if Mubarak falls?

The main concern is that the Muslim Brotherhood will take over. But I don't think this will happen. There are other strong forces now in the Arab world, and they will make a stand. There will have to be some sort of power share.

Maybe there will be some sort of democracy, like in Lebanon.

If that happens, Egypt will become very hostile towards Israel. The Egyptian people hate our guts.

I fear for the peace. They can easily announce that anything the previous regime signed is null and void, and tear up the peace agreement with Israel.

But this is something we will have to deal with at some point anyway. If the new administration wants to be taken seriously by the international community, it will be hard for them to disregard previous agreements. It will be tough, and there will be a lot of hostility at first, but in the long run, it might produce the growth of a stronger relationship between our two nations.

If we ever want to live in peace, we in Israel must wish for the fall of Arab dictatorships, and a rise in the power of the Arab people. In the long run, this is the only thing that can bring peace. I was hoping it won't start with Egypt, but it isn't up to me. And a successful uprising in Egypt will surely inspire an uprising against worst dictatorships, like Libya and Syria.

The battle over the new face of the Middle East begins now.

The Middle East is boiling

2011-01-27T07:18:00.000-08:00

Panoramic view:

Tunisia: things are still volatile. How will the first successful popular uprising in modern Arab history turn out? Five years ago I would have been pessimistic, believing that it could only result in the rise of the Muslim fundamentalists. But now, I don't know. The Arabs have sure changed a lot in the past decade, and now they seem ripe for a more democratic rule.

Egypt: the masses are rioting in the streets, angry mainly with President Mubarack's intent to pass the role of Presidency to his son. They are emboldened by the Tunisian revolution, and so far they are unmoved by the threats of the authority's. Twitter has been blocked in Egypt, proving once again how important social networks have become in the fight for freedom.

It is good to see people standing up to a dictatorship, but also worrying. Egypt, at the moment, plays a much needed stabilizing role in the Middle East, and helping in the fight against fundamentalism. I would rather see the regime remaining in place for now. Let the democratic revolution happen in other Arab countries first.

Yemen: the people started rioting today. See how that goes.

Algiers: still rioting. Hard.

Lebanon: power shift. With reports that the international tribunal is about to implicate Hizballah for the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri, Hizballah threatened to spark a civil war if Lebanon doesn't turn its back on the tribunal. PM Saad Hariri, son of the slain PM, showed guts and refused, so Hizballah quit the government, and managed to gain a majority in the Parliament for its side. The result: Hariri was impeached, and Lebanon has a new PM, Mikathi, a man loyal to Syria.

So it appears that Hariri, and the pro-Western camp, have lost, while Hizballah, the assassins, have won. But I'm not sure. First, it is significant that this coup took place according to the rules of democracy, and even Hizballah felt obliged to play by them. Second, Hizballah is now in the majority, which will keep them busy in running the country, while the makeup of their coalition will prevent them from passing any fundamentalist laws - they will not be able to turn the country into Iran, as some people fear. Third - Hariri may have lost for now, but it is important that he didn't play the usual Lebanese game of compromising with criminals, and keeps demanding justice against the assassins.

It is not certain yet what Hariri and his camp will do now, and if they will accept the new PM and continue to play by the rules of democracy. But for now, Lebanese democracy holds. In the past, this situation would have already escalated into civil war. The fact that it didn't shows that maybe Lebanon has grown.

Palestinian Authority: is rocked by Al Jazeera's revelations that the heads of the PA were ready to give up on the right of return, and parts of East Jerusalem, in the talks with Israel. But surprisingly, so far, there are no riots against the leadership. Could it be that the Palestinian people actually accept it? Let's see what happens tomorrow, after Friday prayer.

Iran: out of the spotlight, the regime is executing all those who participated in last year's riots. About a hundred have been executed just in the past month. Go ahead, this will only precipitate your downfall. January 29 has been designated as a global day of protest.

Sudan: about to split up, as the South just voted on it. Official results are not known yet, but they say about 99% voted for cessation. We still don't know what this will cause.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia: terrorism continues to run rampant, killing thousands every month.

Israel: continues to be the quietest corner of the Middle East.

Tomorrow is Friday, Yaum al Juma'a, the day when Muslims meet in the mosques, and hear rousing sermons. This is usually when the boiling pot starts to overflow. Watch out.

Thank you, Al Jazeera

2011-01-25T04:18:00.000-08:00

Al Jazeera has gone all Wikileaks on our ass, and is in the process of publishing thousands of documents revealing the talks between Israel and the PA. Finally, we get to hear what the Palestinians have been offering in the peace process.

According to the papers, the Palestinians offer to limit the right of return to a symbolic number (tens of thousands) of Palestinians who will be allowed back into Israel; they are prepared to let Israel keep most of the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem; and to swap land in the West Bank for Israeli lands. This is an offer that I can live with, and so can many other Israelis.

Of course, the Palestinian leadership (we're talking Fatah, yes? Not Hamas) vehemently denies what has been published. But anyone who has been following the peace process realizes that what was published is very close to the truth.

This is the thing that was missing. We in Israel know what our leaders have been offering. Not right away, but some time later. For instance, former PM Olmert has revealed that he offered the Palestinians more than 95% of the West Bank, control over part of East Jerusalem, and a token number (a few thousands) of Palestinians that will be allowed to return to Israel. Most Israelis are against this offer, and Olmert's party (like Barak's Labor before it) took a political hit as a result. But it has entered Israeli consciousness. Israelis now realize that some of our leaders think that we must give all that up for peace, and they are getting used to the idea. In time, they will learn to live with it.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, have not been exposed to what their leaders say in the negotiations. The Palestinian leaders keep telling their people that they will not give up the right of return for every Palestinian refugee (several millions), and not an inch of East Jerusalem. As a result, the Palestinians are not being prepared for peace, and we Israelis feel like the peace process is pointless, since there will be no way to implement it.

We see the reaction now. They are shocked, and accuse their leaders of betrayal. Imagine how they would have reacted if an actual agreement was reached.

But now, thanks to Al Jazeera, they will have to start thinking about it. In time, they will learn to live with it.

Hamas moves?

2010-12-01T11:12:00.000-08:00

The Prime Minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, announced in a press conference today that Hamas will be willing to accept a peace accord that will constitute a Palestinian state in the 67 borders (including Jerusalem) and a solution to the refugees, and will abide by it if it passes a referendum.

Not entirely new. They once made a similar promise to Jimmy Carter, and some of them said things to that effect in interviews. But it wasn't worth much, because most of the time they said the opposite. Today was the first time I saw a Hamas leader actually come out and say it to the cameras. This, in effect, makes it the new official line of Hamas.

No need to get too excited. Haniyeh didn't say that Hamas recognizes Israel's right to exist, and didn't discard the Antisemitic Hamas Charter. Since he knows we are still a long way away from a peace accord, he knows this statement will not stand any tests. That basically gives Hamas the freedom to keep working for the annihilation of Israel.

Still, something very important has happened. If that is indeed the new official line of Hamas, it means the whole Palestinian consciousness shifts a little to the left. Implied in this statement is the possibility of recognition in Israel's right to exist. That means that Hamas supporters can now accept Israel. A small step, but very fundamental.

That's how you change reality, with small steps such as these. Since Hamas was elected, I awaited the day it would show signs of moderation. It took them five years to make the first step. Cheers.

Who are the perverts that translate the Bible?

2010-10-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

I recently became aware of a Bible verse that confounds American Evangelists, and causes them to lose sleep. The verse is Ezekiel 23, 20, and the story amuses me to no end. I'm completely secular, do not believe in God, and the only knowledge I have of the Bible is what I learned in school. And yet, it is very easy for me to see how silly their bafflement is. This is a good example of what ignorance can do to people.

Ezekiel 23 begins with Ezekiel telling us that he is speaking the words of God, and then he tells us the story of a man who wedded two sisters who were once prostitutes in Egypt, but then married him, and changed their names to Samaria and Jerusalem. Any person with a minimal knowledge in the history of the Jewish people realizes right away that the man symbolizes God, and the two sisters are the kingdoms of Israel and Judea. Then, continues the parable, the eldest sister prostituted herself to Assyrian lovers, and ended up being killed by them (in other words, Israel started to worship Assyrian gods, and ended up being destroyed by Assyria), while the young one survived, but became an even bigger whore than her sister. He blames her that she did not free herself from the corruption that was instilled in her back in Egypt, and now sleeps with everyone: Assyrians, Babylonians and whoever comes. In verse 20, he describes how the Egyptians corrupted her, and said that she lusted after Egyptian lovers, whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys, and whose sperm is like the sperm of horses. Ezekiel is basically equating worshiping other gods with bestiality, and tells us that to worship any other god than the God of Israel is akin to sleeping with horses and donkeys.

The traditional English translation, known as King James' Bible, is quite faithful to the Hebrew original:

"For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses."

But apparently Americans today are unable to read English, and need translation to Americanese. There are many new translations of the Bible, and with every new one, the verse went slightly further away from the source...

New International Version (©1984)
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses

English Standard Version (©2001)
and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses

New Living Translation (©2007)
She lusted after lovers with genitals as large as a donkey's and emissions like those of a horse

Ooh! Kinky! Now we are talking about giant donkey dicks and massive ejaculations. Ezekiel wanted to disgust us, to make us feel like we are sleeping with a donkey, but in the new translations, it became a man with a penis as big as a donkey's, and the verse becomes alluring.

How did this subversion happen? I suppose it is because these translators grew into the modern world, and knew the expression "hung like a donkey". So when they saw the end of the sentence mentioning horse sperm, they translated "donkey flesh" into "donkey genitals" (there is no basis for that in Hebrew). And generations of Evangelists are now reared on this verse, and don't know how to explain it to their children...

Many of them, of course, also miss the symbolism of the chapter, fail to understand that it is a parable, and just read it straight. A Google search shows confused Christians asking why God uses such a language (since it is, remember, the word of God...), why he is so impressed by how Egyptian men are hung, and why he sees fit to bother us with a story about hookers. And nobody knows what to answer.

Worse, today there are Muslim clerics who use this verse to show Christians that their Bible isn't holy, and again, the Christians don't know what to answer them.

I'm telling you: by the time the Americans are done with it, they will turn the Bible into a great porn mag.

Multiculturalism has failed?

2010-10-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

German Chancellor Merkel announced yesterday that the project of multiculturalism failed in her country. Others are saying it is dead. And not just in Germany, but all over Europe.

I am a firm believer in multiculturalism, and I don't accept that it is dead. But there's no point in a knee-jerk reaction against Merkel's announcement. One has to face up to the truth, and adjust accordingly.

The premise behind multiculturalism was that most people want to live in a free society, and given the chance, they would change their own culture and make it pluralistic. This did not happen. Some immigrant cultures only exploited their freedom to maintain a sense of isolation, supremacy and hate towards other cultures, and teach it to their children. I still believe that given more time, they would eventually change, but we are running out of time. The extreme right is exploiting the matter to gain popularity and spread hate against all immigrants, and anti-Western forces are using the immigrants as a breeding ground for their views. The more enlightened people need to adjust their views and come up with a better plan.

Freedom requires responsibility, and a free society can exist only if all its participants take it upon themselves to respect the freedom of others. So for multiculturalism to work, we first need to ensure that every culture actually wants to live in a multicultural society. If there are certain cultures who are not so inclined, then they should change. And if they are unable to change on their own, then they should be forced.

There is no need to force the Western culture upon them. Every culture has the potential to change and become pluralistic, while maintaining its uniqueness and core tenets. And every culture has enough enlightened people who can realize that potential, and change their culture from within. The new plan should be to neutralize the negative elements in the group, and strengthen the positive forces in it, those who can bring about the change.

Europe still has plenty of time. I'm sure they will eventually find a formula that works.

Roger Waters throwing bombs

2010-10-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

The Anti-Defamation League has accused Roger Waters for using Antisemitic imagery in his recent performances of The Wall. Here's the offending number:

As we can see, the bombers are throwing the symbols of the three major monotheistic religions, as well as symbols of giant financial conglomerates. So the immediate message that arises is not Antisemitism, but lament that we are killing each other in the name of religion and for the sake of profit. It is a legitimate artistic statement, whether you agree with it or not. So the accusations against Waters are not justified.

However, I'm not completely exonerating Waters. The clip begins with a bomber throwing Stars of David, followed immediately by a bomber throwing dollar signs. This creates an Antisemitic combination of Jews and money, which Waters should have been wary of.

And anyway, I'm tired of Waters' simplistic, outdated politics. You'd expect him to get wiser with age, to appreciate the complexity of the issues he sings about, but he only gets dumber. There's only one thing I find more tiring, and that's the constant whining of the Anti-Defamation League.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

2010-10-01T22:56:00.000-07:00

Five Years
Soul Love
Moonage Daydream
Starman
It ain't Easy
Lady Stardust
Star
Hang Onto Yourself
Ziggy Stardust
Suffragette City
Rock'n'roll Suicide

The years 1970-71 were the time when the last traces of revolutionary tendencies disappeared from rock music. In the late sixties, the Hippies believed that they are going to change the world, and the music that they created reflected and fueled that notion. But when time went by and the new order failed to materialize, most rockers looked for other inspirations, and the music changed. Rockers now focused less on politics and more on the music, and regarded rock as a "serious" art form, removed from the "meaningless" pop world. And since "seriousness" in music was defined by the terms created in the world of classical music, rock started to adopt its maxims, and create long, slowly-developing pieces of elaborate musical composition. Instead of three minute singles, rock now focused on creating concept albums - that is, albums that are a cohesive piece, not just a collection of disconnected tracks. Some albums even had a plot, a story that unfolded from beginning to end, like an opera. They saw it as progress, but what this development actually did was to weaken rock music, not only as a social force, but as an art form as well. It made it lose the thing that made it unique amongst the arts, and that is its presence in the real world. Rock'n'roll was born in the era of mass electronic media, so a single that was carried on the airwaves was heard instantaneously by people all over the world, creating a shockwave that would reverberate through society and induce changes and new ideas. Thus, the world became a stage, on which the rock stars could perform, and present new identities and attitudes. A concept album, on the other hand, was something that you had to go out and buy, so its message would reach only those who were already in the know. Thus, the rock artists were relegated to the role of faceless musicians, and lost the theatrical side of their art.

Into this world, David Bowie dropped The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spider from Mars, a concept album that had a narrative, and yet, did not suffer from the ailments of other concept albums. Because here, every song stands alone as a single art piece, and is not subordinate to the overall narrative, but rather tells a story of its own. The narrative of the album arises from stringing these stories together, and remains very loose and flexible. And, more importantly, the songs had presence in the real world, in such a way that the story of the album amazingly played itself out in reality as well. Bowie was the first rocker to be self-consciously theatrical, to present a character who turns the world into his stage, and at the same time reflect on the nature of the relationship between this character and the world. This is what makes this album so unique in the history of art, and when we analyze the album, we must also see how its theatre unfolded.

I surmise, then, that Ziggy Stardust was the first serious attempt of rock'n'roll to reflect on itself, to figure out what it is, and what is its place in the world. When rock'n'roll sprang into the world in the fifties, it created a generational gap, and became the language of a youth culture that saw itself as more lively than the previous generations. In the first years of youth culture, there was no need for self-reflection: rock'n'roll just kept moving by its own inertia, providing a steady stream of great records and novel experiences, and constantly breaking new grounds. But when the Hippies took over, the rebellion became more serious, taking revolutionary tones and aiming to actually overthrow the order created by the previous generations. Rock'n'roll changed into the more stern music that was called rock, and the Hippies looked back at the three minute outbursts of early rock'n'roll as merely the budding of a new rebellious spirit, which now had to become more "serious". But the Hippie revolution failed, and only served to take all the fun and liveliness out of the music and culture of the youth. In his 1969 album Space Oddity, Bowie provided harsh criticism of the youth culture of the time, through allegorical stories about characters that have lost their way. This criticism continued in his next album, The Man Who Sold the World, but here he also delved deep into philosophical realms, and found a personal answer in the Nietzschean concept of the Superman. And in his next album, Hunky Dory, he turned his philosophical eye back on youth culture, looking at it through his Nietzschean prism, and aiming to point its rebellious spirit in another direction. The inquiries of Hunky Dory provided the blueprint of what needed to be done to save rock music, and put youth culture back on track. Now, with his next album, Bowie doesn't just point, but takes it upon himself to be the agent of change, to put his conclusions to the test. Ziggy Stardust, while seemingly playing the rock game of creating concept albums, undermines this game by going back to the source, back to three minute rock'n'roll, to unearth and scrutinize its most primal instincts, and rekindle its spirit.

So, in what way does the album subvert Hippie dogmas? First of all, it is an urban album. The Hippies preached a return to nature, to a rural Garden of Eden that supposedly existed before it was twisted by Western civilization. Bowie accepts their claim that the urban world causes alienation, but rejects their solution, and looks for the answer within the urban world, a world dominated by technology, mass media, shifting identities and cultural multiplicity. He does not look for a lost past, but for a new future, creating a science-fiction fantasy. Marc Bolan already showed the way, when he took his surrealistic imagery out of the Hippie fairytale land and into the big city, and Bowie follows his lead (and acknowledges his influence in 'Lady Stardust'). Another obvious inspiration is the urban poetry of the Velvet Underground, which he already paid tribute to in Hunky Dory, and is felt as a presence in this album as well ('Lady Stardust' evokes 'Femme Fatale', 'Suffragette City' nicks from 'White Light / White Heat', and the Spiders performed some VU numbers live). Stanley Kubrick's urban-futuristic nightmare A Clockwork Orange is another reference point, manifesting itself in the early look of the Spiders, in the electronic version of the 'Ode to Joy' used as the opener for the concerts, and in the word "droogie" dropped into the album. The back cover of the album invokes the sci-fi of Dr. Who, while the brilliant front cover puts Ziggy in urban settings, setting its nightmarish atmosphere, the backdrop to his tale.

The main theme in Hunky Dory is spiritual desolation, a feeling that all paths have been tried already, and there's nothing more that can excite and unite us. Ziggy Stardust picks up where its predecessor left, with two songs that intensify the feeling. 'Five Years' tells us that there is no future, nothing to look forward too, and 'Soul Love' expresses inability to find someone or something to love. The Priest appears in the first song as someone who people turn to for answers in such times, but in the second we find that his answer doesn't work. A little later in the album we find Bowie's cover of 'It ain't Easy', which expresses the desire to get to Heaven, but tells us that it ain't easy to get there in our current situation.

What is the way out, then? Hunky Dory suggested another possibility: if we can't get to Heaven by ourselves, then someone can reach down from Heaven and lift us up there. But Heaven doesn't necessarily have to be the afterworld – it can simply be another world, like Mars. And so, 'Moonage Daydream' presents Ziggy, an invader from outer space, who comes to endow us with a spiritual alternative.

Does this mean that Ziggy has come to take us to another world? No. The conclusion from Hunky Dory is that Heaven is not a place but a state of mind, a state of mind that is created when we go through a process of transformation, brought about by fusing ourselves with something alien. That is the secret of rock'n'roll, the thing that was lost when it became rock. Rock'n'roll sensations were always the outcome of someone fusing elements of their own culture with elements from an alien culture. In the American mind of the fifties, the perception was that "culture" means taking man further and further away from the jungle, so when white boys like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis sang and moved like blacks (considered as people who represent the jungle), it was something that was completely contrary and alien to the logic of the time. But many white kids felt that there were also positive qualities in black music, so identifying with those performers enabled them to internalize these qualities and make them part of their own identity, recreating themselves as something new and exciting. The same thing happened when the Beatles fused English working-class attitude with American rock'n'roll, when the Stones brought together Mersey beat with African-American R&B and existentialist attitude, when Dylan merged folk with beatnik poetry and rock'n'roll, and so forth. They all managed to put together things that previously did not mix, and created a new experience, a new identity. In 'Starman' and 'Lady Stardust', Bowie describes that spiritual moment of encountering an alien, and feeling more affinity towards it than towards anything you've ever experienced. He depicts the initial fear to admit that affinity, and the joy of allowing yourself to be conquered and transformed. If he wanted to transfer the story of the album to real life and revive the thrill of rock'n'roll, Bowie had to find a way to create a similar fusion. He spent the first half on 1972 perfecting the new identity, and when he performed 'Starman ' on Top of the Pops in July, the story of the song materialized, and scores of kids who watched the show were forever transformed.

So what were the ingredients in this new identity, this new fusion, which created the desired alien effect? First there is the language of the album, a combination of the hippest American jive talk with old cockneyisms, and references taken from poetry and classic rock'n'roll records. Then there was the futuristic feel, achieved by the glittered-up Clockwork Orange look, and the sound coming from Ronson's guitar pyrotechnics and Ken Scott's gleaming production. But the two main ingredients were Ziggy's sexuality, and his stardom.

Ziggy's sexuality destroyed all the neat categories created in the Victorian age. He was neither male nor female, neither hetero nor homo. His sexuality was amorphous, and appealed to those many kids who felt that they did not fit into the existing categories, giving them someone to identify with. On the album, it builds up slowly: in 'Five Years' we already meet "the queer", who seems to be the one with most sensitivity and perception, the one throwing up at the ugly sight of the world, while other people are still drinking milkshakes obliviously. The queer stands out of society, so he can see things more clearly. In 'Moonage Daydream' Ziggy introduces himself as a "mama-papa" and a "bitch", hinting at his epicene sexuality. In 'It ain't Easy', it ain't easy to tell if the woman calling from inside is an actual woman, or a woman that is inside him (in the original record, it is clearly another woman). And it peaks in 'Lady Stardust', where Ziggy appears in all his multi-sexual glory. Ziggy turns out to be the queer who sees the world for what it is, and sings songs of darkness and dismay. On the way, Bowie gives shout-outs to gay icons Judy Garland (in 'Starman') and Lord Alfred Douglas (in 'Lady Stardust'), and even throws in some Vaseline for good measure. To bring this sexuality to life, Bowie hired his friend Freddie Burretti, a brilliant gay designer, to fashion clothes that would create the desired effect; performed obscene sexual acts on stage with his guitarist Ronno; and gave interviews in which he admitted to being bisexual. And just like 'Lady Stardust' follows 'Starman' on the album, so was the shock of seeing the alien on Top of the Pops followed by the shock of learning of his outrageous sexuality, at least for most of the public. Bowie intensified the attack with the 'John, I'm only Dancing' single, with its ambiguous lyrics and campy video, and opened a new era. The impact on our society is felt to this very day.

Next on the album comes 'Star', and guess what? Bowie/Ziggy did become a star shortly after the TotP performance. What was alien about stardom? It was alien because Hippie culture stayed away from the showbiz game of stardom, regarding it as "fake". What was behind this perception was the old notion that truth is something that is eternal, something that is beyond Man, and anyone who makes himself the center of the world (like stars do) is holding on to something that is fleeting, and therefore fake. But for Bowie, the truth is something temporary, something that should be sought in the here and now, and then turned into the center of your identity. And stardom is a way to turn this truthful identity into the center of the world, and allow others to feel this truth as well. Therefore, he went against Hippie dogma, and gave birth to a star. Learning all the tricks of past movie and rock'n'roll stars, and drawing from Warhol and his crowd, Bowie transformed himself into the shiniest star of them all. Ziggy wasn't just a star, but a starman, someone who has stardom as an innate quality of his nature, someone actually made out of stardust. And, like the plan he drew in 'Starman', he used the electronic media to project his image, and turn the world into his stage.

And so, Ziggy manages to do what the priest in 'Soul Love' failed to, and bring love into our lives. Instead of the divine love of Christianity, Ziggy introduces the church of man love. When a group of kids are transformed through adopting the alien image, they become as one against the rest of the world, and experience a feeling of togetherness and love. The birth of this brotherhood is presented in 'Starman', where the kids hide their newfound experience from their parents, but contact each other to share it. It peaks in 'Lady Stardust', where the band is altogether and everything is alright, and carries on into 'Hang Onto Yourself'. And let's not forget the anthemic 'All the Young Dudes', the battle cry of a new generation.

