David Bowie “Diamond Dogs” released on this date, April 24th, 1974 (though there is some argument on this point: Wiki puts the date at May 24th but many others say April 24th and since I’m in the mood for Bowie today, I’m going with April). “This ain’t Rock’n Roll — this is Genocide” Bowie shouts out on the album’s title track “Diamond Dogs” and for many critics that was their reaction to Bowie’s 8th studio LP partially based on Bowie having recently fired his Spiders From Mars, replacing them with studio musicians and, most notably, taking the majority of the guitar parts himself from the legendary Mick Ronson. Despite its panning, Diamond Dogs hit #5 on the US album chart and #1 in the UK and contains some of Bowie’s best-known singles: “Rebel Rebel” (its B-side one of my favorite Bowie songs ever, “Queen Bitch”) which hit #5 in the UK and #64 in the US and “Diamond Dogs,” which failed to chart in the US but made it to #27 in the UK.

Bowie envisioned Diamond Dogs as a farewell-to-glam concept album and a political protest based on Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four; he originally intended the record to be a stage musical for the novel. He included “1984″ (a swirly, funky disco track that sounds a lot like the “Theme from Shaft”) and “Big Brother” (the author’s estate denied the rights for the musical). Yet another turning point in Bowie’s career, the album has “been credited with anticipating the punk revolution that would take place in the following years. Bowie himself described the Diamond Dogs, introduced in the title song, as: ‘all little Johnny Rottens and Sid Viciouses really. And, in my mind, there was no means of transport, so they were all rolling around on these roller-skates with huge wheels on them, and they squeaked because they hadn’t been oiled properly. So there were these gangs of squeaking, roller-skating, vicious hoods, with Bowie knives and furs on, and they were all skinny because they hadn’t eaten enough, and they all had funny-coloured hair. In a way it was a precursor to the punk thing.’”