New Project 2 - Glam Rock

For our second project my group were looking at creating a Glam Rock piece. Historically Glam Rock focuses on issues with gender and sexuality. Glam was born out of the turbulent musical era of the early seventies and was originally called various things; Theatre rock, glitter rock, shock rock and gay rock. Most of these terms were derisive, but the form was durable and influential and inspired popular modern artists such as Madonna and My Chemical Romance. The genre is well known for is eccentrically dressed performers, such as David Bowie who dressed very in a more stereo typically feminine way, with the wacky make up, styled hair and accessories.

"Gender Bending and Gender Blending with Bryan Ferry and Roy Wood" is a chapter from Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. This book highlights the importance of gender in the glam rock genre. In reference to David Bowie, "The performative experiments that contributed to the development of Ziggy Stardust centered on two issues: transvestism and the development of explicitly artificial performance personae." Auslander, P (2006). Ziggy Stardust was David Bowie's performance alter ego who “Appeared on television wearing a frock and playing acoustic guitar.” Bowie revolutionised the genre with his rock performance based in theatrical characterisation. 

"Bowie and his guiatarist, Ronson became more and more explicitly sexual, with gestures that evoked both male camaraderie and a more sexualised homosociality. Bowie and his guiatarist, Ronson became more and more explicitly sexual - during a concert in 1972, Bowie famously simulated fellatio on Ronson and this routine and variations of it became staples of Ziggy Stardust concerts." Auslander, P (2006). The explicitness and sexualisation was new and it quickly became popular as well as gaining a large gay/trans audience.

Of course, it wasn't all about sexual identity. Many performers create a persona by whom they perfrom for a variety of reasons. "I can hide behind a role on satge and really enjoy performing." - Kate Bush {(quoted in Sutcliffe 2003, 77) Lenig, S. (2010)}