But 'Hang Onto Yourself' tells us something more: if you want to maintain this perfect state, where you feel at one with yourself and with others, you must constantly hang on to the essence of your identity, and not lose it in the exciting rollercoaster that your life has become. And since the essence of this identity is being an alien, Ziggy had to keep reinventing himself as an alien to hang on to himself. So the next move was to come on like some cat from Japan, with kabuki makeup, Kansai Yamamoto's clothes, and a red mane copied from a female Japanese model. Thus, Ziggy managed to remain an alien, and keep the community together a while longer.

But eventually, it has to end. After a while, the thing that was alien becomes normal and loses its effect, and the sense of camaraderie it brought with it also dissipates. The two main ingredients in Ziggy's identity – his sexuality and his stardom – eventually bring his downfall. In 'Ziggy Stardust', we see that Ziggy's stardom, the very thing that initially brought everyone to converge around him and unify in love, now becomes the thing that puts him above all the rest, and destroys the community. And 'Suffragette City' shows the sex taking over the love, and Ziggy sinking into a world of carnal pleasures, giving up his friendships on the way.

And so, the exploration into the nature of rock'n'roll ends with 'Rock'n'roll Suicide'. And suicide is indeed inherent in the nature of rock'n'roll: that unique fusion that puts you out of any preexisting category can work its magic only once, and for a short period of time, but when the world gets used to it, it becomes just another category, and then it loses the magic forever. Eventually, the unique fusion that Ziggy personified stopped being exciting, and he could no longer reach the same heights as before – he killed his own uniqueness by springing it on the world, committed spiritual suicide. He is left to wander the streets alone, wondering what he's going to do with the rest of his life, now that his personal truth has lost its power to thrill. This is what happened to rock'n'roll in the late fifties, when the first wave died, and again in the late sixties, when Hippie euphoria died. But 'Rock'n'roll Suicide' provides the answer: that certain fusion may die, but rock'n'roll doesn't die, because it is always possible to create another fusion. In the early sixties it was the Beatles who saved rock'n'roll and brought back the thrill, in the early seventies it was Ziggy who did it, and now, someone else comes and reaches down to Ziggy, to pull him up once more, and take him to a world of joy and love. And that's how the album ends: Ziggy may not be rock'n'roll anymore, but rock'n'roll will keep on living.

But here is also where the course of reality diverged from the course of the album. Because Bowie was not about to wait for someone else to come and save him, and take him out of the Ziggy identity and into another identity - he was going to do it on his own. When he saw that the processes of downfall he described in the latter part of the album were beginning to unravel in real life, he proceeded to perform a preemptive suicide, and free himself from Ziggy. At the end of his mid-73 tour, just before the final encore, Ziggy told a stunned audience that this was his last show, and then, in perfect theatrical timing, launched into 'Rock'n'roll Suicide ' for the very last time. Ziggy Stardust was dead.

The audience might have been less shocked if they paid more attention to the development of Bowie's thought. Since 1967, when he became part of Lindsay Kemp's troupe, Bowie's aesthetic approach was that the artist should be a Pierrot clown, who presents a mirror-image to human race and exposes its faults. But in 'After All', one of the songs that presented his newfound Nietzschean direction, he made a slight shift in his perception of the clown, as he observed that "man is an obstacle, sad as a clown". So the clown isn't just a mirror to the faulty side of Man, but to Man itself. Man, Nietzsche said, is an obstacle that needs to be overcome, and replaced with the Superman, someone who has learned to draw joy from every aspect of human existence. So Bowie's characters would now be a clown that represents Man and his failings, enabling Bowie, the aspiring Superman, to transcend these failings and learn how to draw joy from everything. Ziggy, the clown, was a mirror-image of the rock'n'roll stars of the past, who were mere men, and were therefore bound to fall. But through him, Bowie could foray into the field of rock'n'roll stardom and experience all the joys of it, while evading the bad sides.

Actually, the Ziggy saga already had some precursors in Bowie's art, songs that told essentially the same story, and prepared the ground for Ziggy. Take 'Width of a Circle', for instance. It starts from a feeling of meaninglessness, but then, through homoerotic intercourse with a being from another world, the hero transcends to heaven. But after a while, that same intercourse drags him down to hell, and although his mind screams at him to let go, he is too much into it, and lets himself be taken all the way down. Through his intercourse with the Ziggy character, Bowie made it to rock'n'roll heaven, to the highest spiritual plane, and unlike the hero of 'Width of a Circle', he did break away in time, and saved himself from going down.

And even before that, there was 'Space Oddity'. Major Tom uses a man-made spaceship to transcend his world and float in blissful beauty, but then he relinquishes control to his spaceship, and it takes him to oblivion. In the same way, Bowie created Ziggy to transcend his world and experience the joys of stardom, but unlike Major Tom, he never lost control. He passed through the madness of the Ziggy period, and when he emerged out of it he was still at the helm, ready to stir his spaceship to explore new galaxies. Ziggy Stardust was dead; David Bowie was just getting started.

iamamiwhoami does something new

2010-10-01T02:25:00.000-07:00

One of the most intriguing musical projects of the year was the mysterious appearance on youtube of a female singer who identified as iamamiwhoami. Her first video was uploaded on January 31:

What followed were some more short clips, each about a minute long, with cryptic names. Many people were hooked and subscribed to the channel, forming a community that tried to solve the mystery and figure out the identity of the singer. After a while, she started to upload videos oc complete songs, which were all quite enchanting, combining surrealism and ecology. But her face was always distorted somehow, to prevent recognition.

Every video exposed a little more, and eventually, as the community practically guessed already, she was revealed as Swedish singer Jonna Lee. Several weeks ago she released the final video of the project:

This project will be remembered as the first time that someone employed the fact that youtube has become the new center of pop culture, and found a way to use it for artistic expression. I enjoyed being part of it when it happened, and when it ended, I wondered what she was going to do now. Was that the end of iamamiwhoami, now that we know who she is? Apparently not, because today she uploaded a new vid, in which she asks her subscriber community to pick a volunteer. It seems there's something new brewing.

Rock'n'roll Suicide

2010-09-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is an album about rock'n'roll. Its tracks deal with different aspects of the rock'n'roll world, and try to figure out what it is that made it such a sensation. The picture that arises is this: rock'n'roll is an ecstatic experience, as powerful as any religious experience. It is generated in the psyche of kids who feel alienated from the society they grew up in, and carry a certain shared sensibility inside them, a repressed "inner self" that they cannot express in the terms provided by their parents' culture. But then they encounter someone from an alien culture, who provides them with the music that speaks for that "inner self", and by identifying with that alien, they are set free. The result is a sensation of eruption, as if your bottled-up spirit breaks loose. That joyous eruptive sensation is what rock'n'roll is all about. Following that eruption, you also find other kids who are like yourself, and come together to share a bond of love and unity. But the rock'n'roll experience is a temporary one, and the sensation inevitably fades away. After a while, the music doesn't cause the same joy, and the unity in the group unravels. Eventually, you are brought down from the heights of rock'n'roll happiness, and back to the old and boring everyday existence. 'Rock'n'roll Suicide', the closing track of the album, is the record that asks: what then?

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth
You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette

The opening is a reference to the poem 'Chant Andalous' by Manuel Machado, who wrote: "Life is a cigarette / Cinder, ash and fire / Some smoke it in a hurry / Others savor it." In other words, you can either take your life slowly, or burn it quickly. Our hero wanted to live an exciting life, to burn as brightly as he could, and after a few false starts, when he pulled on a finger instead of the life-cigarette, he finally found a way to do it. But now his flame has burned out, while he's still a young man. What is he going to do with the rest of his life?

The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget
You're a rock'n'roll suicide

Rock'n'roll is a joyful experience, but it is also a form of spiritual suicide. You can experience rock'n'roll when you have an alienated part in your being, an "inner self" that is repressed by society, and provides the energy for the rock'n'roll eruption. But rock'n'roll sets this part free, and transforms you: your outer-identity is now compatible with your "inner self", and the alienation is gone. And with it, goes the ability to feel the ecstasy of rock'n'roll. For just a short while, you experienced something cosmic, and got a glimpse at an existence of total, wall-to-wall happiness. But then it fades away, and you fall back to the ground, back to where you started from, but worse: after you've put your "inner self" out on display and let it become just another identity, you can no longer use it to generate rock'n'roll.

You're too old to lose it, too young to choose it
And the clocks waits so patiently on your song
You walk past a cafe but you don't eat when you've lived too long
Oh, no, no, no, you're a rock'n'roll suicide

Our hero is out of cigarettes, and his time is out of joint. Once again, Bowie invokes Chuck Berry's famous definition of rock'n'roll: "Just let me hear some of that rock'n'roll music / Any old way you choose it / It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it / Any old time you use it". In 'Starman', Ziggy referenced these lines to tell us that he has come to bring rock'n'roll back, and even managed to deliver. But now his brand of rock'n'roll has played itself out, and we can no longer use it. Our hero tells us that he feels too old to lose it and too young to choose it, or as Jethro Tull would put it some years later: too old to rock'n'roll, too young to die. After living the rock'n'roll dream, everything else loses its taste, even food. How can he now go back to live the regular life, when he knows that there's something so much better?

Chev brakes are snarling as you stumble across the road
But the day breaks instead so you hurry home
Don't let the sun blast your shadow
Don't let the milk float ride your mind
It's so natural - religiously unkind

Stumbling blindly through life, he almost gets run over by a car. Cars, of course, are an essential part of rock'n'roll poetry, a symbol of discharge and freedom, from the days of 'Rocket 88' (considered by many to be the first rock'n'roll record) up to the modernized glam of T. Rex. But Bowie mentions cars only twice in the album, once in the opening track and once again in the closing, and he uses them to describe the shattering of the rock'n'roll dream. Who is driving that Chevy that almost runs him over? Could it be Don McLean, on his way to the levee to relive the glory days of rock'n'roll, only to find out that it had run dry and the music had died? McLean's 'American Pie', that reached #1 on the charts just as Bowie was developing his Ziggy character, is another record about the death of rock'n'roll, but its hero at least has an alternative to fall back on, as he has religious faith. Our hero doesn't have that faith, so he remains a vampiric presence, hiding away from the daylight, a shadow of a human. Until…

Oh no love! You're not alone
You're watching yourself but you're too unfair
You got your head all tangled up but if I could only make you care
Oh no love! You're not alone
No matter what or who you've been
No matter when or where you've seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain

In the pits of despair, he finds salvation. The beginning of the passage clearly paraphrases Jacques Brel's 'Jef', in which the singer is trying to convince his despairing friend to get up from the sidewalk, and start living again. We imagine our hero sitting on the pavement, after being almost run over by the Chevy, where someone comes and picks him up. What Bowie tells us is that it doesn't matter who you are and what your experience was, there will always be others who can identify with you, who can understand your pain. And one of those others now comes to offer our hero a helping hand, and show him a new love.

In other words, your life cannot be reduced to one cigarette. Life offers you an endless array of cigarettes, and when one is burned out, you will always be able to strike another match, and start a new. You do NOT commit spiritual suicide with rock'n'roll, as our hero thought in his tangled up head. True, you exposed your "inner self" and destroyed it, but the "inner self" (as Bowie has been telling us for a while now) is not a fixed thing. When you transformed yourself and created a new identity based on your former "inner self", a new "inner self" was created along with it, and can now form the basis for a new transformation, a new identity, a new joy. You are never too old to rock'n'roll when you're too young to die – there will always be ways to revive the rock'n'roll experience. Just like Ziggy once came as a hand that reaches down from the skies to take the kids to heaven, someone else now comes to offer a hand to the post-Ziggy kids, and asks them to turn on with him, to burn brightly once more in an existence full of excitement, beauty and love:

You're not alone, just turn on with me
And you're not alone, let's turn on and be
Not alone, gimme your hands
Cause you're wonderful, gimme your hands
Cause you're wonderful
Oh gimme your hands

…and a sublime chord of hope and harmony brings the story to a close.

Hamas aid

2010-09-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

"Free Gaza!" rings the slogan, as the world is becoming increasingly moved by the plight of the Gaza people, and applies growing pressure on Israel to lift the blockade it imposed on it. Human rights activists from all around are on the move, setting out to rid the world of another evil. Before you pick up your gun, however, tarry a while and ask yourself: are you sure you know what you are fighting for?

Gaza, as you probably know, is ruled by the Hamas movement. You probably don't like Hamas very much. You probably deplore their religious fundamentalism and their authoritarian policies. Perhaps you also disagree with their terrorist tactics. Perhaps you've also heard of the Hamas Charter, and you know that it calls for the destruction of Israel. Yes, all these things you know about Hamas are true, but they are not the worst part, the part which compels Israel to retaliate the way it does. So, before you go any further, please allow me to introduce you to the core of the Hamas ideology, and the true nature of the Gaza government.

Following are excerpt from the Hamas Charter, with interpretations. I took the English translation of the charter from the Palestine Center website. Let's let Hamas tell us about itself.

"Hamas is calling upon the Arab and Islamic peoples to act seriously and tirelessly in order to frustrate that dreadful scheme and to make the masses aware of the danger of coping out of the circle of struggle with Zionism. Today it is Palestine and tomorrow it may be another country or other countries. For Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there..." (article 32)

This is the gist of modern Anti-Semitism. Modern anti-Semites do not say they hate all Jews, only "Zionists". But their definition of Zionism has nothing to do with the actual Zionist movement. For the anti-Semite, a "Zionist" is a Jew who wants to take over the world and enslave it. The "proof" for this conspiracy is a book called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a famous 19^th century text written by an anti-Semite which pretends to be a guide book for Jews on how world domination is to be achieved. The anti-Semite defines himself against this imaginary "Zionist" danger, and his whole existence revolves around it: he can never quit the fight against Zionism, because it is the core of his identity. Hamas, we see here, is driven by this kind of Antisemitism, so it can never give up the fight against Israel.

There are several types of Antisemitism, and this is the most dangerous of them all. Why? Because these dreaded "Zionists" cannot be identified. There is no Jew out there who says he wants to take over the world, there are no Jewish organizations teaching The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So how does one fight these scheming Zionists, if one cannot even identify them? Well, we saw what the anti-Semite solution was in the past: the Nazis, who held exactly this type of Antisemitism and believed that there is a worldwide Zionist scheme to take over, set out to preempt that danger by annihilating all the Jews, figuring that all Zionists would perish in the process. Genocide is the only logical solution of this type of anti-Semitic ideology.

"The Zionist invasion is a mischievous one. It does not hesitate to take any road, or to pursue all despicable and repulsive means to fulfill its desires. It relies to a great extent, for its meddling and spying activities, on the clandestine organizations which it has established, such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions, and other spying associations. All those secret organizations, some which are overt, act for the interests of Zionism and under its directions, strive to demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam." (article 28)

Modern Anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory. It believes that Zionism is directing things from behind the scenes, and prepares the ground for its final takeover of the world. Actually, it is arguably the mother of all other conspiracy theories. It was born in Germany in the 19^th century, and the Nazis adopted it, but the Nazis stopped short of blaming only the Jews. They believed that there are other evil clandestine organizations working out there, whose members are not Jews, but are still evil. The Freemasons, for instance, were on the Nazi list, and the Nazis sent them to the concentration camps. Hamas, we see, is not that pluralistic and generous in assigning the blame. According to its ideology, all these other organizations are merely fronts for the Zionists, as the Jews are behind everything. Hamas, we see, is more anti-Semitic than the Nazis.

"The Muslim women have a no lesser role than that of men in the war of liberation; they manufacture men and play a great role in guiding and educating the [new] generation. The enemies have understood that role, therefore they realize that if they can guide and educate [the Muslim women] in a way that would distance them from Islam, they would have won that war. Therefore, you can see them making consistent efforts [in that direction] by way of publicity and movies, curricula of education and culture, using as their intermediaries their craftsmen who are part of the various Zionist Organizations" (article 17)

Apparently, those conniving Zionist have also invented Women's Lib, for the sole purpose of distracting the Muslim woman from her sacred duty, which is to stay at home and raise Jihad babies. This is typical of anti-Semites: anything they don't like, they describe as a Zionist tool. If Hamas will be allowed to have its way, it will use this to oppress the people under its rule, and any type of behavior it doesn't like will be branded as "Zionist", and brutally put down. This is what will happen if you "free Gaza".

"The enemies have been scheming for a long time, and they have consolidated their schemes, in order to achieve what they have achieved. They took advantage of key elements in unfolding events, and accumulated a huge and influential material wealth which they put to the service of implementing their dream. This wealth [permitted them to] take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe in order to fulfill their interests and pick the fruits. They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there… They also used the money to take over control of the Imperialist states and made them colonize many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread their corruption therein. As regards local and world wars, it has come to pass and no one objects, that they stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate… They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials and prepared for the establishment of their state… There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it." (article 22)

In short, the Zionists are behind every bloodshed, corruption and violence. Or, to put is as plainly as possible, the Jews are the root of all evil in the world. History tells us that when one group of people defines another group of people as the root of all evil, they will move to annihilate them on the first chance they get.

The Hamas Charter, then, leads to one logical conclusion: all Jews must be exterminated, in order to save the world. But in case it wasn't clear enough…

"Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them." (article 7)

In short, it is the religious duty of every Muslim to kill the Jews, to bring about Judgment Day. I did not bother to quote them, but the entire charter is laced with quotes from the scriptures, to prove that Allah supports the movement's anti-Semitic ideology. The Nazis, to remind you, never announced publicly that they intend to kill the Jews. Hamas is not that shy about its true intentions.

Antisemitism has always been a part of the Palestinian discourse, ever since the 1930's, when some Palestinian leaders borrowed it from the Nazis. However, it has usually been more of an overtone, not so much part of the ideology. With Hamas, it becomes the core of their ideology, the raison d'etre of their existence. So when the Palestinian people, at the first chance they got, voted for Hamas to lead them, Israelis were shocked and angered. A logical Israeli reaction would have been to regard this as a declaration of total war and react accordingly, but we Israelis choose to believe that the majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas for reasons other than Antisemitism, and we prefer to keep the peace process alive. Therefore, Israel keeps negotiating with more reasonable Palestinians, and in the meantime places a blockade on Gaza to prevent Hamas from amassing weapons, and a strict embargo to prevent the Gaza economy from growing and getting stronger. We have vowed not to let the Nazi monster rear its ugly head ever again.

There was hope that Hamas, once in power, will become more pragmatic, and move away from its extremist ideology. If the Gaza government wants to end the blockade, all it has to do is announce that it recognizes Israel's right to exist. It should take them no more than five minutes, and it constitutes no capitulation on the part of the Palestinian people, nothing they haven't already agreed to in the past. But, even after years of blockade and war, the Gaza government refuses to do so. They would rather let their citizens suffer, than recognize Israel's right to exist. Why? Of course, because that would be giving up on their anti-Semitic ideology, the very thing that keeps them going. They can never do that.

Instead, Hamas uses a different tactic: let the people of Gaza suffer, and wait for the world to pressure Israel to lift the blockade. Once they achieve that, they will be able to import advanced weapons from Iran, with which they can totally disrupt Israeli daily life and economy, until they get Israel to agree to their demand: a long-term ceasefire, which will allow them to grow stronger and indoctrinate the Palestinian people on their anti-Semitic ideology, preparing them for the final battle to annihilate the Jews. They have time, and they assume that there are plenty of anti-Semites in the world that will help them, and many others gullible enough to support their "Free Gaza" campaign. And, guess what? They were right.

The last time that there was a government that was almost as anti-Semitic as the Gaza government was when the Nazis took over Germany. Back then, the world stood idly by and did not take the Nazis' anti-Semitic rants seriously, and the outcome was that 90% of Europe's Jews were wiped out. Horrified and dismayed, the world vowed back then never to allow this to happen again. Well, here it finally has the chance to stand by this vow, to oppose a government that has a self-declared anti-Semitic agenda. So what does the world do? That's right, it comes to the aid of Hamas.

Nothing has changed, nothing was learned.

Abortion=Murder?

2010-09-27T04:08:00.000-07:00

The question of the morality of abortion continues to divide the human race, and remains tough to answer philosophically. I will attempt to take a stab at it.

So, is abortion murder? This question cannot be definitely answered - it depends on your set of a-priori beliefs. If you believe human life begins at the moment of inception (a belief that usually stems from a religious belief in the existence of a soul, which enters the body at that moment), then it is murder. If, on the other hand, you believe that human life begins only when consciousness is formed, then the notion that a cluster of cells can be perceived as a living human is ridiculous to you, and you will not see it as murder. And since we cannot prove or disprove any of these metaphysics, the debate is pointless.

But let's look at it from a moral perspective. Here we have to ask ourselves: why is murder immoral? There are, I think, two reasons.

First, each one of us has self-awareness, and knows that he or she constitutes an entire world, which wants to continue to exist. The thought that we will cease to exist horrifies us, and thus we perceive the act of terminating a person, an entire world, as morally heinous. What about abortion? Well, a fetus is not yet a self-aware consciousness, not yet a world that wants to continue to exist. Therefore, aborting it is not a moral crime.

You might claim that denying the fetus the opportunity to develop and become a consciousness is immoral. But this argument would be true only if existence was essentially a good thing, and existence, in essence, is neither good nor bad - it just is. Life can be either good or bad, so denying someone the possibility to be born into them is not immoral. Actually, a person born to parents who don't want him will most probably end up having a bad existence, so it could be argued that allowing him to be born is the immoral act.

The second moral crime involved in murder is the insufferable agony it wreaks on the people who loved the victim. Is abortion a crime, according to this criterion? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. Parents often develop emotional attachment to their unborn child early on, and already dream of their shared future. But other times they feel nothing towards the fetus save the desire to get rid of it. The moral question should be decided on these grounds.

Let's take a hypothetical case: a woman finds out she's pregnant, feels joy about it, and starts to plan her life as a mother. But someone doesn't want her to have that child, and forces her to abort it. I consider this case to be a murder like any other murder.

On the other hand, when no one wants the child, there is no suffering involved, and therefore no crime against morality.

Bottom line: abortion isn't inherently immoral, but might be in certain cases.

Suffragette City

2010-09-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

In 'Suffragette City', Bowie conjures up the memory of an important chapter in the history of liberalism, the chapter of the Suffragette movement. The liberal dream is to reach a world where every human will be free and equal, and able to pursue their happiness, and the Suffragettes, who struggled for and managed to secure women's right to vote, took us one step closer towards fulfilling that dream. Well, now we are after the nineteen-sixties, another glorious chapter in the history of liberalism. How much have we done to advance the liberation of women, to achieve the mission that the Suffragettes bequeathed us?

Hey man, oh leave me alone, you know
Hey man, oh Henry, get off the phone, I gotta
Hey man, I gotta straighten my face
This mellow thighed chick just put my spine outta place
Hey man, my schoolday's insane
Hey man, my work's down the drain
Hey man, well she's a total blam-blam
She said she had to squeeze it but she... then she...

Our hero is a guy busy scoring with a chick (or maybe several chicks) who is an animal in bed. This was one of the victories of sixties liberalism, of the sexual revolution: it emancipated women from the Victorian perception that sex is something that they do only to please men, and allowed them to enjoy sex as well. The introduction of birth control pills in the fifties enabled women to have sex more freely, and by the early seventies, young women were aggressively sexual. Ziggy, as the next step in the sixties liberation, celebrates this development, in a piece of grinding cock-rock that is a paean to the sexual powers of women.

But there is also another side to the story. This promiscuity drags our hero into a world of sexual joys that leaves him with no time for anything else, and he sacrifices his friendships and his work, to get more and more sex. The mention of "schooldays" may be a reference to Chuck Berry's similarly titled record, in which the heroes are living in the tension between school's repression during the day, and the release of rock'n'rolling and making out during the night. Here, however, there is no tension, and our hero can get sex as much as he wants, which means that it doesn't give him any release either, and he has to delve further and further into the world of carnal pleasures to get the same effect. In the process, he gives up on any other aspect of his life.

