Existential meditations on the passing of time, eerie guitar sounds,  Simon Gallup’s crisp bass lines coated in hazy synths and piano passages  that sound as if they were played by ghosts in a haunted house. In a  clear departure from the still somewhat punk-rocky vibe of their debut, Seventeen Seconds slowly arrives at the kind of sound The Cure  eventually became famous.

One that combines the dire and despair of  human experience with a pinch of cheeky playfulness. Even though people  associate them with all things dark and bleak, they are at the same time  a cheerful band, in a wonderfully bizarre way. That undoubtedly has got  to do with some of the biggest hits they went on to produce and the  aesthetics they adapted as a means of sticking a middle finger in the  faces of everyone who pigeon-holed them as gruff and drab. But if you  have the advantage of knowing what will come, you can foresee some of  that in their earlier work already.

"Again and again and again and again and again"  - A Forest (The Cure)

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The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been  announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources.  Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that  they thought they wanted. Ziggy was in a rock-and-roll band and the kids  no longer want rock-and-roll…”

The concept follows the character “Ziggy Stardust”, a space alien who  manifests himself as a self-indulgent rock star who takes this form to  try and convince humanity to alter their path of destruction.

Through a very long and distinguished career, David Bowie’s absolute classic is the 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It takes the musicianship and experimental of Bowie’s previous album, Hunky Dory  in 1971, to a whole new level where Bowie really hit his stride and  forged his distinctive sound. Although it is a concept album, nothing  feels forced and nowhere is it repetitive, just a grand parade of songs  which collectively tell a story. Bowie’s lyrics and vocals are deep and  emotive, albeit tragic, while guitarist Mick Ronson held the music down to a respectable rock level with his sharp and fat guitar riffs.

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This week on the Vinyl Crusade we feature the 4th Installment of the show dedicated to the cultural revolution and esoteric magnificence of Led Zeppelin IV. Tune in Fridays at 6.00pm EAST and Saturdays and Sundays at 9.30am EST and 6.30am PST on Megazine Radio.

It was in a mystic way that the strange world of Led Zeppelin IV  began to open itself to me. The album conjured up a world of forests and  magic and spirits, of gods and fertility rites and the dark secret  powers of the earth. There was a kind of “wayward Tantric Magic” evident in the lyrics, melodies and intentions illuminated in their music. We were invited to enter into the mysteries of primitive ritual, to  “dance in the dark of night and sing to the morning light.” The songs  invited us to re-imagine a long forgotten world, to turn away from the  dominance of Christian-Western rationality towards the sensual pagan magic of another time and place: “Tired eyes in the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.”

The songs promised a deep synthesis of the  erotic and the religious, a convergence of drugs and mysticism, the  awakening of a strange but authentic “reason” which transcends the  stifling limits of distorted modern escapism, so dominated by technology and utility. As  the majestic nature inspired ode to all humanity “Stairway to Heaven” so aptly puts it:

And it’s whispered that soon

If we all call the tune

Then the piper will lead us to reason

And a new day will dawn

For those who stand long

And the forests will echo with laughter.

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