Created By: Jonathan Dysart (DJJD)
Original Creation Year: 2007
Year of Re-master: 2010
Song Listing
Side A
Side B
Side C
Side D
Origin of the Album
After finishing a sapping love album with DJJD Volume 24 and a movie soundtrack album DJJD Volume 25, I was still pretty much out of ideas. I wanted to finish this project to actually reach the 30-album mark, but I did not want to force it – those types of albums are usually not my best work.
Like DJJD Volume 24, I was going through my compilation CDs of the 70’s to try and get some inspiration. One of those songs was “Rock ‘n Roll (Part 2)” by Gary Glitter; the other song was “Radar Love” by Golden Earring. From there, I got the idea to get some songs from the glam rock genre (see description below). My initial creation of this album was not my best and I was not satisfied with it.
It wasn't until I started remastering this album along with DJJD Volume 22 and DJJD Volume 23 that the album became more satisfying to me.
Update: It's a shame that some great songs on this album are sung by a really horrible man, Gary Glitter, who is on record as a pedophile. One YouTube comment put it best for those two Glitter songs: He suggests separating the song created by the band and the producers that with the singer Glitter. It's hard to do, especially with all of the movies produced or starred by sexual Hollywood predators. I loved these songs, but I can totally understand why someone will dismiss the whole album based on those two Glitter songs.
Concept and Theme of the Album
Going through all of the three albums mentioned above in the remastering process, I decided to try and group most of the glam rock songs together in the first half of the album. And then I got inspired by a YouTube video – or actually YouTube videos from Gary Glitter and T. Rex.
I saw various Gary Glitter YouTube videos as well from T. Rex. They were all shot live from either a British or Germany rock shows, similar that to “Midnight Special” from the United States. They were lip-synching to the songs, but the atmosphere of those videos was similar that to a concert.
That gave me the idea of fading the ends of these songs together like a concert mix, without the traditional break between tracks. I did that a little bit with the first quarter of my soul album DJJD Volume 14. Using this technique with the glam rock songs really added energy to the album and brought life to it. The second half of the album is adequate but not as great as the first half.
Concept and the Album Cover
The cover for this remastered album is one of the favorites that I created, ever since the album cover for DJJD Volume 5. The reason why is that they were totally created from scratch, besides just getting a great picture from the internet. I first was trying to find artwork similar that to the projected art I originally found for DJJD Volume 2. In that search, I found some artwork of woman done using laser neon font texture. Along with other elements, I created an album cover that has a “velvet – neon” look to it. I wanted to reflect the rocking nightlife and the glamour as expressed in the glam rock songs.
Remastering the album cover was not much. I just enhanced the existing colors and added a small picture of a woman on the left side. The background of the back-album cover is a warped version of the blue background of the front album cover, with the neon font for the song listings and album title.
Glam Rock
Glam rock (also known as glitter rock) is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the UK in the early 1970’s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup, and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter. The flamboyant costumes and visual styles of glam performers were often campy or androgynous. Glam rock visuals peaked during the mid-1970’s with artists including T. Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music and Gary Glitter in the UK and New York Dolls, Lou Reed and Jobriath in the US.
History
Glam rock emerged out of the English psychedelic and art rock scenes of the late 1960’s and can be seen as both an extension of, and reaction against, those trends. Its origins are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his folk duo T. Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960's. Often cited as the moment of inception is his appearance on the UK TV programme “Top of the Pops” in December 1970 wearing glitter and satins, to perform what would be his first Top 10 hit, "Ride a White Swan". From late 1971, already a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional makeup, mime, and performance into his act. These performers were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Mud and Alvin Stardust. While highly successful in the single charts in the UK, very few of these musicians were able to make a serious impact in the United States; Bowie was the major exception becoming an international superstar and prompting the adoption of glam styles among acts like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls and Jobriath, often known as "glitter rock" and with a darker lyrical content than their British counterparts.
In the UK the term glitter rock was most often used to refer to the extreme version of glam pursued by Gary Glitter and his support musicians the Glitter Band, who between them achieved eighteen top ten singles in the UK between 1972 and 1976. The second wave of glam rock acts, including Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood's Wizzard and Sparks, dominated the British single charts from about 1974 to 1976. Quatro directly inspired the pioneering Los Angeles based all-girl group The Runaways, which included Joan Jett. Existing acts, some not usually considered central to the genre, also adopted glam styles, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen and, for a time, even the Rolling Stones. Punk rock, often seen as a reaction to the artifice of glam rock, but using some elements of the genre including makeup and involving covers versions of glam rock records, helped end the fashion for glam from about 1976.
Subsequent Influence
Although glam rock went into a steep decline in popularity in the second half of the 1970's it was a direct influence on acts that rose to prominence later, including Kiss and American glam metal acts like Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister and Mötley Crüe. It was a major influence on the New Romantics in Britain, acts like Adam Ant and Flock of Seagulls extended it, and its androgyny and sexual politics were picked up by acts including Culture Club, Bronski Beat, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It also had an influence on the formation of gothic rock, which was completely informed by the make-up, clothes, theatricality and sound, and even on punk rock, which adopted some of the performance and persona-creating tendencies of the genre, as well as the genre's emphasis on pop-art qualities and simple but powerful instrumentation. In Japan in the 1980's, visual kei was strongly influenced by glam rock aesthetics. Glam has since enjoyed continued influence and sporadic modest revivals in R&B crossover act Prince, and bands such as Marilyn Manson, Placebo, Chainsaw Kittens and The Darkness.
Rock Reconstruction
I
was never really satisfied with my original creation of the three albums DJJD
Volume 22, DJJD Volume 23, and DJJD Volume 26.
Most of the songs were just, in my opinion, just thrown together without some
form of coherency to them. When it came time to remaster these albums, I
decided to do a complete reconstruction, reshuffling the songs among each other
as well as adding or removing songs, to make each album more coherent and
organic in structure.
I reorganized the albums into three rock styles or motifs:
·
DJJD Volume 22: Hard rock, progressive rock,
with some instrumental blues
·
DJJD Volume 23: Mainstream classic rock and pop, with
some blues
·
DJJD Volume 26: Glam rock, with some progressive rock
and mainstream rock
Here is how the remastered song listings were
acquired.
Side A
1. Do You Wanna
Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!): Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
(DJJD Volume 22)
2. Rock and Roll
(Part 1): Gary Glitter (Added)
3. Blockbuster:
Sweet (DJJD Volume 26)
4. Jeepster:
T. Rex (DJJD Volume 26)
5. Everyone’s A
Winner: Hot Chocolate (DJJD Volume 26)
Side B
6. California Man: Cheap
Trick (DJJD Volume 26)
7. Bang A Gong (Get
It On): T. Rex (DJJD Volume 23)
8. Rock and Roll
(Part 2): Gary Glitter (DJJD Volume 26)
9. Radar Love:
Golden Earring (DJJD Volume 26)
Side C
10. Mr. Roboto: Styx (DJJD
Volume 26)
11. Point of Know Return: Kansas (Added)
12. In the Year 2525: Zager
& Evans (DJJD Volume 23)
13. Help!: Deep
Purple (DJJD Volume 22)
14. Spirit in the Sky:
Norman Greenbaum (DJJD Volume 26)
Side D
15. Travelin’ Prayer: Billy
Joel (DJJD Volume 22)
16. Love’s Been Good to Me:
Johnny Cash (DJJD Volume 22)
17. Circle of Hands: Uriah Heep (DJJD
Volume 26)
18. Rock and Roll Fantasy: The
Kinks (DJJD Volume 26)