Oh don't lean on me man
Cause you can't afford the ticket
I'm back on Suffragette City
Oh don't lean on me man
Cause you ain't got time to check it
You know my Suffragette City
Is outta sight... she's all right

Again, this can be taken in two ways. As a straightforward celebration of sex, it describes the girls of the time as so wild that only a certain man, a man who has made the mental shift required by the sexual revolution, can handle them. The hero's friend is still stuck with the sexual inhibitions of the past, so he cannot come with him to this Suffragette City, because he'd only slow him down. But it can also mean that our hero is becoming someone whose friends can no longer lean on, as he is too busy scoring. This Suffragette City is a place of sexual paradise for a man, and it makes him forget about any other human value, betraying his friends and himself as he sinks further and further into it.

In short, it is another slice of Bowie's twofold edge. The song is celebrating the sexual revolution of the sixties, our new freedom, but at the same time hints that we are nothing but slaves to our base animal urges. It applies for women as well, of course: instead of trying to pursue the possibilities that the Suffragettes and their like have opened for them, they are squandering it all on immediate gratifications.

Hey man, oh Henry, don't be unkind, go away
Hey man, I can't take you this time, no way
Hey man, hey droogie don't crash here
There's only room for one and here she comes, here she comes

The final verse gives us more of the same, showing the hero discarding his male friends in favor of female companionship. The "here she comes, here she comes" is lifted from the Velvet Underground's 'White Light / White Heat', suggesting that he is about to get his mind blown. The mention of "droogie", however, makes it more sinister. "Droogie" is how Alex, the hero of A Clockwork Orange, refers to his gang mates, as they go on their rampages of assault and rape. It suggests that our hero may be enjoying the free spirit of his female counterparts, but deep down he gives them no respect, and sees them as nothing but objects to satisfy his desires. The sexual revolution proclaimed that it would bring more love to the world, but the world that Bowie portrays shows, or at least hints, that the guys have not made the required mental shift, and instead of making love, they are exploiting the freedom to give the ladies a "wham bam, thank you ma'am" treatment. There is no love here, just lust.

'Suffragette City', then, can be taken as an anthem for the sexual revolution, but also as a song about decadence, about betraying values for the sake of immediate gratifications. If we take the latter options, then it is an attack on the liberalism of the late sixties, which is endangering decades of feminist struggles. And as part of the Ziggy story, it shows us how the Ziggy cult, which started out as a "church of man love" in which no one was to be turned away on account of their sexual orientation, deteriorates into a tasteless orgy, in which any other kind of human ties are severed. During the album, we followed Ziggy's efforts to take us out of our miserable existence and lead us to a happy world. All his work is now down the drain.

Ziggy Stardust

2010-06-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

'Ziggy Stardust' is the song that started it all, the seed from which the Ziggy tree, or better yet the Ziggy forest, grew. Ziggy Stardust, at first, was merely the hero of this record, an archetype of a fallen rock star. It was yet another one of Bowie's comments on the rock world of the late sixties, an era which saw rock stars being treated like messiahs, and sometimes crumbling under the image. Only later, it seems, did Bowie connect this song with some additional songs that comment on other aspects of rock'n'roll and youth culture, and a larger narrative emerged. The entire album then became an analysis of rock'n'roll and youth culture, with Ziggy playing the leading role. In the context of the album, this is the moment of Ziggy's fall, and of the destruction of the subculture that grew around him.

So the record can be seen as another commentary on the collapse of the Hippie culture, and of cults or subcultures in general. But mostly, it is about the fall of the individual, the star. Bowie, of course, already had many examples to draw upon. There was Brian Jones, the beautiful narcissus, the perennial rebel who formed the Rolling Stones in his own image, until that image drove him into self-destructive drug abuse and early death. There was Syd Barrett, leader of Pink Floyd, who embodied the spirit of the psychedelic movement in England, until the psychedelics robbed him of his own spirit and left him an empty shell. There was Jimi Hendrix, worshipped for his guitar heroics, and put on such a high pedestal that he fell to his death. There was Jim Morrison, the messianic cursed poet, who wished to embody the search for the ultimate truth, and sacrificed himself in the process. Finally, and a little more obscurely, there was Vince Taylor, a minor rock figure in England who became a big star in France, until he started to believe he was the second incarnation. Bowie knew Vince personally and witnessed his mental deterioration firsthand, and took it all into the Ziggy image. Ziggy, in short, is all of these rockers put together. Let us now see how his tale plays out.

When we set forth to analyze 'Ziggy Stardust', I believe we should pay attention to the way it is sung. Bowie switches his vocals several times during the record, and to me it suggests that the story is told by several different people, each from a different perspective – kind of a miniature Citizen Kane. It is the Spiders who are speaking here (let's call them Ronno, Weird and Gilly), telling their story, and each tells it a little differently. I will therefore heed Bowie's vocal changes, and assume that the speaker changes as well.

Ziggy played guitar, jammin' good with Weird and Gilly,
And the spiders from Mars

The track begins where the preceding one ends. In 'Hang onto Yourself', Ziggy introduced his act in the plural: "we're the Spiders for Mars". There was no one in the band who was above the rest – it was a communal affair. We find the same thing here: Ziggy is jamming with the rest of the Spiders, and the music is an expression of the collective spirit of the band. However, here it is told in past tense. Did something happen to change the situation?

He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band

"He played it left hand" immediately invokes Hendrix, and paints Ziggy as a shamanic figure, electrifying his audience with his ecstatic guitar playing. Seems that the speaker (let's assume it's Ronno, since he mentions the other two) is in it just for the music, and doesn't seem to grasp this more spiritual side: he describes Ziggy's playing in technical terms, when actually, the guitar hero doesn't just play an instrument, but turns it into a conduit to conjure up the spirits of our time, and set them into our souls. He takes us with him on a journey, and through identifying with him we rise above our boring everyday existence. But herein lies the snag: because of this ability, he is elevated above the band, and the initial unity breaks. At first, Ziggy was merely the mouth that expressed the collective spirit of the subculture, a spirit that engulfed the fans and the band. At some point, as the result of the reverential relationship between the rock hero and his audience, it became all about Ziggy.

Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan
He could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave 'em to hang
He came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan

A different voice speaking now (let's say it's Weird), describing it from another perspective, showing a deeper perception of what makes the rocker so special to his fans. He talks about Ziggy's singing (with which the rock hero gives a voice to our innermost feelings), his otherworldliness (Japan, back then, was as otherworldly as you could get), his unique hairstyle (an essential part of any rock'n'roll sensation), his ability to manipulate the crowd, his sexual prowess, his ecstatic delivery (the "screwed up eyes" can be a reference to Bowie's own weird eyes, but also calls to mind some holy roller with his eyes rolled up), and his being "so loaded", either with the help of drugs or simply as a quality of his volatile personality. It is this package, along with the guitar, that enables him to fire up the wild part in us, and take us as high as we can ever get.

So where were the spiders, while the fly tried to break our balls?
Just a beer light to guide us
So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?

All the Spiders singing together now, complaining about being left behind, and plotting revenge on Ziggy. "The fly" could be the band's manager, who is cheating them out of their share, while Ziggy does nothing to help them. On the other hand, we also get a hint of the spiritual poverty of the Spiders – the light that guides them is light beer – which prevents them from being true counterparts to Ziggy. These discrepancies lead to the breaking of the collective spirit, of that magnificent feeling described in 'Lady Stardust' - the band is no longer all together. Dissension, jealousy and resentment set into the ranks of the once united Ziggy cult.

Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we were voodoo
The kids were just crass
He was the nazz
With God given ass
He took it all too far, but boy could he play guitar

Now we get Gilly's perspective, and he, it seems, despised the whole thing from the start. He doesn't get the spiritual side of rock'n'roll at all, and rejects Ziggy's attempt to persuade him that the band is "voodoo" – for him, it was probably just a way to get money. He also marks Ziggy's messianic quality, his divine sexuality and his guitar heroics, but says that he was merely "playing for time", as if the whole thing was just a scam, and that the way of life which the kids held so highly was actually nothing but crass styling. "The Nazz" is the title of a famous monologue by hipster poet and comedian Lord Buckley, delivered in jive talk and telling of a hip messiah called the Nazz. The speaker equates Ziggy to him, but from his point of view, when Ziggy was jiving like the Nazz, he was actually "jiving us" – i.e. lying.

Making love with his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band

Like most of Bowie's heroes, Ziggy is brought down by the very thing that made him rise. He started out by creating a superstar identity for himself, and that identity put him above regular people, and presented a new and heroic way of life which others could identify with, and come together in heavenly joy. But then, this creation of his own mind sucks him in, and takes over him. Rather than forgetting about his ego when he's among his friends, he behaves like he's above them as well. In the end, he becomes like a leper, who nobody wants any part of. Gilly, from his rationalistic point of view, tells us how Ziggy's egotistical antics ruined the scene, and prompted him to leave the band. "When the kids have killed the man" could mean that they killed Ziggy with their idolatry, which caused his ego to swell up and destroyed the good man he was at first.

But it can also mean something else. I hear echoes of 'Cygnet Committee' here, of a story about a messianic movement that turned murderous. Ziggy's new identity was meant to attract those people who suffered from the same alienation as he did, so that they could all come together in brotherhood. For them, he was indeed a messiah. But when he "sucked up into his mind", he (and some of his followers) started believing that because it worked for some people, it must work for all people, and that they should be made to see the light. I suggest that Bowie may be reacting to what happened in the rock world of the late sixties, when some of the Hippies started believing that their way of life presents the one and only truth, and set out to bring a revolution, sometimes resorting to terrorist means. Going by that interpretation, "the kids have killed the man" talks about an actual slaying, and the speaker realizes that the once benevolent Ziggy subculture has turned murderous, and that he must break up the band to prevent further bloodshed.

Ziggy Played Guitar

The catchphrase that opens and closes the record strips down the godly image of Ziggy, and reminds us what we are dealing with: just a guy who plays guitar. He is not the Son of God, not a holy man, not a seer. And yet, he became a messiah to his fans. Why is that? As we've seen, the one we've called Gilly seems to think it was all a mass delusion, and the fact that it didn't last seems to corroborate his stance. But not in Bowie's world. In Bowie's world, the fact that something doesn't last forever doesn't mean that it isn't real. For a while, rock'n'roll can take you to heaven, and the rock'n'roll star is therefore a true messiah, as long as he doesn't start believing that what he offers is eternal salvation. Ziggy is another in a line of Bowie heroes modeled after Major Tom, who created a vehicle that took him out of his world and into a joyful existence, but then took over him and swept him too far away, until he lost contact with reality. Ziggy, like Major Tom, took it too far, and therefore had to fall.

The masks are beginning to fall

2010-06-08T11:44:00.000-07:00

So Helen Thomas, respected reporter and long time Israel hater, who just this week called the Israeli flotilla operation a "massacre", has been revealed (surprise! surprise!) as nothing more than a regular anti-Semite, who believes that the Jews are subhumans who do not deserve to have the same rights as other people.

When you scratch the surface of most of Israel's vehement critics, that is what you'll find.

It didn't use to be that way. In the past, it was rational to believe that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the root of the problem, the cause of the conflict. Those of us who are inside the conflict knew it is more complicated than that, but many of us, including myself, also believed that the occupation is the main issue. And the position that put the blame entirely on Israel was understandable.

In the past two decades, however, Israel has transferred control of the Gaza Strip and 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians, offered to give them control over more than 90% of the West Bank, and publicly acknowledged the right of the Palestinian people to form a sovereign state in these regions. The majority of Israelis is in favor of the two-state solution, and wants the two nations to live side-by-side in peace and dignity. Only the extreme right still rejects this solution.

How did the Palestinians react to these changes? How do they regard the rights of the Jewish people? Currently they have three leaderships. The Gaza government openly declares it wants to annihilate Israel, and its ideology implies that all Jews should be exterminated. The West Bank government accepts the two states solution, but wants one state (Palestine) to be ethnically cleansed of Jews, and the other state (Israel) to have a Palestinian majority, and give away its Jewish identity. And the leadership of the Israeli-Palestinians warns its people not to play any positive role in Israeli society, and refuses to acknowledge Israel's legitimacy, defining it as a colonial entity. You don't hear any Palestinians acknowledging that Jews are also natives of this land, and have a natural right to live in it. The most they are willing to do is accept that since they can't get rid of the Jews, they are willing to let them stay.

And yet, the global anti-Israel rhetoric has only grown increasingly more hateful and violent, and now uses inflammatory words like "apartheid", "genocide", "massacre", and other words that have no relation to the reality of the situation, but are thrown around generously to describe Israel's actions. How come?

I believe what happened is that the reasonable critics of Israel have realized by now that the situation is more complicated than they thought, and adopted a more careful view. So that left the Israel-bashing to the anti-Semites who disguise themselves as human right believers, and since the media tries to be "balanced", the side that is against Israel is represented by these anti-Semites, who are poisoning the minds of the viewers.

Well, I'm drawing a personal line in the sand. The view that blames "Israeli occupation" for being the root of the problem is no longer reasonable or defensible. I will no longer regard it as understandable. There are enough facts to refute it, and anyone who still holds it in the face of these facts does so disingenuously. Anyone who in this day and age puts the majority of the blame on Israel does so because they are an anti-Semite.

Hang Onto Yourself

2010-04-15T22:58:00.000-07:00

'Hang Onto Yourself' started life as an Arnold Corns record, with a rather nonsensical lyric delivered against a murky rockabilly backing. It seems to try (unsuccessfully) to recapture the excitement of rock'n'roll in its early days, when it was all new and didn't know where it was headed. The lyrics suggest that we are on the verge of breaking into something big, and the phrase "hang on to yourself" seems to be a warning not to get too excited, or we might blow it. When it was remade for the Ziggy album, however, the song dealt with the reality of what happens after you've already become a star, and was changed accordingly. This time the music is tight and edgy, the lyric is biting, and the phrase "hang on to yourself" gains a whole new meaning.

We are, then, already in the thick of Ziggy's success. The beginning of the album saw us plodding through depression and meaninglessness, but then finding a new way, a new promise for a life of excitement and joy. As a result, the rhythm of life escalates, and everything becomes livelier and stronger. 'Star' already speeded things up, and the next three tracks are among Bowie's most rocking numbers ever, as we take a ride with Ziggy through the heavens of rock'n'roll stardom. So hang on to yourself, we are on our way.

Well she's a tongue twisting storm, she will come to the show tonight
Praying to the light machine
She wants my honey not my money, she's a funky-thigh collector
Layin' on 'lectric dreams

Who is "she"? I'm not sure. It could be the band, coming to lay electric dreams on us, extract the buried honey within us, and take us through a tongue twisting storm. It could be a female fan, who is coming to the show tonight to get some of Ziggy's honey and crave his funky thighs. Or maybe "she" is ultimate happiness, which will descend on everyone who will attend the show, band and audience alike, and take them through a storm of electric dreams. In any case, it is a celebration of that wondrous experience that is a rock'n'roll concert.

We can't dance, we don't talk much
We just ball and play
But then we move like tigers on Vaseline
Well the bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar
You're the blessed, we're the Spiders from Mars

In this verse, it is obvious that the speaker is Ziggy, who is introducing his band, the Spiders from Mars. Again, this is vintage rock'n'roll language, blending religious imagery, sexual innuendos and a touch of anarchy. Not much to analyze here: Bowie stays away from his usual multilayered poetry, and keeps it simple and punchy, like rock'n'roll should be.

So come on, come on
we've really got a good thing going
Well come on, well come on
If you think we're gonna make it
You better hang on to yourself

But the chorus does have a slightly deeper philosophical undercurrent. As we recall, Ziggy's "self" is something that he created, according to his (or actually Bowie's) perception that in order to be happy, you should recreate yourself as something alien. But this also means that this created self can bring you happiness only as long as it is still alien, and once it is no longer perceived as alien, the happiness fades. You should therefore remain in control of this self, so when the day comes when it no longer induces happiness, you can set yourself free from it, and recreate yourself once again. You should hang on to your self, remember the reasons for its creation, and not let it be distorted by the changing reality. The special traits of Ziggy's self were his superstardom and his multi-sexuality, and he managed to get the world to perceive him that way as well. But the outcome, as we see in this song, is that he is now exposed to all the temptations of superstardom and unbound sex, which have nothing to do with the initial reasons for his choosing this way of life. Ziggy is reminding himself to hang on to himself, to not lose himself to these temptations, but as the guitars go wild towards the end of the song, and the temptations are luring him "come on, come on", we can feel him losing the hang. Swept tongue-twisted by the storm of his own creation, getting lost in the electric dreams he put forth, slipping on the Vaseline, he is rushing towards his fall.

Ke$ha

2010-04-13T06:27:00.000-07:00

I was waiting for a revolution, and here it comes. Ke$ha represents a new generation in the pop world, and she's redefining the lines. Some major points:

1. For a while now it was obvious that the new pop is going to come from electro. In the second half of the previous decade, many pop artists forayed the electro field, but it was always mixed with other styles, and tended towards artiness. While the artists who made pure electro focused on the music, without presenting an image and trying to become pop stars. Ke$ha is the first to break big with electro that is pure, primitive and fun, which kicks at everything that came before. This is a new beginning.

2. Along with Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, Ke$ha shows us that you don't need to be a bombshell to become a desired pop star. All you have to do is behave the part, be provocative, wild and fresh, and transmit sex. In the past, such girls were relegated to the punk rock niche. Nowadays you can do whatever you want.

3. Regarding sex, Ke$ha poses a new female attitude, which allows itself to treat men as objects of desire, like men always allowed themselves in regards to women. If the basis of male pop was always "cars and girls", Ke$ha asserts that the basis of female pop is "boots and boys".

Of course, to have a revolution you need more than one artist. I predict that we will see more electro kids sprouting in the coming months, and that some established artists will rotate towards the sound. It's gonna be fun.

So who will be the 3D Babe?

2010-04-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

So far, Avatar remains the only movie shot in 3D. The revolution is here already, but only retroactively: every big-budget fantasy movie made in the last year (such as Alice in Wonderland) has been converted to 3D. The results are not impressive, and already there are people grumbling that 3D adds nothing, and just makes you wear annoying glasses.

The thing that will shut them up for good is the sight of a sexy actress in 3D. I was wondering who will get to be this actress, the Hollywood starlet that will forever be remembered as the 3D babe, the one who turned the world on to the new technology, the one who will do for 3D what Jean Harlow did for blond hair, Jane Russell did for cleavage and Ursula Andres did for the bikini. I'm ready now to place my bet. I'm guessing Iron Man 2 will be three dimensional, and I'm guessing furthermore that once the world gets a gander at Scarlett Johansson's curves in 3D, it will no longer be willing to settle for any less.

Retraction: I am told that Iron Man 2 will not be in 3D, so the race is still on. If I'm a director making a 3D movie right now, I'm casting Eva Mendes.

Star

2010-03-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

So, 'Moonage Daydream' and 'Starman' established that Ziggy is an alien, and 'Lady Stardust' revealed one of the traits that make him an alien: his bisexuality. The next song, 'Star', presents Ziggy's other otherworldly trait: his superstardom.

We have already encountered Bowie's fascination with the phenomenon of stardom, and how it connects to his dreams of a heroic existence. 'The Prettiest Star' suggests that we carry the memories of movies we saw, and out of them we can create ourselves as something bigger than life, like the silver-screen stars. And Hunky Dory contains several references to Hollywood and its stars, as well as eulogizing Andy Warhol and his aesthetic celebration of fabrication and glamour. But why do I call this "otherworldly"? Because it went against the grain of the Hippie worldview that dominated the rock world at the time, a worldview that demanded that musicians should be authentic and stay away from any artificiality and fabrication. Stardom was regarded as part of the "fake and meaningless" world of pop, which serious rock musicians were to stay away from. When Bowie and Bolan turned glam and embraced stardom, most critics dismissed them as sellouts who gave up on authenticity in exchange for fame and fortune. But they were wrong, because what Bowie does here is actually to undermine the entire Hippie worldview, and redefine our notions of "real" and "fake".

Why did the Hippies, and most other people, grasp glamour and stardom as something fake? Because their worldview holds the belief that we are defined by an "inner self", a core that remains stable, while our varying outer-identity is just the cultural mask we are wearing. The star persona is not who the person "really is inside", but a projection for the public's eyes, and therefore regarded as unreal. Hippies believed that rock should be an expression of authenticity, and that music is the way to remove the masks, and reveal ourselves as we really are. Furthermore, they believed that by dropping the masks, the boundaries between humans will fall, and the human race will unite in harmony and love. Playing the game of stardom, and putting the emphasis on one's "fake" outer persona instead of his real "inner self", were therefore regarded as something that hinders our chances to create a utopia.

Bowie, of course, saw things differently. As we know, he did not believe in an "inner real self", a permanent core that defines us, and regarded everything in our being as subject to change. In his worldview, what defines us is not who we are inside, but what we act out in the world, and if the way we act induces happiness, then it is real. In 'Andy Warhol', he tells us what would happen if we force Andy to take a cruise on his own, as if to tear him away from his regular actions and surroundings and give him a chance to search for his inner self: he will nevertheless continue to think about his art, and about other people. In other words, Warhol gets that the "real self" is not a personal inner thing that you are born with, but rather something you create and share with others. And that is why the star, who presents a distinct artificial identity that can be imitated by others, is actually a model of authenticity.

It is well known that the formation of a movie star, in the golden age of Hollywood, was largely the work of the studios, which created the persona for the stars, and then sold it to the public through a clever public relations machine. When it comes to music, however, our approach tends to be more romantic, and we want to believe that rock stars become so because of their musical talent. The perception isn't true in both cases: Hollywood stars become so mainly because of a quality they themselves possess, while the making of rock'n'roll stars does involve a great deal of conjuring. Bowie was now getting prepared to employ the lessons of decades of star making, and conjure up the biggest rock star of them all.

Of course, David Bowie himself is nothing but a stage persona conjured up by David Jones, and one of the tactics he used to market this alias was to blame it on another rock act, an act that became infamous for its inauthenticity. The Monkees, a band that was conceived by two TV producers who wanted to create an American version of the Beatles, hit American television in September 1966 as a weekly show, offering a combination of zany slapstick comedy, innocuous youth rebellion, and Beatlesque musical numbers written by professional tunesmiths. The personas of the band members were prefabricated by the producers and played by actors (including a Briton named Davy Jones), but many kids nevertheless fell under their charm, and hysteria didn't fail to ensue. Within a year, though, rock started taking itself more seriously, moving in the direction of authenticity and profundity, and the Monkees became a laughing stock (even the band members themselves rebelled against the concept, and tried to make it as a "real" band, writing their own tunes). In the collective memory of rock, the Monkees were remembered as a sham, a cynical attempt by the industry to cash in on youth culture. Bowie managed to escape the peril of being wrongly identified as Monkee Davy Jones when he changed his name, but by 1972, he was taking a fresh look on the world of rock, and finding merit in what the Monkees had to offer. The people who created the Monkees showed that you can actually determine the image of the band before you make the music, and also that you can make the public believe in it, through the electronic media. They were displaying their creativity not through the musical side of pop, but through the sides of identity creation and crowd manipulation, sides that late-sixties rockers didn't pay much attention to, but Bowie was now getting ready to explore. So while past heroes like Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who et al. left the development of these sides to their managers, Bowie was to set a new standard, in which image creation and media manipulation are to be done by the artists themselves, part and parcel of their art. "I wasn't at all surprised that Ziggy Stardust made my career," he said years later, "I packaged a totally credible plastic rock star – much better than any sort of Monkees fabrication. My plastic rocker was much more plastic than anybody's." Bowie was about to redefine what rock was about: instead of focusing on the music and letting everything else revolve around it, the rock artist should first of all create an identity for himself, and everything else should revolve around that.

Another influence on Bowie's new perception came from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, an eccentric country & western performer who was convinced he was going to become a legendary star, and named himself accordingly. He was basically laughed off the stage, but Bowie was intrigued by the fact that the guy announced himself as a star before becoming one, hoping that he can get others to see him as such. Borrowing the "Stardust" moniker for his own creation, Bowie was determined to succeed where the Ledge failed.

In 1970, Bowie encountered another wannabe star, when he was approached by Les Payne, lead singer of the band Chameleon, who asked him to write a song for them. Chameleon were on the verge of breaking big, and Bowie penned a song called 'Star', which reflected the thoughts of every teenager dreaming of rock stardom. But Chameleon soon broke up and their version was not released, and Payne went on to miss a few more shots at fame, eventually making a name for himself as the rocker who almost made it. Bowie, on the other hand, did make it, and his revamped version of 'Star' became a central piece in the Ziggy story.

