It's Bowie Birthday week, and this week on Teenage Kicks, we'll feature songs from his Ziggy Stardust era. With The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars — a loose concept album about an alien rock star who comes to Earth to warn us about an apocalyptic future — Bowie helped catapult Glam rock into the stratosphere. The Ziggy era included albums Pin Ups and Aladdin Sane, and then, just a little more than a year after it began, he retired the Ziggy persona. Bowie would go on to recast himself — as the Thin White Duke, The Berlin avant guard artist, the Let's Dance pop superstar, and as music's most thoughtful elder statesman — but no version of Bowie would change the sound, look, and attitude of rock and roll like Ziggy.

Segments

Playlist, hour 1

Playlist, hour 2