Diamond Dogs

“This ain’t Rock n’ Roll! This is genocide,” yells David Bowie in the beginning of his post-apocalyptic, glam-rock hit “Diamond Dogs.” This song marked the transition of a typical Bowie phase change, from glam-rock to punk, and features adequate voice distortion and some gritty guitar playing. The album was originally intended to be a Styx style, theatrical album, outlining moods portrayed in George Orwell’s "1984." However, the rights were denied, and after modification, the songs found them on the 1974 album, “Diamond Dogs.” The cover song is saturated with dystopian themes with Bowie’s first verse:

As they pulled you out of the oxygen tank
You asked for the latest party
With your silicone hump and your ten inch stump
Dressed like a priest you was
Tod brownings freak you was

The mood of the song is certainly achieved with other lyrics like, “Hunt you to the ground they will, mannequins with kill appeal,” and “Come out of the garden, baby, You’ll catch your death in the fog.” What is Bowie's intended reaction? The song certainly coincides with the political fervor of the day as hippies, yippies and other rebel rousers as they began to pour out of the pool of discontent. However, Bowie’s disturbing apocalyptic imagery in Diamond Dogs isn’t painted as negative, but takes a more positive approach like Bowie’s sister song on the same album “Rebel, Rebel:” A tribute to a hot tramp who’s mother can’t tell if she/he’s a boy or a girl. Instead there is an embracement of the oddity, the nasty and a sleazy attitude that says, “Abandon the creeping meatball. This world sucks: let’s have fun." Most likely the song was just a product of nonsense breaded in an acid trip, but who said rhetoric had to be intentional?