Tony went to fight in Belfast
Rudi stayed at home to starve
I could make it all worthwhile as a rock & roll star
Bevan tried to change the nation
Sonny wants to turn the world, well he can tell you that he tried
I could make a transformation as a rock & roll star

'Star', in a way, is an extension of 'Changes'. On that song, Bowie told us that there were "a million dead-end streets", and here he counts some of them. Tony went to fight for his country, still believing in the old notions of patriotism, but the country turned out to be a false idol. Bevan (a name that brings to mind Aneurin Bevan, and therefore socialism) tried to change the nation from within and achieve socialist utopia, but that proved to be unattainable as well. Rudi (probably a shout-out to his friend Freddi Burretti, a.k.a "Rudi Valentino") gave up on all ideologies and refuses to commit to anything, but that way, as Bowie already told us in 'Quicksand', only leads to spiritual starvation. And Sonny kind of sums up all those ideologies, who believed that in order to give meaning to your existence, you should strive to change the world for the better. 'Changes' overturned that perception, in teaching us that the change should not be done for the end result, but for the sake of the change itself, because through transformation we find joy. 'Star' presents the way of life that enables you to realize this new ethic: as a rock'n'roll star, he could perform the transformations he wants, and make his existence worthwhile.

So inviting - so enticing to play the part
I could play the wild mutation as a rock & roll star

And so he will become a rock'n'roll star, and through that, he believes, he will have the freedom to keep mutating, and keep living a wild and exciting way of life.

I could do with the money
I'm so wiped out with things as they are
I'd send my photograph to my honey - and I'd c'mon like a regular superstar

This passage deals with the more trivial temptations of stardom: money and fame. Bowie acknowledges that they are part of it as well, but as he told us in 'Changes', the aim is not to be a richer man, but a different man. Money and fame are seen as a secondary thing, while the main goal is self-creation. Bowie uses the term "superstar", a term Warhol used to denote those glamorous characters that surrounded him, and lived their entire lives as if they were stars on the silver-screen. This now becomes Bowie's ideal: he will present the rock'n'roll equivalent to Warhol's superstars, and create a persona who exists not only on stage, but in real life as well. He will become the star persona, and compel the rest of the world to see him that way. Thus, he believes, he will achieve the heroic existence he was dreaming of.

I could fall asleep at night as a rock & roll star
I could fall in love all right as a rock & roll star

Here, however, the rhetoric is going a little too far, and reveals the ironic side of the song, an irony that drips from the way Bowie sings these lines. The protagonist, it seems, believes a little too much in the power of stardom to provide happiness. The song goes against Hippie dogma and shows us that stardom is actually a positive thing, but these lines remind us that it has a dark side as well. It seems that the protagonist has gone over to the dark side, and fell into the entrapments of stardom.

Within the context of the Ziggy saga, this is the moment when our hero starts to lose it. When he initially took the stage, he did it because he wanted to express himself, and in order to find others who are like him, with whom he can come together in love. Now he starts to think about money and fame as well, and believes he can find even better love as a star, as someone who is above the crowd. We are at the zenith if Ziggy's rise. From here on begins the fall.

Lady Stardust

2010-03-08T11:41:00.000-08:00

In 'Starman', Bowie describes the moment when the kids first hear Ziggy on the airwaves, and portrays the thrill of encountering a new musical experience, something that is alien to the rationality of the culture you grew up in. 'Lady Stardust' does the same, but describes the moment of actually seeing the new act perform on stage. And it adds two more important ingredients to the story. First, it gets deeper into the phenomenon of the crowd's reaction, and tries to understand what causes it. Secondly, it provides us with a clue to one of the traits of the Ziggy character, one of the things that make him an alien.

As with any other track on the album, this one can be understood both ways: as a standalone piece, and as part of the bigger story. In itself, the record seems to be inspired by a very special moment in pop history, the moment glam rock broke big. The glam sensibility had been fermenting since 1970, inspired by Warhol via the Velvet Underground, and developed in England by the two friendly rivals David Bowie and Marc Bolan. Both of them have been going through the same phases since the mid-sixties, but up to 1972, Bolan was always a step ahead: trendier as a Mod, freakier as a Hippie, flashier as a glam rocker. In his Hippie phase, he was a cult figure, catering to the flower children's yearn to escape the realm of science into the realm of magic by providing Tolkienesque fairytales of wizards and elves, sung in a dreamy voice with folksy acoustic backing. But when Hippie magic started to whither away, Bolan joined Bowie in the quest to reconnect to the roots of early rock'n'roll, and draw imagery not from fantasyland, but from a futuristic space age. His lyrics were still surrealistic, but the landscape was now an urban landscape, the images were now rock'n'roll images (in other words, cars and girls), the music was rhythmic and electrified, and the vocals charged with sexual energy and prowess. Tyrannosaurus Rex, his cult band, now became T. Rex, a stomping monster oriented towards making smash hits, and in March 1971 they were scheduled to appear on Top of the Pops, to perform their new single 'Hot Love'. And appear they did, with Bolan adorned in a shiny silver suit and a touch of glitter under the eyes, bringing back the glamour into rock'n'roll. It doesn't look very shocking when you watch it nowadays, but against the backdrop of the unglamorous, macho, denim-clad world of early seventies rock, he came over as a radiant androgynous figure, sending a jolt of excitement through many teen viewers. Within weeks, the streets were colonized with kids who mimicked Bolan's style, and the era of glam was upon us.

Bowie, as always, took notes and internalized. And so, even before he had his own Top of the Pops moment, he already prophesizes the reaction he would generate, by writing a song inspired by Marc's big moment, and making it part of the Ziggy Stardust narrative. 'Lady Stardust' is that song.

People stared at the makeup on his face
Laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace
The boy in the bright blue jeans
Jumped up on the stage
And lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and disgrace

Once again, Bowie is analyzing the moment when human beings encounter something that is alien to their rationality. Rock'n'roll, when it broke in the fifties, went against every notion of musical "quality", and was laughed at and scolded by culture guardians, who regarded it as a primitive form of music. But there was also fear: the sudden appearance of this primitive, "animalistic" form of music went against the notion that we are continuously progressing away from our animal roots, and thus threatened to expose the whole rationality of "progress" as erroneous. That is why the adults were so perturbed by it, and tried to ridicule it and shut it up, but the kids didn't care – they knew rock'n'roll gave them more joy than anything else, and they didn't have to explain it rationally. By the late sixties, however, rock also began to think of itself in terms of "quality" and "progress", and moved away from its rock'n'roll roots. Bowie, through Ziggy, brings rock'n'roll back, with a rereading of what rock'n'roll does: the ecstatic joy did not come from a "retreat to animalism", but because this "animalism" was alien to the rationality of the fifties, and liberated the kids from it. Rock'n'roll, in other words, is a liberating force, that smashes the rationality of your old world and gives you that special thrill of breaking loose. So to revive rock'n'roll, you must find a way to come over as something that is alien to the rationality of your time, and this is exactly what Bolan did. In his long black hair, makeup and glitter, he looked effeminate, confusing the very strict gender lines. Androgyny, then, is the way to go, and Bowie appropriates it to his own means. The description given in 'Lady Stardust' fits Bolan to a tee, documenting that moment when he made his initial ripple, but at the same time it switches the story towards our hero, Ziggy Stardust. Referring to him throughout as a male, but calling her a "Lady", it suggests that this is a creature of dubious sexuality, which does not fit any sexual category in our current rationality, and thus threatens to show this entire rationality as erroneous. As always, most people reject this alien, reacting with fear and ridicule. The fear was mentioned in 'starman'; here we encounter the ridicule.

Femme fatales emerged from shadows
To watch this creature fair
Boys stood upon their chairs
To make their point of view

But not everybody is laughing. There are those who find in the alien something that reflects what they feel inside, something they can identify with. Bowie characterizes Ziggy's crowd: it is made from "boys", teenagers who feel alienated from the world they grew up in, and "femme fatales", a term that immediately evokes the Velvet Underground classic, and can stand for all those urban misfits in the VU's albums. All those persons now come out of the shadows and "make their point of view" – another clever Bowie pun, which can mean either that they want a better view of the performer, but also that they can now finally express what they feel inside, given a voice by Ziggy.

I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey
Lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and dismay

Suddenly, the narrator makes his own presence known, and we learn that he too was among this crowd. But he reacts differently than all the others: he does not mock the alien, but he does not let himself be swept by him/her either. He does feel that this creature kindled something inside him, but he cannot obey this inner feeling, and remains in the capacity of observer to the whole affair. What is that "love" that he feels inside, and why does he feel that he cannot obey it? We shall have our answer by the end of the record.

And he was alright, the band was altogether
Yes he was alright, the song went on forever
And he was awful nice
Really quite out of sight
And he sang all night long

It is part and parcel of the rock'n'roll mythology: when rock'n'roll first broke, it suddenly seemed like time stopped rushing forward, and instead became an eternal circle of joy. Every new moment brought a new thrill, the options to explore seemed endless, and life became a twenty-four-hour party. You can hear this sentiment in early rock'n'roll records like Bill Haley's 'Rock Around the Clock' and Chuck Berry's 'Round and Round'. But then the rock'n'roll moment faded, time resumed its forward motion, and life was a drag once again. The memory lingered, though, and rock'n'roll always dreamed of returning to that magical moment. Ziggy, now, comes to revive it once again, to stop time and plunge the youth into non-stop partying. The album was supposed to contain his rendition of 'Round and Round', telling us how the joint started rocking once Ziggy came on, and just wouldn't stop. The track was eventually edited out, but it doesn't matter, because the chorus of 'Lady Stardust' says it all. The appearance of this "out of sight" musical alien seems to lock us in a magical circle where the song just goes on forever, and we find ourselves in a "paradise" of ultimate joy.

In 'Soul Love', Bowie spoke of his need for love, and how he does not know how to find it, and can only hope for it to descend on him. Well, Ziggy now shows us that love can also be willfully generated. When you find a way to embody something inside you that heretofore could not be expressed, you provide anyone who suffered from the same repression with something they can identify with, and once they do, they all assume a collective identity, and unite in a mutual bond. "The band was all together", sings our narrator, but it's not just the band: everyone touched by Ziggy now comes together, and find themselves to be parts of a bigger whole, and all-embracing love.

So by appearing as androgynous, Ziggy touched something inside a few kids and misfits, helping them to come out of the shadows. What is that repressed trait inside of them, which the alien now liberates?

Ooh how I sighed, when they asked if I knew his name

It's the sigh that gives it away. In 'Two Loves', a poem written by Lord Alfred Douglas, Uranian poet and Oscar Wilde's "special" friend, the hero dreams of standing in a strange garden, where he has a brief erotic encounter with a young lad. Then, two figures promptly appear, one of them singing beautiful and joyous songs about love between boy and girl, the other just sighing sadly. The hero asks the silent one "what is thy name?", and the latter replies "my name is Love", but the other figure immediately intervenes and contradicts him, claiming that "I am true Love, I fill the hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame", while the other one's name isn't "Love" but "Shame". To which the sad one sighs again and says: "Have thy will, I am the love that dare not speak its name." What is the nature of that "other" love, the love that dare not call itself love, dare not sing its own songs, because it is not allowed to do so by the more dominant kind of love? To the prosecutors in Oscar Wilde's trial (and they were most probably right), there was no doubt: it is homosexual love, asking to be recognized on the same level as heterosexual love. This was, of course, out of the question in Victorian England, and continued to be so in the 20th century, but by invoking that infamous poem in his line about sighing and daring not saying the name, Bowie is now telling us who Lady Stardust truly is: she is the voice of that other love, which finally found a way to sing its own songs. Not allowed to sing beautiful love songs, she focuses on the dark side of human existence, singing about disgrace and dismay, but by so doing, she provides a turf for those other kind of lovers to express themselves and come together. The narrator is still bound by the old conventions, still sighing instead of calling his feelings by name, still not daring to obey his homosexual love. But on the stage in front of him, and in the crowd's reactions around him, the conventions are breaking down, and we are entering a new world.

'Lady Stardust', then, introduces us to one of the traits that make Ziggy an alien: his bisexuality. It has a few levels. On one level, it is simply a continuation of the sixties sexual revolution. The Hippies said "Make Love, Not War", and lived up to their credo by practicing "free love" – in other words, as much sex as possible. Ziggy now comes to traverse more boundaries, and make love even more global and free. His inaudible muttering in the end, which sounds something like "get some pussy now!", suggests that this is merely the next step in rock'n'roll's insatiable quest for the next sexual adventure.

But it is also a revolution. Ziggy embodies an identity that couldn't exist before, an identity that went against the rationality of the time. This rationality defined each gender in strict terms, and had very definite ideas on what is "masculine" and what is "feminine". If a boy displayed "feminine" traits, or a girl "masculine" traits, they were regarded as "unnatural" and needing a cure. But many girls and boys had traits that did not fit into the neat draws of the dominating rationality, and they had to hide these traits, hide their true nature. Ziggy now blends "feminine" and "masculine" together, presenting an identity that contains both, and enables those kids to break away from oppression, and live out what they feel inside.

And, of course, he is also giving a voice to that love that dared not speak its name, to homosexual love. Homosexuality was also considered "unnatural" and forced to hide, but Ziggy wears it on his sleeve with pride, and encourages others to do the same. Finally, in the subculture that develops around Ziggy, they can sing their own songs.

Finally, Ziggy's bisexuality can be understood on an aesthetic level as well. There is an old tradition in Western thought that regards the male gender as the one who stamps his own form into things, and the female as the formless clay who is being stamped. Rock music followed this tradition, demanding that its male singers would present an original identity, and impose it on the world. Ziggy obeys this demand, but Bowie understood that there is no such thing as a completely original identity – everyone learns from others, and originality means taking what you've learned and creating something new out of it. In other words, you first of all have to let others lay their form on you, and be impregnated by them, before you can create a new form and lay it on others. Ziggy, then, is a bisexual type of artist, holding both the "female" part of being stamped by someone else, and the "male" part of stamping his own form on the world.

'Lady Stardust' is the record that puts forth this novel aesthetic approach. The reigning perception of art contended that every artist has a unique vision, which stems from his unique self, and he should spend his entire life developing that vision, and growing the self in the process. But Bowie's perception regards the self not as a growing thing, but as a thing that is periodically reborn through transformations, and so he uses his art to create these transformations. At the beginning of each transformation there's this moment where he encounters an alien performer, and feels a strange fascination, an inner attraction. His rationality tells him that this is a love that he cannot obey, that this alien is all "wrong", but Bowie tells us that we should indeed obey this love, because we will be reborn in the process. On one level, this record is about how Bowie was reborn when he saw Marc Bolan, and let himself be transformed by emulating him. On the second level, it is about how the kids are reborn when they let themselves be taken by Ziggy. On the third level, this is the blueprint for Bowie's entire career, a career built on constant transformations, achieved through emulating alien forms of art.

Starman

2010-03-03T01:52:00.000-08:00

So, in 'Soul Love', we saw the hero wallowing in the same desolate state of mind like most of Hunky Dory's heroes, idly passing the time, disillusioned by all the options the world has to offer, waiting for love to descend on him, but not really believing it can happen. And then, suddenly…

Didn't know what time it was, the lights were low
I leaned back on my radio
Some cat was layin' down some rock'n'roll, "lotta soul" he said
Then the loud sound did seem to fade
Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase
That weren't no D.J., that was hazy cosmic jive

Every music fan knows this feeling. Some day, you are busy on your daily routine, not expecting anything, and the radio is blaring the same old tunes in the background. But then, something new comes blasting out of it, something that makes you drop everything and freeze in your place, something that compels you to swerve the car to the side of the road and stay there until the record ends, something that makes all the tiny hairs on your body bristle. When those magical three minutes are over, you are not the same person any more. You are forever transformed, and you want nothing but more of that new sound.

I had to phone someone so I picked on you
Hey, that's far out, so you heard him too!
Switch on the TV we may pick him up on channel two
Look out your window I can see his light
If we can sparkle he may land tonight
Don't tell your poppa or he'll get us locked up in fright

And it is never a solitary experience. When you are hit by the new musical gospel, you find that there are other kids who have been hit by it, and they understand what you're going through. Your parents, on the other hand, don't understand it at all, and they try to lock you up and prevent you from hearing this music, prevent you from expressing yourself. The kids here are aware of it, so they keep it their own secret, creating a world of their own. 'Starman', we see, is another youth anthem, another celebration of the generational gap, which Bowie already tried to capitalize on in records like 'Changes' and 'Oh! You Pretty Things'. In those records, Bowie defined the difference between youth and adulthood in terms of their attitude towards the alien and towards change, and attempted to redirect the sixties revolution along these lines. Now, he turns it into part of the Ziggy saga, and defines "change" and "love of the alien" as the essence of rock'n'roll.

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

The chorus ties this track to its album precursor. In 'Moonage Daydream', Bowie recreated himself as Ziggy, a creature who introduces himself as an invader from outer-space, and calls the kids to follow him and come together in a new church, a church founded on rock'n'roll. In my analysis of the track, I claimed that this was his way to regenerate the rock'n'roll experience, which comes about when you are hit by something that is alien to your logic, but relates to your innermost intuitions. 'Starman' looks at the same thing from the opposite perspective, from the perspective of the youth who are hit by this new message, and their ecstatic response to it. The Starman is someone who is out of this world, someone frightening and mysterious, and yet there's something about him that makes him seem right, more right than anything they encountered before. Bowie uses the word 'blow' to create a double-meaning that expresses the dangers and opportunities of this close encounter. Taken literally, it is a warning that the meeting might prove too powerful for their earthly mind, and is liable to blow it up, but if it doesn't blow, it will prove to be worth their while. Taken in its colloquial sense, it says that it will offer them a "mind blowing" experience, that can change their mind forever, but they are also liable to "blow it", to fail to live up to what he offers them, and miss the chance for happiness.

The Starman refers to the youth as "the children", a term rife with biblical resonance, which enhances his messianic aura. But the main mythology behind this story does not come from the bible – it is first and foremost rock'n'roll mythology. In 1957, in one of the first records that celebrated the power of rock'n'roll and distinguished it from other types of music, Chuck Berry requested: "Just let me hear some of that rock'n'roll music / Any old way you choose it / It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it / Any old time you use it / It's gotta be rock'n'roll music / If you wanna dance with me." Berry promised us that if we remain true to the backbeat, there is no way we can lose that wondrous sensation, and rock'n'roll will last forever. But youth culture did lose it, did forget how to make rock'n'roll, and was no longer able to use the music to generate the same joy. Our Starman now promises to bring it back, to let the children "lose it" and "use it" once again, and be able to boogie to it like they did before.

It all harks back to the fifties, to the early days of youth culture. In the fifties, American and British youth lived in a society that believed it is the best of all societies, and it is well on the road to solving all its problems and creating the perfect world. Everyone was expected to play a positive part in this society, and no one was to stray from the path. You can see it in the numerous alien invasion movies created by Hollywood, where the aliens represented lesser ways of life coming to take over our society, and we must work together to overcome them. But in little known B-movies, or in obscure rock'n'roll gems like 'Flying Saucer Rock'n'roll' and 'Purple People Eater', an opposite picture was presented: the aliens were regarded as symbols for a more exciting way of life, an alternative to the boring conformity, who come to Earth to play rock'n'roll and teach us how to have fun. Four tracks into The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, we realize that Bowie is now finally taking this undercurrent and bringing it to the surface, to create a sci-fi story that is the opposite to what we were told in the fifties. The idea that we are on the way to a perfect society died, and its death was proclaimed in 'Five Years'. The alien Ziggy now comes to offer an alternative, and pave a new road to happiness. When he launches into the chorus, whose first notes are lifted straight out of 'Somewhere over the Rainbow', we feel that this is someone who comes from Oz, or Mars, or any other magical place that is on the other side of the rainbow, and that he has come to take us, his children, to that place.

Moonage Daydream

2010-02-26T11:35:00.000-08:00

The opening two tracks of the Ziggy album tow the line that Bowie drew in his previous album, portraying contemporary human existence as a desolate spiritual wasteland, leading towards decline. 'Moonage Daydream' explodes into the scene to provide the solution, to revitalize the human spirit and bring happiness. So what is the magical key to happiness, which could succeed where all religions and ideologies failed? Bowie's answer is: rock'n'roll.

It is hard for us to remember nowadays, when rock'n'roll is just another musical genre, what it once meant. But for many kids in the fifties and sixties, rock'n'roll was the essence of existence. "Till there was Rock, you only had God", sings Bowie in the Ziggy outtake 'Sweet Head', and at other times he referred to rock'n'roll (in its early years) as the substitute for the church. When you listen to early rock'n'roll stuff from the mid-fifties, you can hear it: the feeling of pure release and euphoria that emanates from the records, the sheer ecstasy that is every bit as powerful as religious ecstasy. It sounds like the singer's soul has been trapped in a little bottle all his life, and now breaks loose and fills the entire world with joy, lifting its listeners right up with it. But the rock'n'roll kids have also learned something else: this joy doesn't last forever. The wonderful sensations contained in mid-fifties rock'n'roll records died towards the end of the decade, and even those who originated them - like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley – could no longer reproduce them. The Beatles distilled this eruptive quality and brought it back in the early sixties, but the question now became: how can we maintain it? What is the secret ingredient that produces this quality, this ecstasy? That is one of the main questions that the youth culture of the sixties grappled with.

The Hippies claimed to have the answer. The ecstatic experience of early rock'n'roll, they contended, was only a taste of the true joy, the joy attained through the psychedelic experience, wherein you feel at one with the universe and with your fellow humans. The breakaway sensation of rock'n'roll, they claimed, was only the preliminary step to get us out of our old state of mind, and once that was achieved, a new state of mind must prevail, one that is based on the insights achieved through psychedelia. The music changed and became rock, which regarded itself as "serious" music, distinguishing itself from rock'n'roll, which was now seen as meaningless teenage fodder. Instead of the wild, eruptive, three-minute outbursts of early rock'n'roll, rock now provided long, contemplative pieces, that aspired to "musical quality". It was no longer about freaking out, but about listening carefully, as the musicians tried to uncover the secrets of life. In one of rock's most celebrated pieces, Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' from 1971, we are taken on a quest to find the perfect tune, the tune that can take us to Heaven. It is a long, long quest, but in the end we are promised that we will get what we want, as "The tune will come to you at last / When all are one and one is all / To be a rock and not a roll". That was the gist of the rock worldview: the short-lived sensations of rock'n'roll are meaningless; what we are looking for is something solid, a rock and not a roll, something that will get us to a Heaven of pure unity and harmony, and will keep us there forever. And that is what rock promised to provide.

It didn't feel that way, though. Actually, by the early seventies, it felt like all the fun was drained out of rock music. Led Zeppelin, in the same album, tell us that "it's been a long time since I've rock'n'rolled", yearning to get back to those wondrous early sensations, and many other records of the time express the same nostalgia. Something was lost in the switch from rock'n'roll to rock, something essential.

That must have been how Bowie felt, too. The first version of 'Moonage Daydream' was released in 1971, as part of the Arnold Corns project, and its lyrics presume to resurrect that ecstatic, quasi-religious rock'n'roll experience. Why was that experience lost? Bowie's reply may be hinted at in the name of the band, if the story that it takes its name from Pink Floyd's 'Arnold Layne' is to be believed. 'Arnold Layne' was written by Syd Barrett, who was basically the last paragon of the flamboyant, androgynous, boisterous and provocative figure that was the main rock'n'roll archetype ever since the first days of Little Richard. After Barrett fell victim to drug abuse, rock no longer produced such characters, stayed away from the pop game of posturing, and shifted the focus from the persona towards the music. This was the thing that Bowie rebelled against. In 1970, he presented the band Hype, which tried to bring pop art and fabrication back into the world of rock. In 1971, Arnold Corns tried to bring back that flamboyant, androgynous and provocative rock'n'roll star figure that disappeared from the scene along with Syd Barrett. But their version of 'Moonage Daydream' fails to induce the ecstasy of rock'n'roll, and did not register on the charts. Only in 1972, with his third fabricated band, does Bowie finally discover the missing ingredient needed to produce a real rock'n'roll sensation, and get 'Moonage Daydream' right.

