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

Perhaps not Bowie's most progressive work - though obviously the theatrical nature of the Ziggy Stardust concept and the unique plot should make the album of interest to prog fans with an appreciation for classic rock (and Rick Wakeman was offered the keyboard player's stool but passed it up to join Yes!) - this bittersweet celebration of the redemptive power of rock and roll and the destructive power of fame gave David Bowie the widespread success that, after so much effort, he surely deserved.

A lot of the numbers on here hark back to earlier rock and roll genres, but each time they are given Bowie's own unique twist - showing delicacy and fragility where such songs would typically have oozed bravado and machismo. For a brief, spellbinding time the album takes us into a world where everything is about the present, the thought where we'll be five years from now seems impossible to contemplate, and glory is just a guitar chord away, and part of why it's so impressive is how it manages to evoke such a complex range of emotions without necessarily resorting to technical complexity. Bowie would produce more explicitly progressive works later in his career, but since we're in prog-related that's not necessarily the right criteria to judge it on. As far as the related (and, indeed, overlapping) genre of *theatrical* rock goes, this is a masterpiece.