'Moonage Daydream', in the Ziggy cut, bursts into the end of 'Soul Love', bringing back the eruptive power of rock'n'roll. And then come the four lines that try to break down the rock'n'roll phenomenon to its parts, and decipher its secret:

I'm an alligator

"It sounds like the singer's soul has been trapped in a little bottle all his life, and now breaks loose and fills the entire world with joy, lifting its listeners right up with it", I wrote above about the rock'n'roll experience. What it also brings on is a feeling of omnipotence, and in the late sixties, this was exhibited by rock singers in the form of proclaiming themselves to be some mythical, larger than life figure, which suddenly burst out of their former selves: I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash, I'm a Voodoo Chile, I'm the Lizard King. "I'm an Alligator" continues this line, detonating its way through the pathetic, depressed figure of the first two tracks, shedding it like dried skin to reappear in a shiny new guise. The actual image he chose, the alligator, is immaterial, and was probably chosen for the purpose of rhyming. What is important here is that he is an "allegator", someone who alleges to be something new.

I'm a mama-papa coming for you

And this new identity, it turns out, is not particular to just one individual. Whenever rock'n'roll broke, whenever some rock'n'roll star assumed a new identity and broadcasted it to the world, there were kids who identified with him, and felt that he was expressing what they felt inside. Through imitating him, they could liberate themselves from their false identity, and replace it with an identity that felt real. Rock'n'roll is like being reborn, and the rock'n'roll star is the person performing this rebirth. The announcement "I'm a mama-papa coming for you" poses our rock'n'roll hero as a replacement for your parents, calling on any alienated kid to be reborn through identifying with him.

But does any form of rebirth induce a feeling of freedom and happiness? Can you simply choose an arbitrary new identity, and the rock'n'roll ecstatic sensation will immediately appear? Certainly not. There must be some principle behind the new self you are creating, which will ensure that it does indeed generate rock'n'roll. What is that principle?

I'm the space invader

The third line provides the answer. Rock'n'roll is the space invader, the alien from another world. Or, at least, something that seems like an alien. The artists who ignited the rock'n'roll experience were always those who combined elements of their own culture's music with sounds that came from a musical logic that was alien to it, and thus were able to express a sensibility that their own musical language was previously unable to express. When white boys like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley inserted elements of black R&B into white pop and country, they did something that went completely against the logic of their culture, because for white America in the fifties, the black man symbolized the jungle, the thing that civilized persons should aspire to distance themselves from. So for most white folks it seemed like a step backwards for civilization, the beginning of its downfall. So Elvis, a white boy singing R&B, was something completely paradoxical and alien to the logic of the time, but for some kids who were alienated to that logic, and felt that R&B held some truths it failed to encompass, he was the first thing they could identify with. Similarly, when the Beatles combined English pop with American rock'n'roll, they blew away all preconceptions of how Englishmen should behave, and the same thing happened when the Rolling Stones conflated Chicago blues and Mersey beat, or when Bob Dylan fused folk music with rock'n'roll - they all seemed at first like something that came from another world, something that was unheard of before. The rock'n'roll experience, then, happens when something that was previously banned from your culture finds a way to invade your cultural space, to present itself in a language that is understandable to you, and speak to something inside you that was always repressed. When you identify with it, you feel like your inside erupts and takes over, smashing your old identity.

This also explains why the rock'n'roll sensation can be felt by many kids at once. It is not some individual "real self" that was locked inside. It is a shared sensibility, which is the result of cultural repression. Every society defines "human being" in a certain way, a way that leaves out some traits that a few of its members have. These members feel oppressed, and when someone comes and presents an identity that belongs to that society and yet includes one of these repressed traits, all those who felt oppressed can assume that identity, and find freedom through it. Thus, they all feel the same liberation.

I'll be a rock'n'rollin' bitch for you

So what does rock'n'roll do? First of all it rocks you, constituting an alien invasion that attacks the foundations of your logic; but if you open up and succumb to it, it rolls you – you go through a transformation, and become someone else. When rock'n'roll became rock, music that only built on its own foundations, it lost that ability to come over as an alien, and thus the ability to roll. And with that, it lost the ecstatic, joyous sensation that accompanies the breakout of rock'n'roll. "I'll be a rock'n'rollin' bitch for you" announces that Bowie intends to bring that transformative power back, to rock'n'roll us once again.

Within the framework of the album, 'Moonage Daydream' is of course the moment when Ziggy arrives, to take us out of the slump presented in the first two tracks. In concerts, Bowie would sometimes present it as "a song written by Ziggy". Ziggy, we see, is not necessarily an alien. He is rather someone who presents himself as an alien figure, larger then life, which the kids can identify with, and be rock'n'rolled and reborn in the process.

And the terms "bitch" and "mama-papa" also point to one of the traits that make Ziggy an alien: his androgyny. In the logic of the society he grew into, you were either a male or a female, and you could only be attracted to the opposite sex. This logic repressed all those who felt that their sexuality was not that clear cut, that they had characteristics that were attributed to the opposite sex, or that they were rather attracted to members of their own gender. Ziggy would break that oppression, presenting an identity that is sexually fluid, and provide all those people with something they can identify with. In 'Queen Bitch', the hero was afraid to give in and become part of that alternative sexual world. Through Ziggy, Bowie himself becomes the Queen (Rock'n'rollin') Bitch, who draws the kids in.

Keep your mouth shut,
You're squawking like a pink monkey bird
And I'm busting up my brains for the words

In the first four lines, Bowie is trying to find words to express the essence of rock'n'roll. But like he already told us in 'Memory of a Free Festival', capturing the essence of ecstasy in words is an impossible thing to do, and these following lines seem to convey his frustration during the process. The "pink monkey bird" is an imaginary creature that signifies something really loud and bothersome, and here it probably means the entire outside world. When you are trying to find words to express your innermost feelings, everything else becomes a distraction, and seems like a pink monkey bird to you. Bowie is trying to shut out the outside world, so he can reflect on these feelings.

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

The second line always appears in lyric sheets as "the church of man, love", but I think it is actually "the church of man-love". The church of God-love promised us that through God we will find love, but as we saw in 'Soul Love', it failed. And so, Ziggy posits the church of Man-love in its stead, claiming that we have the ability to generate love by ourselves, with no need for the mediation of God. When we are transformed through rock'n'roll, when our inside becomes outside, our masks fall, and we fuse together. All those who assume the identity of the alien now become as one, and feel the joy of love for one another.

We are reminded once again of 'Memory of a Free Festival'. There, Bowie assumed the role of a Hippie who tries to convince us that his way of life brings ultimate love, which draws in even aliens from outer space, who come to bask in it. But the truth seeps in through his words, and we realize that this "love" is a feigned one. Here, Bowie finds the way to true love, by simply reversing the order: first of all the alien comes, liberating us from our alienated identities, and as a result, we can lay the real thing on each other, and dwell in the church of man love.

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!

The chorus emphasizes the futuristic nature of the whole affair. To reach freedom, happiness and love, you have to recreate yourself as something completely new, something alien to everything that came before. But the title also hints that this perfect state is only temporary. Yet again we are reminded of 'Memory of a Free Festival', where we didn't reach the Sun, the symbol of truth, but settled for a Sun Machine, a technological replacement. The fact that this is a "moonage daydream" hints that we do not reach daylight, but remain in the dark moon-age, but we do create a temporary replacement of daylight, a daydream.

The secret of rock'n'roll has been deciphered. Bowie is going to transform himself into something that appears otherworldly, and offer something new to the world. Once this realization has been made, it can be codified into bolts of electric current and sent into space, where it is transformed into waves of glistening supersonic sound, and then zapped back towards Earth, to hit the unsuspecting antennas of millions of aimless kids, who have no idea what is about to descend upon them.

Soul Love

2010-02-20T02:30:00.000-08:00

In 'Five Years', the opening track, Bowie told us that we have no future to look forward to. This, as we've seen, causes the modern society to crumble, because it kills the idea that holds it together, the idea that we are working towards the creation of a future utopia. The underlining belief of modern thought is that the human mind can devise a perfect system, which will bring happiness to all humankind. But if the mind can no longer see any future, it loses its direction, loses all meaning for existence, loses any criteria to determine good from bad. What can save us from this calamity?

The traditional answer is: LOVE. There were always those who contended that the human mind is incapable of creating a perfect world, and that the key to happiness lies rather in the heart. The human capacity to love, they say, is the road to our salvation, and if we focus our energies on spreading love, we will eventually form a human society that lives in eternal happiness and harmony. With 'Soul Love', Bowie makes the effort to go down that road, to see if love can provide a solution.

What the singer in 'Soul Love' is trying to do is to determine the nature of love. He looks at lovers, and attempts to figure out what brought them their love. If he can decipher the secret of love, he might be able to create a loving existence for himself, and maybe even teach it to others, to create a harmonic world. What, then, is the nature of love?

Stone love - she kneels before the grave
A brave son - who gave his life to save the slogan
That hovers between the headstone and her eyes
For they penetrate her grieving

The first set of lovers that he examines does indeed reveal to him something about the nature of love, although it is something that isn't very reassuring: love dies. It is, of course, not the first time we meet this theme in Bowie's early work, nor indeed the last. We are reminded of 'An Occasional Dream', where the hero-lover, after one hundred days of happiness that he thought would last forever, is left with nothing but a photograph of his lost love. This may be what we have here as well, if we choose to understand this verse metaphorically: love has turned to stone, and so the lover is remained with nothing to look at but the headstone on the grave of her relationship. But it can also be taken literally, and in that case it is probably another jibe at the counter-culture of the sixties, a movement that believed it can create a new world based on love. Here we are reminded of 'Cygnet Committee', where a movement that pretended to carry the "flag of love" had turned oppressive and murderous, and its ideals became empty slogans. The "brave son" could be someone who fought for these slogans, believing he is creating a better world, but all that happened was that he died along with the love message he gave his life for, leaving his actual love with nothing but a headstone to grieve on.

New love - a boy and girl they talking
New words - that only they can share in
New words - a love so strong it tears their hearts
To sleep - through the fleeting hours of morning

His gaze now turns to lovers who are alive, and in the morning of their love. But if he wants to find the secret of love, the common denominator in all loves, it becomes clear that he cannot do that: every love is unique, every pair of lovers live in a world of their own, speaking in words that only they can share. He does acknowledge that it is a powerful and magnificent thing, but there is also great sadness attached to it. The couple he describes is not like the couple in 'An Occasional Dream', who wasted the short time of their love in dreams of the future – this couple is fully aware that their love is fleeting, and that they have to make the most of every minute of it. They want to stay awake, to experience every moment of this morning, because they know that it will soon turn to evening, and then die.

Love is careless in its choosing
Sweeping over cross a baby
Love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none - just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love - and love is not loving

The chorus presents the conclusion: he cannot find the secret of love. You do not choose love, love chooses you, and there is no law behind it. It is purely coincidental, and any idiot can suddenly and unexpectedly fall in love, while he, the smart one who consciously seeks love, remains loveless. All that his consciousness can achieve is to love the concept of love, but that is an analytical sort of love, not something that can fill your heart. The only idea he can come up with to finding true love is touching the "flaming dove", which, I suppose, is an image that signifies the holy-spirit. But the holy-spirit is not something that is so easy to touch.

What we get from all this is that love cannot be the basis for any lasting solution. Love is not an eternal, universal and stable thing, but rather fortuitous, personal and temporal. It is not some ideal that floats in the heavens somewhere, but rather something that comes from a spark between two living humans, and lasts only as long as their personalities still produce this spark. If you try to capture it in stable concepts, to turn it into some universal and eternal ideology, it will immediately turn to stone.

Soul love - the priest that tastes the word and
Told of love - and how my God on high is
All love - though reaching up my loneliness evolves
By the blindness that surrounds him

Well, there are of course those who disagree with his conclusions. Christianity claims that there is a key to gaining everlasting love, and that key is faith in God. Through faith, you become part of a being that is all love, and find eternal happiness. That is what the priest tells us, but Bowie, in 'God Knows I'm Good', already told us a different story: God has forsaken us, he is blind to our misery, and when we call on him, he never answers. The same applies here: when the singer tries to reach God, to be part of that all-embracing love, he finds nothing but emptiness and blindness, and this discrepancy only makes him feel even more loveless and lonely.

Love, then, turns out to be another dead end. After 'Five Years' denied the possibility that an eternal solution could be found through the mind, 'Soul Love' denies the possibility that it could be found through the heart. The human race seems to have been rendered incapable of finding any meaning to life, and the heavens remain silent as well, refusing to lend a hand. And so, bereft of any solutions, fresh out of inspirations, struck dumb by reality, our narrator just la-la-las his way to the end of the track, idly passing the time. And then, suddenly, the heavens aren't silent any more.

Five Years

2010-02-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

'Five Years' is the opening track of the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Startdust and the Spiders from Mars, and this location is significant, since this is an album that has a narrative. When I analyzed the tracks of the previous albums, I treated them both as stand-alone records and as part of the overall concept of the album, but I didn't pay much attention to the track's place within the album. With the tracks of Ziggy Stardust, I will also treat them as part of a sequence, and follow the story that Bowie is telling. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that this is not a rock opera like the Who's Tommy, where all the tracks revolve around the same characters and tell only part of a bigger story. Rather, every track on Ziggy Stardust is an independent piece, and there's nothing to indicate that the characters in it are the same as in the other tracks. Plus, each track deals with a different subject, and contains elements that shed light on that particular subject and have nothing to do with the rest of the album. So every track is a story in its own, and retains its meaning even if you hear it apart from the album (which isn't the case with many of the tracks on Tommy). But when you put them together, a definite overall story also emerges, a parable with morals and conclusions. Our analysis will have to keep an eye on each story as it unfolds.

So what is the story of 'Five Years', the opening track? We get it right off the bat:

Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying

'Five Years' is one of those records that split the history of rock music in half. In the fifties and sixties, rock was celebrating the never-ending Present, or dreaming of a utopian Future. Here, suddenly, comes a rock record that suggests that the Future doesn't exist, and that our Present is about to end. The idea that the world might come to an end was quite common in sci-fi at the time, at an age that was coming to terms with the dangers of the A-bomb, the population explosion and the deteriorating ecology, but not in the inherently-optimistic realm of pop music. If it was discussed, like in the apocalyptic visions of Bob Dylan, it was a warning against what would happen if we don't change our ways. Bowie is offering something else, a doomsday scenario where Earth is going to die in five years, and there is nothing we can do about it. The record doesn't even tell us why it is dying, and it doesn't matter – what matters is the inevitability of this death.

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought Id need so many people

They say that when you are about to die, your entire life flashes in front of your eyes. What would happen if we learned that the world is about to die? According to Bowie, the entire world will flash in front of our eyes. All those people, appliances, songs and places that previously seemed mundane and meaningless, now suddenly become dear to the singer. He tries to remember them all in all their wonderful diversity and contradictions, to store them in his head. On the verge of losing it, he realizes that he loves this world and its inhabitants.

A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt to kiss the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that

But while he discovers his love for the human race, he also watches it go to pieces, as the ties that hold humans together unravel. His voice starts to break as he tells us how they behave in this time of crisis, how everything seems to disintegrate. The image of the young girl hitting tiny children says it all, while around her, the symbols of authority break down – the soldier seems to be contemplating suicide, the policeman gives up on earthly authority and turns to faith – and the only ones who seem to keep a level head are rather the ones who were always thought of as unruly – the black and the queer. It seems uncertain that we will survive even the remaining five years.

Why is it so? Why does society crumble in the face of this news? Because in modern society, everything is based on the future. The modern mind is directed towards creating a perfect future society, and its ideas of morality and happiness are based on this ideal. Take the future away from the modern person, and it would be like taking God away from a religious person – their whole belief-system would collapse, and they would lose the basis for their ethical and behavioral code.

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlor, drinking milkshake, cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
Don't think you knew you were in this song

In one of Bowie's most brilliant passages, the singer turns directly to the listener, and makes us part of the story. And here is where we realize that this isn't just some fancy sci-fi story – this is happening now, all around us. That doesn't mean that the world is really going to end in five years, but what it does mean is that our society is crumbling, because there is no more future goal. After the sixties, which overthrew the old dogmas, we seemed to have lost our faith in the perfect future, and that means that the basis for our morality is gone. Pretty soon, the horrors described in the previous passage will engulf us, and there will be no way to hold them back. But the people remain oblivious to this reality, and don't realize the danger they're in. While we are busy drinking milkshakes and worried about looking fine, the logic that ensured the well-being of our society is melting, and slipping from under our feet. Like a prophet standing at the gates of the city, the singer is trying to wake us up to this danger, to scream it in our ears. Maybe the impending doom he prophesizes has nothing to do with ecological or astronomical reasons, but is what he foresees for us if we continue our current ways.

And it was cold, and it rained, so I felt like an actor
And I thought of ma and I wanted to get back there

With no future to look forward to, the world becomes meaningless, and the singer feels alienated to it. He feels as if he is an actor playing a part, not someone who actually lives in this world. He yearns to go back to a time when things were simpler and warmer, and it almost sounds like he wants to go back into his mother's womb. What he means, probably, is that he wants to bring back a world where existence has meaning.

Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk

Once again, the singer expresses his love for the human race, but here there is also something else: the line "I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk" brings to mind a fairytale story, where the hero, with the power of his kiss, saves sleeping beauty from her paralysis, and makes her walk again. It hints that Bowie may have found the way to save the human race, a new code that we can build a new world around.

But that is a mere hint, and the reality of the record allows no such hopes. The awakening to and acceptance of the fact that we are doomed finally sinks in with all its resonance, and his voice, which kept breaking as he went along, reaches its climax in a shriek of terror:

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got

However, as the haunting drumbeat takes us out of the track, the terror seems to subside. Nowhere else on the album is it mentioned that the world is going to die in five years – this vision is specific to the opening track alone. What does it have to do with the rest of the story, then?

The importance of 'Five Years' to the album's narrative is that it sets the stage on which the Ziggy saga will play. It announces that the old ideologies, those that were based on the belief that we can create a better future, have no more ground to stand on, and can no longer satisfy our crave for meaningfulness. We must find another solution, another meaning for our existence. This is where Ziggy comes in.

News from the sandbox

2010-02-10T02:40:00.000-08:00

So a couple of weeks ago, Yossi Peled, former IDF general and now a minor minister in the Israeli government, spoke in some school in the North and said they must be prepared, because he predicts there will be another war with Hizballa in the coming years. Immediately, the Lebanese jump and accuse Israel of threatening to open war on Lebanon.

Then, last week, Defense Minister Barack gives a speech, and says that we should make peace with Syria now, for if we don't, we might have war, and after that war we will negotiate peace for the exact same terms we can get now. So why don't we skip the war, and proceed directly to the peace? Immediately, the Syrians jump and accuse Israel of threatening to open war on Syria.

Why are they doing this? Are they that dumb? No, they really do believe it. The Syrian and Lebanese have reiterated the lie about Israel wanting to take over their lands so many times that they started to believe in it wholeheartedly.

And then come the idiots on the Israeli side, those who believe that the Arabs behave like that simply because they are looking for any excuse to kill Jews. Foreign Minister Lieberman opens his big mouth, and threatens the Syrian President that he better not go to war with Israel, because it will cost him his position. And so, the atmosphere gets tense.

This is the kind of moronic behavior that gets many people killed for no reason. I'm not very worried at the moment: none of the sides is even remotely interested in going to war, so this will most probably just die down in a couple of weeks. However, there is someone who is very interested in seeing things blow up. The Iranians are under a lot of pressure from the international community, and a war between Israel and its neighbors would suit them just fine. It is very possible that they are behind it all, that they were the ones pressuring the Lebanese and Syrians to escalate the war of words. And if we don't bring things down, they might take it to the next level, and order Hizballa to start shooting.

This is still on a very low level of probability. In the meantime, let's revel in the stupidity of humans and their leaders.

Not a good time for liberalism

2010-02-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

Everywhere I look, I see depressed liberals. They are depressed in Israel, they are depressed in Europe, they are depressed in the US. American liberals thought that they scored big with the election of Obama, and now walk around feeling betrayed and discouraged. But the problem is not Obama, nor any other person or group. This is simply not a good time for liberalism.

It is not a good time for socialist reforms. Basically, globalization gave the rich more power, and they have us by the balls. If they don't like the policies of one country, they can take their business elsewhere, and find plenty of better offers in many places around the world. In such an environment, the people will not want to hear our ideas, and if we do manage to implement some reform, it will fall flat on its face. But globalization will also gradually level the economies around the globe, until the markets become more equal. When this happens, we can think of big reforms again. Until then, no chance.

It is not a good time for peace. The enemies of the West at the moment are fundamentalist Muslims, and they are driven by an ideology of non-compromise. Until they change and become more pragmatic, there is no sense in talking peace to them.

It is not a good time for multiculturalism. The fundamentalists are using the West's multiculturalism not to integrate better in Western society, but to maintain and spread their anti-Western ideology. Again, we liberals have to face up to this reality.

It is not a good time for liberal immigration policies. The West is being swamped by immigrants from all over the world, and until the situation in their countries becomes better and the stream slows down, immigration policies will have to be more restrictive.

You get the idea. So, what should liberals do, until the environment becomes open to liberal thought again?

Play defense.

No point in getting frustrated or discouraged. Face reality, and realize that now is the time to defend and bolster what we have achieved since the sixties. This time can be used to rethink, to reevaluate, to reassess what has been done and what we should do in the future. There are also many small battles that can be fought and won. But don't waste energy on trying to bring on big progress. Conservatives have the wind in their back at the moment, they are on the offense, and our job is to hold our ground until the wind blows in our direction again.

That's all I had to say for today. Happy Superbowl!

101. Joe Woody – McDonald's Rap (2006)

2010-01-31T04:55:00.000-08:00

All through this project, I kept on treating the pop world as if it is as it always was: a world where an artist must find a record company that will peddle their stuff, if they want to be heard by the public. I mentioned cases of artists who managed to circumvent the process and reach the public directly through the web, but they too were signed very fast. But there was another story that was going on, and one of the major events of its second half, at least since youtube was launched in 2005, is that we can all make video clips, and become famous for fifteen minutes. Youtube (and other sites) has a vibrant community with its own stars, and every once in a while some nobody from nowhere uploads a vid that the entire world views and talks about. I could have chosen many examples, but this one is the best.

The story is a classic pop story, of the type Andy Warhol would have loved. Four guys from Fort Wayne, Indiana were bored one evening, so they sat around and composed a hamburger-ordering rap, based on the McDonald's menu. The next step was to go out and try it on the local branch, and film the response. To their delight, the girl taking the order was totally cool and played along, which made the video all the more amusing. Joe Woody, the leading rapper, put the video on his homepage, and someone nicked it and uploaded it on youtube. Soon it had millions of views, and spawned numerous copycats all around the US who tried it on their own, composing raps for other types of junk-food. I doubt they got much to eat (a blessing in itself), but fun was had in abundance. And as for the rap itself, all I can say is: crispy.

100. Snoop Dogg feat. Tanvi Shah - Snoop Dogg Millionaire (2009)

2010-01-31T04:47:00.000-08:00

In the course of the decade, UK garage went in two main directions, which became dominant in the decade's second half: one is the frenzied and raucous grime, based on rappers; the other is what is known as dubstep, a mainly instrumental style, which combined the broken beats of two-step garage with the mystical sounds of dub, to create something that uplifts both body and soul. But dubstep remained underground, and did not create any pop stars. So it doesn’t really belong in the theater show that we call naughties pop, and may be waiting for the next decade to take the stage. To put it in our show, we'll have to look at it from hip-hop's perspective, and hip-hop discovered dubstep only in 2009.

After conquering the US, Snoop Dogg evidently decided to expand his empire, and started looking for fresh beats from around the world to rap to. When the successful movie Slumdog Millionaire came out, he naturally had to rapitalize, and pun-jobbed it as 'Snoop Dogg Millionaire'. And since this was an Indian movie, the record needed a touch of India, but Snoop recently featured in the bhangra record (and the Bollywood movie) 'Singh in Kinng', so he had to find something else. The solution was found in 'Eastern Jam', a record by dubstep duo Chase and Status, which contains a female Indian singer who blends in wonderfully with the dubby sounds. Snoop makes the record his own, and also grants greater exposure to the style, which seems to be on the brink of entering the mainstream.

I'm not too smitten by what Snoop is doing here, and he's a bit too brash for my taste. I prefer the original record. But I put it in here as a sign of hope that this heralds a deeper dialogue between American hip-hop and UK garage, which will bare fruit in the coming decade.

99. t.A.T.u – All the Things She Said (2002)

2010-01-31T03:06:00.000-08:00

Somehow, there never was a lesbian sex-symbol in pop. There were sexy lesbians, like Joan Jett, but they played down their preferences to appeal to a wider audience. Those who were open about their orientation looked like they were bent on justifying the stereotype of a lesbian as a woman lacking femininity and sexual appeal. The power of pop is in breaking stereotypes, and I'm still waiting for a lesbian who would be brave enough to pose a sexy image, which will star in women's fantasies. And, if she plays it right, in men's fantasies as well.

We needed an import from Russia to cast the first stone. The cute t.A.T.u duo declared that they have the hots for one another, were happy to demonstrate, and hinted that they dig boys too, which made them more interesting to the other gender (actually, it was all a fib – they are not lesbians). Their 2002 breakthrough wrote another chapter in the sexual revolution of the period, a period that saw the liberal mind completely transcend the remnants of past homophobia. But they got tired pretty fast: they weren't exactly sexy, they didn't have an interesting enough personality, and not enough good records. We still await the lesbian that will get it right.

'All the Things She Said' is probably the most memorable gay record of the decade. The heroine is a girl who falls in love with another girl, and has to deal with her confusion, and with the negative reaction of those around her. Trevor Horn, who was responsible for similar records in the past, produced.

98. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Whatever Happened to My Rock'n'roll (Punk Song) (2001)

2010-01-31T02:39:00.000-08:00

One of rock'n'roll's starting point was the movie The Wild One, that came out in 1953. Young Marlon Brando, wearing the coolest outfit ever (boots, jeans, T-shirt, black leather coat), leads a biker gang that descend on a small peaceful town and wreaks havoc in it. The bikers call themselves B.R.M.C, and when a local girl asks them for the meaning of the initials, they replay: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The girl then turns to Brando and asks him: "hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" "What d'ya got?" he shoots back, in a quote that became one of the youth slogans of the era.

Rock'n'roll hit shortly after, and for several years it did to American culture what Johnny and his buds did to that small town. By the end of the fifties, the first wave of rock'n'roll subsided, but was not forgotten. There were kids who remained loyal to rock'n'roll, and formed the subculture that was known as "Rockers": bikers who adopted Brando's look, and danced only to the most unruly and rebellious rock'n'roll records. With their records and bikes, the Rockers made a noise that sent chills down the public's spine, and made them feel like they are rocking the foundations of the dominant culture. The Rockers were the ones who kept the flame burning, those who purified rock'n'roll and left only the essence, those who turned it into a religion. And yes, they were the ones who gave us the Beatles, the band that saw to it that it will never be forgotten.

But even if rock'n'roll was not forgotten, it always had to battle for its soul, since humans have the tendency to get used to any type of noise, and even learn to like it. Whenever rock'n'roll started to become acceptable by society at large, it ceased providing its fans with the original experience. But there was always a new generation that came along and created rock'n'roll anew, as a style that once again sounded to previous generations like unmusical noise, and made its fans feel like their soul is surging against the world. In the middle of the seventies, this process generated punk, which regarded rock'n'roll as anti-music, whose essence is eruptive noise. And punk kept recreating itself, through increasingly extreme noise, and for a couple of decades didn't do bad at all.

But in the beginning of the new millennium, there was nowhere left to go. When even your grandfather danced to rock'n'roll, it can no longer be the voice of teen rebellion. And if it isn't rebellious, it loses its breath. This record, by a band that named itself after Brando's gang, presents the problem: the singer tells us that he converted to rock'n'roll, and experienced total spiritual elation, but now can no longer feel the same ecstasy. For me, this is the record that best represents rock'n'roll's current status.

97. Daft Punk – One More Time (2000)

2010-01-31T02:24:00.000-08:00

The French never knew how to make pop. Their approach to music is too brainy, and in pop the trick is rather to forget everything you know, and give yourself up to the new experience. In French pop, and that's true throughout the twentieth century and beyond, there is no ecstasy, and therefore it lacks the essence. But the intellectual approach does occasionally produce a different take on the existing pop styles, brings in a touch of class. In the end of the nineties, they gave us French house, which was pretty cool. And the coolest were of course Daft Punk, with their spacesuits and electro-funky sound. In 2000 they hooked up with one of the main phenomena in the pop culture of the last two decades – Japanese manga (comics) and anime (animation) – and created a concept album that was accompanied by an anime movie. It was okay, but a tad pointless, and after that I've had enough of French house. Nevertheless, one more time.

Daft Punk - One More Time
Uploaded by hushhush112. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

96. Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - Thou Shalt Always Kill (2007)

2010-01-31T02:14:00.000-08:00

Hip-hop ruled my parade, and mostly it was African-American hip-hop. But hip-hop from other cultures also represented, and I showed that it became the language of minorities around the world, the expression of their street-culture and their struggle against the dominant culture. But here's a white British duo, which connected to hip-hop for the purpose of making art. Scroobius Pip, one of those poets who found in hip-hop a channel for self-expression, teamed up in 2006 with DJ Dan Le Sac, and together they created a unique mixture of electronic beats and poetic rap. The rap's flow here is obviously indebted to the classic 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' by street-poet Gil Scott Herron, but it is turned into a lash at today's pop culture, expressing mainly confusion in face of the overload of stimulation in our life. Snappy, nutty, happy, funny.

95. Eminem – Like Toy Soldiers (2005)

2010-01-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

In 2004, Eminem felt that the curtains are about to go down on his inner drama. His first three albums were named after the three main characters in it: the first was called The Marshall Mathers LP, the second The Slim Shady LP, and the third The Eminem Show. The name of the third already hints that we were witnessing a show, and his fourth album from 2004 was named Encore, bringing it to a close. While the first three albums were dominated by the hilarious sociopath Slim Shady, in this album you could sense Shady losing the cynicism and anger that drove him, and becoming a caricature of himself. In the meantime, the characters of Marshall and Eminem grow and mature: in the course of the epic battle against the shady one, they managed to overcome him, and establish themselves as confident, conscientious and moral figures. Eminem displays it in this record, decrying the beef between his protégé 50 Cent and the rapper Ja Rule, and calling for restrain. Ja Rule dissed him as well, and rather viciously, but Eminem sets a personal example and refrains from retorting, to avoid escalation (if Slim Shady was still strong, he would never let that happen). It shows a higher awareness to the dangers of these feuds and an attempt to prevent the recurrence of the 2Pac & Biggy tragedy (and other rappers who fell victim to violence, and appear in the video), and so far, it looks like the efforts bare fruit, and the current hip-hop spars do not result in violence.

But without Shady, Eminem also becomes less interesting, and he knew it. A year later, he released the album Curtain Call, a greatest hits collection. The album ends with a new recording, in which Marshall tells us how his little daughter got him to want to heal their family, and reunite with his ex-wife (yes, the same ex-wife that Slim Shady fantasized about slashing her throat, cutting her up, and some less pleasant things). And so, the show closes with a happy ending. Marshall Mathers did indeed remarry his daughter's mother, and they lived happily ever after…

Well, not quite. Life isn't a show, and does not end when the happy ending arrives. Three months after the wedding, the couple divorced again (although this time, it seems, the relationship remained cordial). Eminem himself went into hibernation, and suffered from the usual problems that plague an artist when his fountains of creativity have run dry. In 2009 he came back with a fresh album, but it's not the same. As the teens open, the naughties' most important artist is looking for a new show.

Eminem - Like Toy Soldiers
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94. Aaliya – Try Again (2000)

2010-01-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

This decade in pop, thank the gods, did not beleaguer us with many tragedies, if we don't count the agonizingly dragging tragedies of Michael Jackson and Phil Spector, which began long before the decade began, peaked during it, and reached their bitter end at its closing. There were other tragedies, but when it comes to losing people we felt had a lot more to give, this was the least heartbreaking decade in the history of pop. Aaliya, who died in a plane-crash at the tender age of twenty-two, was I believe the biggest loss. A talented r'n'b singer, who released a few excellent records in her short life, and was still in ascendance. This lovely record gives us the opportunity to hear how Timabland's production sounds when it is detached from the aggressive rap of Missy Elliott and engages with soft r'n'b, and Aaliya's feathery voice makes it complete. Still pinches your heart.

93. Scarlett Johansson – Falling Down (2008)

2010-01-30T04:48:00.000-08:00

The changes in female attitude, dictated by the pop princesses, were visible in the cinema as well. In the years 1997-2003, when pop chicks became evermore funky, the young movie starlets (Liv Tyler, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz, Christina Ricci, Selma Blair) also displayed a new kind of femininity, strong and kicking ass in action flicks, independent and rebellious in teen dramas, sexually liberated in romantic comedies. In the following years, just like in pop, this attitude deteriorated to the loose and stupid behavior of starlets like Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid. But there were others, who preserved the good from that wild period but displayed a tamer attitude, like Natalie Portman and Keira Knightly, and above all, Scarlett Johansson. Combining the beauty and glamour of the old screen goddesses, new millennium sexiness, a bright and fetching personality, good taste, and a serious attitude towards the acting profession, Scarlett managed to charm many people in the movie industry, and was offered many diverse and juicy roles to sink her teeth into. Thus, she became the most interesting entertainment figure of the latter half of the decade.

Many of the period's movie-starlets tried to make it as singers as well, and the products they put out were as superficial as their image. When Johansson decided to cross over, it was obvious that we were going to get something else, and I was very curious to hear which direction she will take. Once again, she managed to charm some great people to want to work with her, and got the acclaimed producer Dave Sitek, and none other than David Bowie, who awoke for a moment from his long hibernation to contribute background vocals on a couple of the tracks, including this one. But the album also displayed the problem with smart and serious girls: they can be too smart and serious. Scarlett decided to do an album consisting only of Tom Waits covers, and went with Sitek to strange and foggy directions. It was another testament to her good taste and creativity, and was a worthy homage to Waits (who gave his blessing to the project and was satisfied with the result), but did not give her the opportunity to show other sides of her personality, like the glamour, the sexiness, the humor and other things I like about her. She took an active role in the production, and created interested walls of sound, but too many times she drowned her vocal in them. I was hoping the videos would save the day, but the only video she made is this one, which goes in the other directions and shows her as the everyday person behind the glamour. Clever, you see.

I hope Scarlett keeps singing, and explores other directions. One of her virtues is a will to get better and try new things, so there's hope. When this will happen, it will be possible to go back to her first album and enjoy the good things in it, and there are many. Her vocal has many colors, and her theatrical ability can express itself in Waits' epic songs. She understands and connects to the lyrics, and tries to deliver the emotions while doing it in an original vocal style. You have to listen carefully to get it all behind the misty production, and then you hear someone trying honestly to be an artist. When you look at the vid, you realize how desperately Scarlett wants us to see her as a woman of deep substance, not just amazing outer beauty. When she will succeed in combining her interior and exterior, she'll fully realize her potential.

YouTube - Scarlett Johansson - Falling Down Clip
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92. Twista feat. Kanye West & Jamie Foxx – Slow Jamz (2003)

2010-01-30T04:39:00.000-08:00

Twista is one of those virtuoso rappers whose flow is so torrential that they leave you razzled-dazzled. But here he pays homage to slow music, or to be more exact, to the slow sensual soul of the seventies, the music that makes your body melt in pleasure. Twista knows that fast-talk may be good for impressing a woman enough to get her back to your apartment, but once she's there, something else is needed to put her in the mood that would get her out of her clothes. So he employs the services of actor Jamie Foxx, who became a successful soul singer after he played Ray Charles and learned to channel his singing, and of Kanye West, who attends to the luscious production. Together they create a record that is at once a paean to those soul greats, to whom we owe so many orgasms, and a very sexy record in its own right.

91. Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind (2009)

2010-01-30T04:29:00.000-08:00

The last hit of the decade, and what an appropriate finale to a decade whose most defining records were duets between male rappers and female singers. And it is also a celebration of the bigger connectivity between the worlds that once were alien to one another, using New York as a showcase. As Jay-Z's rap moves fluidly between the different parts and facets of the city, it also reminds us of the easier and safer mobility between these areas, no matter which one of them you come from. And, of course, it is yet another great pop record about New York, the city that continues to be the capital of freedom, pluralism and ideas, even at the end of the decade that started with fundamentalists making their best effort to bring it down.

Jay-Z - Empire State Of Mind (feat. Alicia Keys)

90. Beyonce – Work It Out (2002)

2010-01-29T20:09:00.000-08:00

One of the places where you can witness the new sexual revolution is the Austin Powers movie trilogy, about the groovy and naughty spy who supposedly embodies the spirit of the sixties. Austin was frozen at the end of that decade, and when he is defrosted in 1997 (in the first movie of the series), he wakes up into a world where sexuality is a lot more inhibited, and finds it hard to cope. This is of course a gross distortion of reality: the sixties were infinitely more inhibited than the nineties, and the myth about them circles around a small group of youngsters who rebelled and went to the other extreme, going completely wild with the sex and drugs. They paid a heavy price for it, but also opened the doors for the rest of us, and by the nineties their influence spread to such an extent that society became a lot more open to sex and drugs, but also more aware of the dangers and therefore more tame and responsible. But the myth remained, and the Austin Powers series used it to blast the remaining inhibitions, to make the world even more shagadelic. While in the first movie the heroine reacts with prudish aversion to Austin's behavior, the second movie (from 1999) already has a leading lady that is as liberated as him, and the third movie from 2002 serves as a platform for the pop princesses to display their minxifulness: Beyonce plays the leading role, and Britney tries to steal the show from her in a charming cameo. But she has no chance, because Beyonce simply shines in her movie debut, and shows real comic talent. That year, I was sure that this girl is going to be one of the greatest ever, in line with Dietrich, Garbo and Monroe. Now I'm not so sure, but the potential is there.

Both Beyonce and Britney used the movie to present their new sexy image, to a crowd that mostly still thought of them as virginal teens. Each also put out a record to match, produced by, who else, the Neptunes. Britney made the horny 'Boys', one of her best records. But Beyonce trumped her once again, with this funky-to-the-bone bomb. In the movie, Austin uses a time machine to go back to the seventies and meets her in the role of Foxy Cleopatra, a combination of Pam Grier, Tamara Dobson and all the sex symbols of seventies blacksploitation movies, mixed together with Patti Labelle, Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, Gloria Gaynor and all the singing divas of that decade. With the shagadelic afro and the downright funkiness, she proves to be a worthy heir to all of the above, and in this record she purifies their essence to a tune so funky it would make even Frau Farbissina shake her ass.

89. Common feat. Kanye West & the Last Poets – The Corner (2005)

2010-01-29T19:59:00.000-08:00

One of hip-hop's starting points were the black street poets, who emerged in the late sixties. Basically they were an offshoot of the merger that the beatniks formed between jazz and poetry, but their music relied heavily on the beat, and sometimes their only accompaniment was tom-toms. The singing was also completely rhythmic, kind of a precursor for rap, but with less flow and more pulsation, emphasizing every syllable. The content of their songs was highly political, and expressed the tumultuous spirit of the time. Contrary to what is claimed by some, hip-hop itself did not emerge out of this style, but from street dance parties, and drew more from reggae and funk. But hip-hop DJs did sometimes play the records of these street poets, and the rappers listened and internalized. When rap turned political at the end of the eighties, it became apparent how much they owe these pioneers.

Common is one of the rappers who came out of this political wave, and he's also very aware of black history, and believes that one of the roles of hip-hop is to educate the youth about it. Here he joins the Last Poets, the greatest street-poet band, to pay respect for the past. Together, they eulogize one of the most important places in the formation of black culture: the corner. The street corners of the ghettos were the places that gave host to the preachers, the street poets, the doo-wop singers, the break-dancers, the rappers and many other elements in this culture, which so affected the lives of all of us. Common's rap moves on several levels, the main one being just a description of the flow of sights and sounds that pass through the corner on any given day, but on other levels there are descriptions that paint the street-corner as a place where ideas meet, converge and go in other directions, and also descriptions that turn the corner into a modern version of the blues singers' fabled crossroads: a place where you must determine the direction your life will take from here on, your fate always riding on your choice. The Last Poets, on their part, focus more on the political significance of these meetings and choices, and remind us how they shaped and advanced black culture in the past. Thus, the record itself becomes a corner, a meeting between two generations of black music, and Kanye West mixes it all together to make sure it works, and even sounds like great pop.

Common - The Corner
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88. Christina Aguilera – Ain't No Other Man (2006)

2010-01-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

If it isn't clear already, I adore Christina Aguilera. I love almost everything about her, and one of my favorite traits is her graciousness, which comes through in several records. Already in 1999, still a teen, she released 'What a Girl Wants', in which she thanks her boyfriend for being kind and gentle and promises to reward him for it, and in the video she also does a sexy dance for him. In a period that was still loaded with female pop records that bashed men for their baseness, Christina reminded everyone that along with the stick there should also be a carrot, and the carrot better come with a bunny. This was still just on the level of principle, but in 2006 there was already an actual man to reward – her husband, whom she just wed. This record, the leading single from her new album, was dedicated to him, and what more can a man ask for than to have his desired superstar wife tell the whole world who's the man?

One of Christina biggest challenges came after her 2002 Stripped album, in which she adopted a skanky image. Those who paid attention realized it was about making an artistic statement and breaking stereotypes, but the world at large is obviously too dumb to get it. Most people viewed her as a slut, and the challenge was to change that image. A decade earlier, Madonna solved a similar problem by going in a romantic, and then mystical, directions. Aguilera, on the other hand, turned to the past, and in 2006 took on the image of a sweet forties pinup girl, and cooked up an album the merged contemporary sounds with the jazz and blues of that decade. It was an interesting musical experiment, albeit not very successful – the album didn't manufacture strong hits like its predecessor. But image-wise it was just the right step, and Christina quickly got rid of the cheap reputation that burdened her, and became a model of good taste. I eagerly anticipate her next step, which is coming very soon.

As mentioned, I wasn't very taken by the other stuff she put out in 2006, but this is an excellent record. Jazzy, funky, one of a kind. Do your thing, honey.

Christina Aguilera - Ain't No Other Man
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87. Ronan Keating feat. Yusuf – Father and Son (2004)

2010-01-29T15:18:00.000-08:00

Cat Stevens was one of the voices of my youth, an enchanting singer/songwriter whose records were a spiritual quest in search of the ideal life, and carried messages of peace and universal human harmony. I knew he found the answer in the Muslim religion, stopped making rock and changed his name to Yusuf Islam, and for me, Cat Stevens was a voice from the past, someone who died before I got around to listen to him. Islam and pop were completely alien to one another, and the possibility of a connection ever forming between them, or that we will ever hear Stevens singing pop again, seemed like fantasy. From time to time, the media published stories (completely distorted) on Yusuf, which made him seem like a rabid fundamentalist, and he was for me a completely different person than the man I heard in the old albums.

In 2004, I opened the radio in my car and heard a young singer, which I later learned was Ronan Keating, covering Stevens' classic 'Father and Son'. I wasn't very impressed, but I let it play on. And then, an unmistakable voice joined it, a little older and cracked, but still full of soul, still the same soul from back then. I recognized him instantly, and it was like hearing a voice from the beyond coming out of my radio, sending a quiver down my spine that did not subside for several days. The few lines he sang were enough to make me fall in love with him all over again.

Turns out Yusuf never quit singing – he just sang religious songs, shunning the sinful world of pop. But the war that broke out between Islam and the West encouraged him to try and form a bridge between the worlds, and sound a message of peace once again. Somehow, the path his life took brought him to be exactly in the right place at the right time, to make a difference. After the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center he participated in the concert for New York, and performed his song 'Peace Train' for the first time after more than twenty years. Around that time he announced that there is no contradiction between the religion of Islam and the secular world of pop, and those who think otherwise are wrong. His duet with Keating announced his return to the pop world, and since then he's with us again, writing and performing in his familiar style, which still sound good.

'Father and Son' was one of Stevens' biggest records, a dialogue between the rebellious son who looks for a different existence than what the world has to offer, and the settled-down father who advises him to conform. In the original recording from 1971, Stevens sings both parts, but there's no question he identifies with the son. Here, he takes the role of the father, and this is the role he took in real-life as well, the role of the adult who tries to advise the young, and steer them in more positive directions. In today's Muslim world, such people have a lot of value.

Ronan Keating ft. Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)-Father And Son
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86. Black Eyed Peas – Pump It (2006)

2010-01-29T14:17:00.000-08:00

The Black Eyed Peas were the decade's most successful band when it comes to hits (except for Coldplay, who made pretty but formulaic records), and displayed an impressive talent to sample and quote from every possible source, and manufacture something that works. Only it didn't really work for me – many of their records had no real substance for my taste. Nevertheless, every once in a while they hit very close to the mark, like with this record. The sample is of course from Dick Dale's classic 'Misirlou', and it is one of the most energetic and electrifying guitar licks ever made. It is very dangerous to mess with such records, because the inevitable comparisons will usually bury you, but the Peas ride the waves created by Dale, the king of surf guitar, and manage to make a record that almost equals it in ecstasy.

To my ears, this is the last record that is still part of the fun pop of the decade's early years. It came out in the beginning of 2006, the year when the mood changed, and since then, no one has created such vibrations, which make you increase the volume to the max. Like the surfers that inspired this massive guitar riff, I live in anticipation for the next wave.

Black Eyed Peas - Pump It
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85. Mylie Cyrus – Fly on the Wall (2008)

2010-01-29T11:45:00.000-08:00

The next generation is sharpening its teeth. Mylie Cyrus grew up as a child-star on the Disney channel, the same channel that a decade before sprouted Britney, Xtina and Justin. At age thirteen she was already a big star, and accumulated lots of fans and stage experience, on which she can count when she reaches adulthood. Beyond being a Disney star, Mylie has rock'n'roll in her blood as well: she's the daughter of country-rock star Billy Ray Cyrus, and she's already displaying signs of rebelliousness, and corrupting a new generation of girls. It looks like we're witnessing the birth of the next pop-kitten.

This, to me, is one of the greatest teen-pop records ever. I jogged my memory and couldn't recall a fifteen-year-old girl putting out a record that was so powerful, and frankly it would have been powerful even for a twenty-year-old, loaded with an ass-kicking electro-rock sound and aggressive vocals. The object of her attacks and flirtations is someone who is obsessively stalking her, and you don't need a lot of imagination to ascribe it to the paparazzi, or to the public that follows her life. Mylie is already part of the generation that grew up into this reality of being twenty-four-hours under surveillance, the generation for whom this is second nature, and I'm waiting to see how she works this when she gets older. With such a strong warning shot, I guess we have something to wait for.

84. Snoop Dogg feat. Pharrell & Charlie Wilson – Beautiful (2003)

2010-01-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

By the end of the nineties, Snoop Dogg looked finished. Gangsta-rap lost its cachet, his collaboration with Dr. Dre fell apart, and his attempts at trying softer directions did not gain the popularity that his gangsta braggadocio brought him. He also had serious trouble with the law, and the feeling was that he was burned out. But then, he hooked up with the sexy and bouncy style of the Neptunes, wrapping his flow perfectly around it, and recreated himself in a cute, romantic and lovable image. His private language is silly as hell, but he manages to make even that sound like the coolest thing in the world. This little sizzle proves that Snoop is still the dopest thing in pop.

Snoop Dogg - Beautiful
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83. M.I.A – Paper Planes (2008)

2010-01-29T06:11:00.000-08:00

Already an established figure, M.I.A did not forget where she came from. She continued to make politically flavored music, and be the voice of minorities. This record samples the Clash's 'Straight to Hell', which reflected and lambasted the way Westerners regard and treat third-world immigrants, and gives the story from the immigrants' perspective. The Clash tell us that most Westerners would rather see the immigrants go to hell, and get out of their face – Mia replies that they all ready are in hell, having to struggle all day to make a buck in a society that doesn't want them. Lyrically moving, musically hypnotizing, and a surprising hit for the Tamil tigress.

82. DeScribe & Y Love – Change (2009)

2010-01-29T06:07:00.000-08:00

One of the decade's most uplifting developments is the rise of Hassidic hip-hop, which comes mainly from the US. While most religious Judaism remains hostile to pop, there are those in it who find in the spirituality of reggae something they can relate to, and express their Jewish soul through contemporary dancehall/reggae. Matisyahu is the biggest star to come out of the scene, and his success is commendable. But it is still hard for me to get excited by his and his peers' music, because I hear nothing new in it. The themes and messages are the same as in Hassidic music – only the style is different.

Y Love, on the other hand, is something else. A black Puerto Rican who was born a Catholic but converted to Judaism and studied in a Jerusalem yeshiva, he blends English, Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic to one seamless fabric, and spreads the words in an amazing flow that makes them all sound like the same language. His music is also very varied, able to collaborate with musicians from all over (especially Jews and Arabs), and his spirituality is a universal spirituality, carrying a message of peace and harmony.

Here he collaborates with DeScribe, a Hassidic rapper from Brooklyn, making his first steps. What I like about DeScribe is his use of auto-tune, because the vocal manipulations of the auto-tune always remind me a little bit of the Jewish trill, and DeScribe does indeed utilize it in his favor. Together, these two mishuginas make a crazy and groovy mix.

81. Prince – Black Sweat (2006)

2010-01-29T05:59:00.000-08:00

When you listen to the fantastic pop of the beginning of the decade, to the hungry minimalist funk that dominated it, you realize how much Prince altered our psyche, all the way back in the eighties. We required more than a decade to catch up with him, but eventually it happened. But Prince, during that time, went further and further into funk, and finally went too far. As often happens to great artists, he wanted to merge with the thing he was expressing, he wanted to be the essence of funk. In the middle of the nineties he changed his name to an unnamed symbol, a symbol that unifies the male and female signs, and signifies, as far as I understand, that Prince puts himself at the place where love is unified, before it breaks into the make and female elements. In his private life he drifted more and more into a world of his own, and although he kept on making tons of music, most of it sounded like something that may play well in his mind, but undecipherable to most of us. The content of his records became more mystical and religious, and eventually he turned to abstract jazz to manifest his spirituality. All that made him detached from what was going on in the pop world, and the pointless wars he conducts in recent years against websites that post his photos and vids is a sign of that detachment.

And yet, there are contrasting signs, hints that Prince is aware of the funkiness of contemporary pop, and digs it. To begin with, in 2000 he went back to the name Prince, and it was once again possible to talk about him on the air without having to waste time on thinking how to call him. Secondly, he churns three-minute-records, and the best of them reminds us that this is still funk's prince of princes, and that with all due respect to today's artists, they still have a lot to learn. 'Black Sweat' – what says funk more than that?

prince - black sweat
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80. Macy Gray – Sexual Revolution (2001)

2010-01-29T01:06:00.001-08:00

When people talk about the "Sexual Revolution", they mean the period between 1955 (the year the birth-control pill hit the market) and 1969 (Woodstock), when the youth cast away the puritan shackles, and started to regard sex as something done mainly for recreation, not procreation. But a no less powerful revolution happened between the years 1989 (when rave culture crossed over into the mainstream) and 2003 (Paris Hilton's sex tape), a revolution that brought more equality between the sexes, and acknowledged the diversity of human sexuality. The biggest victory for this revolution was that it happened without fanfare, but just slowly entered our minds, until most people today can't remember how different their psyche was just twenty years ago. The only record I know of to actually come out and declare the revolution is this record.

Macy Gray, a singer with a wonderful bluesy voice, broke big in 1999 with the rise of neo-soul. She disappeared all too quickly, but left us with this anthemic record. With enough musical and lyrical elements to connect it to the sixties, it revives the spirit of the original revolution, and also encapsulates the new revolution. Put this capsule under your tongue and suck it slowly – it takes time to get into the groove and take effect.

79. OutKast – Hey Ya! (2003)

2010-01-29T00:58:00.000-08:00

In 2003, OutKast seemed set to be the most important band of the decade. The duo kept on with their relentless innovation and experimentation that pushed the boundaries of hip-hop further and further, and at the same time made music that was entertaining and commercial. Unfortunately they kinda scattered about since then (although they didn't break up, and they promise to return), and left the stage to the less talented Black Eyed Peas. Here's a hit from the time when they were on top of the world, and showed that hip-hop, if it so wishes, can sound like sixties rock'n'roll. One of the most fun records of the decade.

Outkast - Hey Ya
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78. Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (2005)

2010-01-29T00:51:00.000-08:00

A record that came around in 2005 and brought some more life to the corpse of rock. Energetic garage-rock, agitated and dissatisfied, like in the good old days. The lyrics can be taken as an attack on the dance styles that usurped rock, and many rock fans regard the Arctic Monkeys as the great white hope of bringing back old glories. They can keep hoping – Arctic Monkeys is a very good band, but not groundbreaking. This record is wonderful, and certainly deserved to be named among the best records of the decade, but nothing new.

Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor
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77. Jay-Z feat. UGK – Big Pimpin' (2000)

2010-01-29T00:43:00.000-08:00

In the alternative world created in black ghetto culture, the biggest hero is the pimp. Exploiting the fact that many black women cannot find a better job than prostitution, and the fact that many white men regard the black female as the utmost fantasy, the ghetto pimps form financial empires, and live like kings. For many ghetto kids, the pimp is the best lifestyle you can aspire to. According to the myth, the pimp in the man, so virile that he can make any woman do his will and work for him, thus yanking loads of dough from the Man and living the American dream without bowing to the system. The pimps are also known for their sense of style, for their colorful homes, clothes and cars, and are considered icons of cool. Iceberg Slim, a pimp who talked about his conquests in books and albums from the seventies onwards, became such a street-hero that several rappers named themselves after him. The fact that all of this entailed the exploitation of their black sisters didn't really bothers these guys – the entire African-American culture was plagued with extreme male chauvinism.

We've mentioned the positive changes that happened over the years, and the big change caused by the sexual revolution of the turn of the millennium. This change could be seen in the image of the pimp as well. While nineties gangsta-rap drew mainly from violent gang life, in the naughties it became more sexy, and the pimp played a more central role. And again, the hip-hop artists affected a more elaborate view on this particular lifestyle. In this record there is no double-meaning, and Jay-Z is just pimping it, repeating all the clichés, but the clip shows something else. There are many hot chicks here, to show that Jay-Z is a big pimp, but there is no hint of exploitation: they are just dancing and having fun. The pimp is beginning to be transformed here into someone who uses his legendary virility not to enslave women, but to make them feel good. This was the first time I felt a change in the image of the pimp, and in the following years, some more elements connected to it got sublimated and became more positive. Thus, the TV show Pimp My Ride reshaped cars in the pimp style, and the term "pimping" started to mean: tinker in a colorful way. This process strips the pimp image of its unique traits, and deflates the myth.

It had a negative side as well. As always, most people were unable to discern the moral from the immoral, and the pimp's bigger acceptability caused the immoral sides of his profession to find their way to the screen as well. In the pimped vids of 50 Cent and the likes, there is abuse and exploitation of women. But pop's history shows that there's something good about that as well: when you bring something up from the underground to the light of the Sun, the public's bigger awareness of it makes it discuss it more, and the process eventually cleans it up. The larger public awareness to the pimp will compel street culture to deal with its attitude to women, and I expect to see that in the coming decade.

Anyway, the man who pimped this record is Timbaland, in a brilliant production that samples Arab belly-dance music. And Jay-Z, as always, is right on the money.

JAY Z - Big Pimpin'
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76. Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne – Changes (2003)

2010-01-27T11:49:00.000-08:00

One of the most conspicuous phenomena of the decade is the rise of reality TV, which in the middle of the decade threatened to take over completely and kick the more traditional shows off the small screen. Personally, I had enough of reality TV around 2005, and looks like I'm not alone, because it isn't as popular as it was. But some of the shows from the beginning of the decade were classics, and became part of pop culture. Basically, there were two types of reality. There were the survival shows, where contestants were voted for and eliminated by the home audience, and there were shows that documented the private lives of people. And appropriately, the best show of each kind had something to do with rock'n'roll.

The best survival show was of course American Idol, arguably the most successful TV show of all time. Beyond the entertaining concept, which relied mainly on the personality of the judges, there was also the real-life drama of watching youngsters trying to fulfill their dream, and the show produced a number of performers who later went on to pop stardom. The most successful private life show was The Osbournes, which among other things was as funny as any classic family sitcom. The clash between the British working-class family and the lucrative Hollywood neighborhood they moved to; the awesomeness of watching Ozzy Osbourne, heavy-metal's Prince of Darkness, trying to raise a family; the powerful figure of Sharon, the woman behind (and in front of) Ozzy's success, who finally got the recognition she deserves; the rebellious kids, who did everything to be worthy of the family name; and the family pets, who were as wacko as their owners, turned the series into must-see-TV. And there were some serious and painful moments, like Sharon's and the family's fight against her cancer, or Ozzy's and his son Jack's battle with alcoholism – this was true reality, on a level that no other reality show achieved. And if that wasn't enough, then the show had its own American Idol, in the figure of daughter Kelly and her attempt to become a pop star. A lovable, cheeky, big mouthed girl, Kelly added color to the female pop world, and even had a couple of records that weren't bad at all. Here, she joins her dad, and together they remake 'Changes', thirty years after Ozzy sang it with Black Sabbath. In the original record, the singer is talking about a woman who was his love for many years, until he went through a change and decided to leave her, but now goes through another change and feels sorry and miserable for letting her go. The remake manages, in a rather clever way, to change very little of the lyrics, and still turn the record to a duet between a father and his daughter, in which the father understands that his little girl has grown up and he must let her spread her wings and fly away, and tries to come to terms with the change. Good record, and what makes it even better is that we know it represents reality.

75. Wiley – Wot Do U Call it? (2004)

2010-01-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

In this record, British rapper Wiley is rejecting all labels floating around for his style, dissing UK garage and two-step and stressing what makes him distinct from them. This is a typical statement for many musicians, who refuse to be categorized and restricted by the confines of a certain style – music, they feel, should be completely free. However, music is also a way to define oneself, and when a certain new musical sensibility is found, and produces enough records that manifest it, it inevitably gets labeled. Wiley wants to be outside of every category, but this is one of the records that define grime.

74. Kanye West – Through the Wire (2003)

2010-01-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

We've talked about some of the great producers that worked in hip-hop in the beginning of the decade and infused it with power that conquered the world, but there is one more big name that I did not mention, and that's Kanye West, who shot to fame mainly due to his work with Jay-Z. His unique style, relying mainly on sped-up samples that create a hysterical sound effect, brought him great success, which made him think of a career as a front-man. But a serious car accident in 2002 left his face smashed and in need of reconstruction, and his jaw had to be reattached with wire. Kanye thought that his career was done and his life would never go back to what it was, but the traumatic event, eventually, turned out to be the incident responsible for the successful launching of his solo career, since it inspired this record, the record that instantly made him a star.

The production here is of course West's, and it is very typical, sampling Chaka Khan's 'Through the Fire' in double-speed. "Through the fire" means going through something that makes you stronger, and Kanye changes it to "through the wire", indicating the mouth-wires he has to sing through. But his accident was of course a "through the fire" experience as well, and Kanye dramatizes it is a way that is partly amusing, partly serious, partly scary. After such a strong opening, the horizons were opened, and in the lean years of the decade's second half, Kanye was one of the only rappers who continued to make hip-hop that was both commercial and substantial, and rightfully became a big star. Most of his records don't do it for me, but some of them were good, and this one is fantastic.

73. David Bowie – Sunday (2002)

2010-01-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

I spoke of the new wave rockers, and how they conducted themselves in this decade. I also discussed the old rockers who died during the decade. But I've yet to mention the old rockers who are still with us, still recording. They are now fated to contend with the world that they created: they are the ones who, back in the sixties, asserted that it is the youth who determines the values of pop culture, thus also directing the course of the human spirit. And so, as they now reach old age, their voice is no longer heard on the hit parade, and their music is played on the radio. Only their fans keep the flame going and keep on listening, and they in turn inform them of the questions arising from life in their advanced age, and offer answers. Every rock fan has at least one aging rocker who remains part of their life, who they still follow.

For me, it is David Bowie, the man who helped me develop my philosophy of existence, the man whose records helped me through rough times, the man whose art opened endless horizons for me, the man who sold me the world. But in the beginning of this decade I was somewhat detached from his art. In the nineties, after the commercialization of the eighties, he went back to making exceptional and groundbreaking music, but it lacked the penetrating emotion which the seventies records always had. I retained my loyalty to seventies Bowie, and kept an eye on what contemporary Bowie was doing, but my attention went more towards younger artists. When I bought his album Heathen in 2002, I didn't know what to expect, and I didn't expect much. I put the CD in the player and pushed Play, and 15 seconds into the opening track 'Sunday', he had me all the way back.

Bowie says he cried when he wrote this song. Fifty-five years old, the thought of death started to enter the mind of the man whose art was always connected to the here and now. The result was this album, which deals with the deepest questions that always troubled humankind, and stubbornly does so from the point of view of a heathen, of a man who refuses to accept any doctrine that offers consolation, but looks reality in the eyes and knows that no one can provide the final answers. It is a highly spiritual album, a sense of religious splendor resting upon it, and we here echoes of angel-singing throughout, but without any confidence that there are indeed angels that watch over us. And Bowie's voice, the voice that somehow lost some of the soul and feeling and pain over the years, gets all its depth and sonority back, flowering in an emotional range even greater than before. To most of his fans, this album is on the same level of his more famous masterpieces, and almost every track from it is considered a Bowie classic. I could choose at least seven of them, but 'Sunday' for me is above all, since it is the one that hit me first. The heart of Bowie's art has always been his struggling with the changes that we go through in our lives, and asking how we can control them to achieve happiness. Here, he talks about a total spiritual change, a metaphysical transfiguration. Again, it isn't clear is he's talking about transformation from human to angel, or about some spiritual changes that happens in your life, and it doesn't matter. The experience, anyway, is beyond words.

72. Fischerspooner – Emerge (2000)

2010-01-26T08:44:00.000-08:00

In the end of the nineties emerged electroclash, a style that came out of electronic dance and was influenced by the artistic pretensions of the electronic new-romantic bands of the end of the seventies. But the new-romantics belonged to the rock world, where the electric guitar was the sound of the human spirit, and their use of synthesizers expressed emotional coldness, alienation and loss of humanity. Electroclash, on the other hand, arrived way after electronic music became the voice of the human spirit, and for youngsters today the old new-romantic records sound different than they did at the time – now they sound like the roots on today's spirituality. It was therefore logical to go back to the style and carry on in a new direction, using today's perspective. Furthermore, electronic dance reached a point where it was time to take a step back, and instead of records that would make you dance yourself to oblivion, make pieces of self-reflection. Electroclash was therefore of its time, and I saw it as an interesting and meaningful development.

But I didn't hear any truly interesting statement coming out of it. Perhaps I missed it, but everything I encountered sounded arty-farty and devoid of true substance. Electroclash made a lot of noise among the critics, but didn't really capture the wider audience. Looking back, its main significance now looks to be that it was one of the steps towards today's electro. This is one of the only electroclash records that had any real power.

Fischerspooner - Emerge
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71. Lady Gaga – Paparazzi (2009)

2010-01-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

After 2006, there was a vacuum in female pop. Britney went into a tailspin, Kylie was slowly recovering from breast-cancer treatment, Christina took time out for pregnancy, Beyonce couldn't really regenerate the thrill of her first album. Trying to fill the void were Gwen Stefani, Fergie and Pink, who made playful and eclectic white pop, but failed to offer anything truly new; Rihana, r'n'b's new star, which made updated but uninspired music; and Katy Perry, a cheeky young Californian girl who infused some humor and surrealism, but musically didn't offer anything too special. Female pop needs a revolution to take it in a new direction, and that should come from a new generation, which hasn't fully arrived yet. In the meantime, the woman who managed to inject a big dose of fun into it is Lady Gaga, who broke in 2008 and takes a cabaret approach to contemporary pop. Gaga plays the pop game and crafts hit records, but she does it in a theatrical and ironic way, which exposes its dark and grotesque sides as well. With bizarre outfits, surreal videos and provocative behavior, and with catchy electro-based music, she's the most interesting star of the last two years of the decade.

Here, she deals with one of the most repulsive side effects of the glamour world. In his movie La Dolce Vita from 1960, Federico Fellini shows how the culture of the old world succumbs to pop culture, through the eyes of an Italian journalist who runs around Rome to report on the shallow lives of the glitterati, accompanied by a nosy photographer called Paparazzo, who is constantly trying to get their photos. Fellini couldn't have known that he just coined a new term for pop culture's use, and that his Paparazzo would multiply and become numerous paparazzi, who satisfy the public's unquenchable thirst for any piece of info about its stars. And in our age, we have all become paparazzi, walking around with cameras in our pockets, and belonging to a web that allows us to show our photos all over the world. Furthermore, we have become used to being constantly under the surveillance of cameras, with any of our deeds liable to be caught and uploaded on the web. This reality will only become more pervasive in years to come, and today's pop stars are preparing us for it. Britney Spears was the one who developed the deepest relationship with her paparazzi tails, a relationship which found its way into her songs as well, but it was an unhealthy relationship that only aided her deterioration. Lady Gaga penetrates this sickness and presents it to our judgment, in abstract words that string together all the phenomena related to it: voyeurism, obsession, identification with someone else to the point of self-annulment, lust for fame. When she sings about the love between her and her "papa-paparazzi", we get an uncanny, and probably intentional, sense of incest. The video does the job as well, exposing the twisted relationship between the press, the public and the star. Welcome to cabaret.

70. Missy Elliott – Work It (2002)

2010-01-26T08:20:00.000-08:00

In 2002, on Doctor's orders, Missy had to start a slimming diet, and give up her special look. When this record came out, it sounded like the music went on a diet as well, removing the fat and leaving only the funky skeleton. So? Did it make it any less brilliant? Not while Timbaland has anything to say about it.

What can I say about this record? That it is almost as good as 'Get Ur Freak On', that it is 100% pure unadulterated funk, that I would have placed him a lot higher if I didn't want to represent Missy in the bottom part of the chart as well. So here are Timbaland and Missy, to shake the bottom part.

Missy elliott - work it
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69. Mary J. Blige & U2 – One (2006)

2010-01-26T08:13:00.000-08:00

Like every culture that offers a new way to deal with reality, rock started out as a mixture of high morality and immorality. Its rebelliousness was driven by insights that were more enlightened and progressive of those of the dominant culture, but also led to a collapse of values that bred bad deeds. In time, its internal discourse managed to resolve these problems, and establish itself on the basis of its original intuitions, as a style that brings enlightenment and morality to the world. This is one of the reasons why it is so boring today, but there's no need to mope – that's the nature of progress. The rockers had to adjust and find their place in the new order of things, and U2 took it upon themselves to be rock's ambassadors, those who take all the values and insights that rock brought to the world and spread them further, using their power as rock stars to make our world better. It is a little self-righteous and annoying, and I used not to like it, but in time I came to the realization that someone had to do it, and they are just the guys for the job. And now, when the pop world is ruled by other styles that are still torn with moral dilemmas, the can serve as guides to them. 'One', their ballad of human fraternity, was one of the strong anthems of the nineties, and when the need arose to update it for the young generation, there was none fitter than Mary J. Blige to do it. The un-disappointing summit between the biggest rock band in the world and the biggest r&b diva was born on stage, when U2 invited Blige to perform the song with them, and it felt so good that they decided to go into the studio and record it. The outcome, born out of the duet between the soulful voices of Mary and Bono, is better to my ears even than the classic original.

68. Lil' Jon – Get Crunk (2004)

2010-01-26T07:45:00.000-08:00

Hip-hop was born in New York, and that's where all its big stars came from until the end of the eighties, when California started to challenge its dominance. In the nineties, the hip-hop world was a battle between the East Coast (more serious, artistic and political) and the West Coast (gangsters, bitches and hedonism). Meanwhile, the South established itself and started to challenge them both, with hip-hop that was more danceable, dealt mainly with sex and used lyrics that were even racier. Out of this scene came crunk, a style based on dancehall-like beats, music made mainly with synthesizers, and rap made mainly of exulted shouts. The term "crunk" is a combination of crazy and drunk, and was originally used mainly to describe the feeling of mixing alcohol and weed, and the music gives more or less the same feeling. This style reached the peak of its popularity in the middle of the decade, and raised southern hip-hop to the stature of a serious contender to the crown, to the chagrin of many in the hip-hop community, who regarded crunk as a loud and tasteless debasement of the art-form. The jury is still out.

Crunk intrigued me as another case of merger between hip-hop and dance, but no record I've heard really did it to me, until this one. Lil' Jon is the High Priest of crunk, and this anthemic record makes it somewhat more understandable to me. The heavy synth has a mind-numbing effect, the drum machine enhances the disorientation, and the shouts drown you in the experience. In this mental state, the flow of the rap sounds exactly right, and the rest fits in as well. Give me more records like that, and I too will get crunked.

67. Morrissey – First of the Gang to Die (2004)

2010-01-26T07:13:00.000-08:00

Punk, which emerged in the mid-seventies, and the new wave, indie and alternative that sprang out of its loins, have all gone against the "classic rock" of the sixties and seventies, claiming that it sold its soul. One of the things they reacted against was the phenomenon of stars and idols, and punk musicians aspired to always remain part of the community which they grew out of, not above it. In the eighties and nineties, a lot of them succumbed to the temptations of stardom once they became famous, but in the naughties, when rock became just a musical genre, those who survived fell back into the fold, shedding all traces of star dust. The only rocker from the generations that came after punk who is still regarded as a rock god, and acts accordingly, is Bono. In a way this is a victory to the ideology of punk, but as I already stated, something very important was lost in the process: rockers no longer offer distinct identities, alternative lifestyles. The rock world, which once was an expression of plurality, diversity and originality, became homogenous and boring.

The exception is Morrissey. Even in his advanced age, he did not lose the ability to generate strong identification in some people, and sharp antagonism in others. Even in his heyday back in the eighties he was always the anti-star, the sensitive rocker who sings his pains in a heartfelt way, and he remained true to his way even in the nineties, when he became a target for the critics. In the end, he managed not only to keep his fan base, but also to find new crowds, such as Latin-Americans who like his underdog stance, or sensitive emo kids, or those nostalgic for the eighties. His shows are a religious experience, in which he gives himself completely to the loving crowd, who reacts with total devotion.

I'm one of those who can take Morrissey only in small doses. But sometimes, a small dose of Morrissey makes my day. Some of the records he released this decade are as good as his Smiths material. This one is my favorite.

66. 50 Cent – In Da Club (2002)

2010-01-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

Having conquered the hip-hop world, Eminem turned to the next challenge: production. Like his mentor Dr. Dre, Eminem wanted to find new talents and nurture them, and with 50 Cent he found gold. For one thing, he was sexy, and drove the girls wild. But he had something which captured the minds of the boys as well: while previous gansta-rappers were mainly artists who drew from the world of ghetto gangs into their art, he actually came from that world. So there was something more authentic about him, and that authenticity captured the minds of many youngsters who grabbed his records like hot buns. My reaction, on the other hand, was: so what?

I see nothing thrilling about 50 Cent. He looks like a caricature, a Mickey Mouse version of a gangsta and a pimp, glorifying a lifestyle that has nothing heroic about it. Other gangsta-rappers have also glamorized this lifestyle, but the good ones always showed the other side of the coin as well. It's hard to expect someone who's actually named after a coin to see the other side of himself, and Fifty's music is even flatter and cheaper that his name. The content of his records is silly, the lyrics lack any inspiration, and his flow is lame. Dre and Eminem's production helps a lot, but doesn't salvage the situation.

This is actually an excellent party record, mainly due to the production. For the rest of his records, I wouldn't give you even five cent.

50 Cent - In Da Club
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65. Kylie Minogue – Spinning Around (2000)

2010-01-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

Oh, how happy this video made me when it came out. Throughout the nineties I had a thing for Kylie, the funkiest, foxiest, jolliest, sweetest, funniest chick around, but I was frustrated by everything she put out. Instead of bringing her delightful personality into music and films, she seemed bent on making things of "quality", which neutered her funkiness. She had some good output here and there, but none of it showed the Kylie I knew from interviews. And then, in 2000, she hooked up with disco, and finally found the beat that brought out her cheerful essence to life.

What is the secret of this beat? Let's go backwards again. In the middle of the sixties, the dominating styles were rock'n'roll and soul, and they relied on the backbeat: the second, fourth, sixth and eighth beat in every bar. This creates a propulsive feeling that pushes forward, and these styles make you feel like your soul erupts out of your body and breaks free into the outer world. But funk, which was born right then, moved the emphasis to the first beat, and treated all the instruments as percussive: the guitars are pinched, the brass and the singing come out in short sharp outbursts. This creates a feeling that all the energy remains in the body and explodes inside, resulting in an inner razzmatazz that makes you want to dance. That brought a change in the attitude towards sexuality as well: in rock'n'roll, sexuality is eruptive, something that bursts out of your loins and drives you to conquer an outer subject of desire; in funk, sexuality is first of all something that flows within you and fills your being with pleasure, and the funk/soul of the seventies produced lots of sensual records. For those who grew up on rock (which was most white kids in the seventies), funk sounded like something that leaves you rooted in one place, and was very hard to comprehend. But the gays did get it. The gay culture in the seventies revolved around their secluded discotheques, where they created a world of their own. And since what brought them together was their sexual identity, sex was a big part of that culture, and the preferred music was naturally the most sensual music around: funky soul records. In time, this culture affected record making as well, toning down the polyrhythmic nature of funk and adding the technology of the discotheque, but maintaining the steady beat and the funky sensuality. By the middle of the seventies, it was possible to define a new style: disco.

To rock fans, disco was a complete travesty, and sounded to them like soulless, robotic music. Not to mention its campy elements, which disgusted the homophobic psyche that was still very prevalent at the time. Following disco's big break in the late seventies, it was viciously oppressed by the rock establishment, and in the eighties it was sent back underground, where it spawned the electronic dance revolution, and returned triumphant in the nineties. But even the dominant culture of the eighties took some things from gay culture - for instance, it was the gays who began the fad of going to gyms to build up your body, and in the eighties it became popular with the masses as well. During that decade it was mainly the shaped male body that got the attention, but in the nineties the focus shifted towards the female body, and the ones who led the way were the supermodels. The supermodels were the biggest pop icons of the nineties not just because they were a new level of cool, women who didn't even have to open their mouths but could make the whole world fall at their feet with just one glance, but also because they shaped their bodies to perfection, and proudly displayed it. By the end of the decade, they influenced women from other fields. Kylie, who was always a scrawny girl, suddenly reemerged here with a knockout body, stuffed into the hottest hotpants ever, and with her singing and dancing, and the funky personality that bursts out of every smile and look, she elevated the hotness bar to a new level.

The record itself was a little weak, but it didn't matter. Kylie finally found herself, and from here on the sky was the limit. Later on she became more interesting musically, and lived up to my expectations of her. Her movie career is still a disappointment, but who cares – there's always video.

64. Busta Rhymes feat. Pharell – Light Your Ass on Fire (2003)

2010-01-25T11:04:00.000-08:00

The quality by which rappers are judged is what is known as their "flow" – the way they phrase the words within the bars and thus affect shifts in the rhythm of the rap, creating a feeling of a stream that in some places is gushing and in other places slow. Every rapper has their own distinct flow, and every hip-hop fan has rappers whose flows delight him more than others. For me, the flow I most enjoy streaming with comes from Busta Rhymes, especially when he collaborates with the Neptunes, who always make him less aggressive and more funky. He had many good records along the decade, and I chose the one that deals with the body part most identified with the funk: the pelvis, or, to be more specific, the ass.

To understand why the booty is so important, we must once again go backwards. Naturally, music is something that moves the entire human existence, feet, gut, heart and mind. But European "high" culture emasculated music, and repressed the beat. This is because Western thinking created a split between "body" and "soul", and rather than treating them as one unit, regarded them as separate worlds, and asserted that the soul should escape the body. Therefore, European music is designed to make you forget your body, and moves the soul alone. Dancing, in this culture, was demoted to a function serving other activities, such as courting, and its dance music does not generate ecstasy, but is very inhibited. In the dances of European "high" culture, the body remains stiff, and only the legs move, obeying a predetermined set of steps.

In African culture, on the other hand, dancing animates your entire being. African music is polyrhythmic, and the rhythms take hold of your being and make all parts of body and soul move freely. When the Africans were brought to America as slaves, they were forbidden to play their own music, and compelled to play the European music of their masters. But they always played it in ways that preserved some of their sensibilities, and when slavery was abolished, African-American musicians started to develop styles based on these sensibilities, and slowly created a new black consciousness. You can actually describe the history of twentieth century black pop as a gradual breaking away from the shackles of emasculating European consciousness, and a return to a more African perception of music. Full release was obtained with sixties funk, which put the emphasis back on rhythm, and produced polyrhythmic records that rattled all parts of your being. Funk also taught us how to dance in the correct way again, where the pelvis, the center of your body, moves freely, and makes the rest of your body move as well. "Free your mind and your ass will follow, the kingdom of heaven is within", preached Funkadelic, the premier prophets of funk: when we free our mind from the inhibitions planted by European culture, and move our pelvis freely, the stiffness in our body dissolves, and then we realize that the key to paradise is not in some distant place in the sky, but lies within our bodies, a-posteriorily part of us, and ecstatic dance turns the lock.

The demand to move your ass is therefore featured in many funk records, and naturally, it is usually directed towards women, mingled with sexual desire for that part. When it is done in a distasteful way it is offensive, and too many records made in the last couple of decades are just insulting and pointless. But if it is done with humor, and sits on a good funky beat, it enlivens body and soul. Humor is something Busta Rhymes has in abundance, and funky beats are the Neptunes' expertise, so the meeting between them has to result in something good. From the moment the records starts with the "boom, boom, bababoomboom boom", we get the mental image of a voluptuous woman moving her juicy booty as she walks, and all Busta has to do is provide the details. And, as usual, he delivers.

Busta.Rhymes.Light.Your.Ass.On.Fire
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63. Eminem – The Real Slim Shady (2000)

2010-01-25T09:19:00.000-08:00

In his first album from 1999, Eminem sparked the big bang, presenting the first white star to express his teen rebellion through hip-hop (ok, there were the Beastie Boys in the eighties, but they were relatively marginal). A year later, Slim Shady assesses the situation, in his disgusting and amusing way. As he bashes other forms of white pop – boy bands, pop princesses, metal – he observes that white youth no longer flocks after them, but rather wants to imitate him. And hindsight shows that he was right: the boy bands disappeared almost completely, metal fell from grace, and even the pop princesses increasingly turned to hip-hop. But, he says, there is only one Slim Shady, and none of those imitators will ever be able to match. And here, too, he was correct: ten years later, no white rapper has achieved star status. I suppose it will happen eventually, but when Eminem enters the closing verse, firing the intricately interwoven rhymes in Vulcan speed, it's hard to imagine anyone who will ever be able to top him.

Eminem - The Real Slim Shady
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62. Arcade Fire – Wake Up (2005)

2010-01-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

By the middle of the decade, it was painfully obvious that rock has gone out of the business of changing the world. Young rock musicians no longer attempt to create themselves in a unique identity, no longer challenge the existing order, no longer try to produce hits that would shake the globe. They, and their disciples, regard rock as "serious" and "quality" music, stay away from the charts, and are busy regurgitating rock's glorious past, innovating only within its boundaries. Indie, that independent record industry which sprung in the seventies in an attempt to bypass the established industry and create art for the sake of art, has grown to such an extent that it can provide rock artist with a rather comfortable existence, enabling them to create without external pressures. The result is that the indie bands are siphoned in the confines of the indie world, and don't try to transcend it and struggle in a world where other rules apply, a world that would require of them to show true originality, ingenuity and rebelliousness. All they have left to offer is to play rock a bit differently, and write interesting songs.

Among the new indie bands, Arcade Fire is arguably the best. On the basis of drums and guitars they add a lot of acoustic instruments, creating complex records with intriguing sound textures. Music with a lot of "quality" (in other words, boring), but cute.

61. Daddy Yankee – Gasolina (2004)

2010-01-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

Latin pop's crossover into the mainstream opened up the way to more underground Latin styles to get global recognition, and the first to break was reggaeton. As implied by its name, reggaeton is inspired by Jamaican music, and its roots go back to the seventies, when Central-American musicians started to play reggae and combine it with local sounds. In time, reggae turned into dancehall, which focused less on mysticism and more on the earthly and sensual sides of reggae. The change affected the Latin musicians as well, but the term reggaeton stuck. And in 2004, just as the big waves of hip-hop and Latin pop subsided, reggaeton broke into the mainstream to unify them, and become a new global craze.

There were several big reggaeton hits that year, and 'Gasolina' was the biggest. I wasn't taken by it back then, but listening to it now, it is better than I remembered. Pure electronics, strong rapping, and still sounds distinctly Latin. Duro!

Daddy_Yankee-Gasolina
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60. The Pussycat Dolls feat. Busta Rhymes – Don't Cha (2005)

2010-01-24T10:18:00.000-08:00

When you ask where the feminine sexual revolution that peaked at the beginning of the decade came from, it all goes back to the end of the eighties, the end of the decade that saw America returning to "family values", after the promiscuity of the sixties and seventies. The values were updated – women were no longer required to remain home and focus on rearing the children, but were allowed to develop a career of their own – but girls were still educated to abstain from sex until marriage. This, of course, created a dissonance: on the one hand, they were taught to be independent and aspire to a career (which entails late marriage), and on the other hand, they were supposed to wait with the sex. Naturally, there were many young women who chose to rebel and express their independence through liberated sexual attitude, and one of the places they could do so was in the rock concerts of glam-metal bands, which were a shameless celebration of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll. Especially sex.

It goes without saying that the puritans were abhorred by what was going on in glam-metal, and preached to these girls that they are letting themselves be exploited. Admittedly, there was a lot of truth in that claim, but it had no chance of convincing the girls, because the "educational" assertions also had a lot of holes in them, and they did not jive with the intuitions of the youth. For instance, it was claimed that a woman who allows herself to become a subject of desire is exploited, because she is turned into a "sexual object". This contention ignores the fact that sex is a shared experience, in which part of the joy is being desired, and another part is enjoying the pleasure that your sexuality is giving to someone else. Those girls already knew that it is fun to be a subject of desire, but since the dominant culture repressed any discourse that treated women that way, they had to find this fun in places were it was taken to the opposite extreme, and in which they were exploited. Thus, an unhealthy situation evolved.

If you want to see a presentation of eighties family values, go no further than the TV sitcoms of the period, which all painted a picture of happy homes where everyone loves everyone else, all the children grow up to be successful, and every drama is happily resolved by the end of the episode, an end that carried an educational message. Until 1987, when the first sitcom to slash through this idyllic charade hit the little screen. Married With Children presented the dysfunctional unit of the Bundy family, in a comedy that slew all the sacred cows of conservative America and sishkebabed them. One of the components in this unit was daughter Kelly, a dumb bleached bimbo who screwed anything that moved, and was the antithesis to anything the conservatives described as the ideal all-American girl. This was the satirical dimension of the character, but actress Christina Applegate infused her with other dimensions, and turned her into a rock chick, expressing the mindset of her coevals. Unlike the dumb blondes of the past, who were always sweet and naïve, Kelly Bundy took shit from nobody. While the dominant culture regarded a sexually active girl as "putting out", Applegate presented her as "taking on".

In the nineties, this new female consciousness already started to settle in, and Applegate, now a big girl, took it one step further, and branched into the stripping business. Strippers were always considered cheap and whorish, women who turn themselves into "sexual objects", but Christina wanted to change things, and form a striptease act with more class. In 1995 she opened the burlesque act The Pussycat Dolls, which for the next decade would be in the forefront of the new sexual revolution. Young starlets who wanted to parade their hotness, both from the field of pop music (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani) and the field of cinema (Applegate, Carmen Electra, Jaime Pressly, Charlize Theron, Charlie's Angels) came to sing, dance and strip with the Dolls. Thus they became increasingly more famous, and naturally wanted to expand. In 2004, a band was formed on the basis of the concept (and including some of the cast members, but mainly new recruits), and set out to conquer the world.

And they made it, too, but when they first appeared, it was one of the signs that the revolution has ended. When a pop or movie starlet plays a stripper, it is naughty and titillating. When strippers become pop stars, it takes all the naughtiness out of the stripper image, and kills the thrill. This record, their first hit, was still good: starting out with bubbling funky music, Busta Rhymes sets things on a roll with his rap, and the girls ride on the momentum he gives them, bringing it on with a bitchy, slutty and taunting song. But they went nowhere since then. None of them has the personality to become a real star, and it all still seems like a burlesque show to me, with rather patchy music. This remains their only record that can be called a classic, and I suspect it will play in strip clubs for years to come.

59. No Doubt – Hella Good (2002)

2010-01-24T10:00:00.000-08:00

Following her duet with Eve, Gwen Stefani kept looking for ways to relate to hip-hop through her band No Doubt as well. Here they are still making rock, but for the production they hired the Neptunes, with their immediately recognizable funk. For Gwen, it was another important step in creating her new image; for the Neptunes, it was an expansion of their empire into the rock world, and they would continue to produce rock records throughout the decade, bringing their unique touch to that world as well; for No Doubt, it was their best record ever; and for the pop world, it was a record that reintroduced the sound of a synthesized electric guitar, kind of electro-rock, a thundering sound that would resound in other records further on in the decade. A record that lives up to its name.

No Doubt - Hella Good
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58. Crazy Frog – Axel F. (2005)

2010-01-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

The advancement of technology, as always, opens new ways for musicians to make money. In the nineties, they started getting asked to provide music for video games, and in the naughties, for ringtones. I asked myself who will be the first star to arise out of this media, and my query was answered in 2005, with the birth of a star that was, how delightful, a virtual figure.

Crazy Frog sings in computer language, so it is only fitting that he would be the first cellular star. The sound effect was created back in 1997 by a Swedish bloke, and in 2003, another Swede attached computer animation to it, and made it the voice of a nutty and annoying frog. In 2004 the Frog was hired by a German phone company to provide their ringtone, and an aggressive campaign on TV made it popular in Europe, and also controversial, since many parents complained about the frog's visible knob corrupting the innocent soul of their children. The ad was eventually censored, but the frog itself could not be censored. Any adolescent who wanted to drive the world crazy immediately purchased the ringtone, turning their cellphone to an environmental hazard that could start cackling at any moment and shatter the nerves of anyone who was unlucky enough to be around. This was rock'n'roll at its best, a noise custom-made to annoy parents, and it did not take long for our froggie to make the natural step into music making. 'Axel F.', a remix of the Beverly Hills Cop tune, was his first record. And he kept on making gleeful remixes and ringdingding his way through many other familiar tunes, until finally he got on everybody's nerves, and vanished back into the cybernetic pond he came from.

Mark my words: Crazy Frog will return. Virtual figures will fill our lives to a growing extent in the future, and when the charts will ring with their songs, everyone will remember and pay respect to the first virtual star.

Crazy Frog - Axel F
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57. The Streets – Has it Come to This? (2001)

2010-01-24T09:40:00.000-08:00

The poet laureate of UK garage, Michael Skinner, a.k.a "The Streets", went through the decade making cohesive concept-albums that reflected the life of working-class youth in England, through the prism of his own life. His first record already shows what a unique voice he is in the pop world, and from there he went on, always connected to what was going on in the British pop scene, but always doing it like no one else.

56. Missy Elliott – 4 My People (Basement Jaxx remix) (2001)

2010-01-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

Hip-hop and dance were alienated to one another in the nineties, when gangsta-rappers, surrounded in chronic smoke, made laidback heavy records, which had no rapport with the ravings of the ecstasy-driven dance boys. Towards the end of the decade you could here some attempts at bringing them together, and in 2001 Missy Elliott released her masterpiece album Miss E… So Addictive, which was like a drug in itself, but also revealed a change in habits. "Miss E" is one of the monikers Missy has for herself, but E is also the symbol of the famous amphetamine, and this hip-hop-rave record turns her into a priestess of ecstasy. The music proves that rappers can rave as well, and the rap heralds hip-hop's invasion into club world, serving as an anthem for the era that saw the rise of crunk, grime and other styles that combine the two worlds. Dancefloors around the world reacted enthusiastically to Elliott's call, and the record became a hit on the dance charts.

Basement Jaxx's remix, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't add or subtract from the original. But it is this version that came out as a video-clip, so it earns the honor of making the parade.

55. Spiller feat. Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Groovejet (if this ain't Love) (2000)

2010-01-24T08:32:00.000-08:00

The wave of young pop princesses of the beginning of the decade included some British girls as well, who also presented a fresher and more liberated attitude than before. The case could actually be made for England as the birth-ground of this wave, which could be dated to the rise of the Spice Girls in 1996. In the beginning of the new millennium, the princesses started to emerge out of the bubblegum pop of the Spice Girls and explore new directions, and while the Americans turned to funk, the Brits connected mainly to dance. In retrospect it was a mistake, because dance faded away, and did not provide them with the power needed to battle the Americans. This failure is one of the reasons that the British girl singers who came in the second half of the decade (Amy Winehouse, Adele, Duffy etc.) shunned dance, and returned to the safer grounds of rock and soul. For those of us who look for innovations, there were too little good records from female British singers this decade, mostly from its beginning. But those who were good were special and worthwhile, and 'Groovejet' is the one I like the most.

Christiano Spiller is an Italian DJ who created the original house track back in 1999, and like most house numbers, its repetitiveness may work alright on the dancefloor, but makes it too boring for radio play. But a year later, Sophie Ellis-Bextor added her vocal, and turned the numbing monotony into a sweet dream. Since she draws our attention, we pay little notice to the repetitive main riff, and more to the variety of electronic sounds that wrap her voice like cotton-candy. Thus, Sophie also gains from the collaboration, the house track giving her a more exotic and interesting backing than the rock numbers she recorded prior to that. The outcome is an airy, floating record, and it makes me feel so good.

54. Sugababes – Freak Like Me (2002)

2010-01-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

While solo artists were back on top in America, in England it was still the boy and girl bands, like it was in the nineties. As far as I'm concerned, not enough care was put into developing a distinct image and personality to the band members, so they stood no chance against the soloists. Still, these bands contributed to the decade, and took part in the transformations that happened in it.

And one of these transformations was the rise of the mashup as an art-form. The custom of mashing up two records was considered just a fun use of new technology, until Richard X mashed up Adina Howard's 'Freak Like Me' with Tubeway Army's 'Are Friends Electric?', two records that are very different in style but have the same chord sequence, and somehow mashed up perfectly. Suddenly, there was a mashup that sounded like a legitimate new record, so much so that the Sugababes, to my ears (and eyes) the best girl-band after the Spice Girls disbanded, decided to cover it, hiring Richard X to produce. 'Are Friends Electric?', coming out in 1979 in the midst of new wave and post-punk, used the electronic sound of the synthesizer to express loss of humanity, and the hero of the song feels such strangeness and alienation that he imagines everyone else is actually a robot. But in the years that passed, electronic sound became part of our humanity, and could be mashed with Adina Howard's kinky r'n'b record to express a different kind of strangeness, a strangeness that emerges from deviant sexuality. The record is also one of the first to sample eighties synthpop, and bring it back into the pop mix, a habit that would only increase throughout the decade and lay the ground for the rise of electro. Are we electric?

SUGABABES-FREAK LIKE ME
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53. Baby Cham feat. Alicia Keys – Ghetto Story (2006)

2010-01-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

The last record on the list was an r'n'b record that featured a dancehall artist. Here's a dancehall record that features an r'n'b artist. Baby Cham is one of the best singers to come out of Jamaica in the last decade, and in 2006 he released the excellent record 'Ghetto Story', which told of his life's hardships in the ghetto, and how he managed to survive and get out of it. This is of course a subject that African-Americans can relate to as well, and the song spawned several versions featuring different American artists, the most successful being this version with Alicia Keys. At first I wanted to put the original record in my chart, to bring it on with pure unadulterated dancehall, but eventually I decided that the added value brought by Alicia makes this cover superior. Her soulful trills blend in perfectly, and even her rap is fine. In the long chain of artistic pieces that documented the slow journey of blacks to get out of the ghettos and become part of Western society, this record earns a respectable place.

Baby Cham ft. Alicia Keys - Ghetto Story
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52. Blu Cantrell feat. Sean Paul – Breathe (2003)

2010-01-24T07:05:00.000-08:00

The relationship between African-American and African-Jamaican music was always problematic. Black Jamaican pop was born in the end of the fifties, when local musicians took American rhythm 'n blues and started to play it with a different beat, creating a new style called ska. In the following two decades, the music evolved and begat rock steady, reggae and dub, but maintained almost no dialogue with the soul and funk that dominated black American pop, and it needed the love and support of white Brits to reach a wider audience. In the early seventies, however, something new happened, the reversal of what happened with ska: a style imported from Jamaica to the US bred a new American style. The custom of going out on the street with a sound system, manipulating the sound of the records while they were playing, and adding a rapper (or actually someone singing in a style similar to rap, called toasting) was born in Jamaica, brought to the Bronx by several DJs, saddled on funk, and manufactured hip-hop. Meanwhile, Jamaica gave birth to yet another style, which combined toasting with electronic sounds and faster reggae beats, and was named dancehall. There was now a common ground for dialogue, but still, it took a long time for the two cultures to connect.

By the beginning of the naughties, the connection was pretty well established. Hip-hop DJs acknowledge their debt to reggae and dub, neo-soul singers regard Bob Marley as their spiritual guide, and dancehall singers are known in the hip-hop community. In the course of the decade, the two styles became intertwined, and many of the global offshoots of hip-hop are actually closer to dancehall in style. But that, it seems, didn't do much good for Jamaican pop, which lost its distinctiveness. Sean Paul was the only Jamaican who became a big star, the biggest since Marley, but he did so by watering dancehall down, and taking it very close to hip-hop. I enjoyed some of the records he released during the decade, but none of them swayed me like dancehall in its heyday.

This is a record that I do like a lot, and it is also the most commercially successful dancehall-r'n'b collaboration of the decade. Another winning production by Dr. Dre, Blu Cantrell provides her strong and unique vocal, and Sean Paul adds color. The duet, appropriately, is about a troubled relationship.

51. Johnny Cash – Hurt (2003)

2010-01-24T06:23:00.000-08:00

During the decade we said goodbye to some of the giants of 20th century music, the people who shaped the form of pop music in the fifties and the sixties, and turned it into the main expression of the human spirit. A lot of them died young, paying the price for being the pioneers, and those who survived and lived to see the new millennium started to drop dead from natural causes. Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, James Brown, George Harrison, Isaac Hayes, Syd Barrett and many more did not make it alive to the end of the decade. Among them, the one who left the most lacerating last words was Johnny Cash, who knew years ahead about his impending death, and poured it all into his music.

Johnny Cash was there when rock'n'roll was born, one of the musicians in the legendary 'Sun records' label, which spawned Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and others. Together they created rockabilly, a fusion of black rhythm 'n blues and southern country, which created the biggest bang pop has ever known. From there he went in a country direction, becoming a legend in that field, but the connection to rock and blues was always there as well. His deep and dark voice had appeal to rock fans, and enabled him to sound convincing even when covering songs from the darkest regions of metal. Here he takes 'Hurt', Nine Inch Nails' blood-curdling ballad of loneliness and loss of humanity, and turns it into the song of a man who stands alone in the face of death, feeling life slowly seeping out of his body. The record came out two months after his demise, and was an appropriate epitaph to one of the truly great ones.