TREND I-SPY

Hard to believe it's been 40 years since David Bowie's landmark 1972 album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.  It will be reissued in a special 40th anniversary edition on June 5th 2012. The record, which was Bowie's fifth and features such enduring classics as Five Years, Moonage Daydream, Starman and Ziggy Stardust will be presented in several formats, including CD, 180-gram vinyl and 5.1 mix DVD.  The original album shows Bowie dressed as Ziggy standing with one foot on the steps leading into a building that, at the time, housed late photographer Brian Ward's makeshift studio .  Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet recently unveiled a plaque at the location in Heddon Street, London.  Kemp said, “Ziggy was the ultimate messianic rock star, and with him David Bowie successfully blurred the lines not just between boys and girls, but himself and his creation. Bowie was...

Patti Smith with Robert Mapplethorpe I recently read Just Kids Patti Smith's memoir of her relationship with the late artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and of their life together in the New York of the 1960s and 70s. It was wonderfully evocative of the music and art landscape of that particular time, dominated by the doyennes of Andy Warhol's Factory, Max's Kansas City and the Chelsea Hotel. I thought it was an absolute knock-out and wasn't surprised to learn that it won the National Book Award for nonfiction in November 2010. Before she was a rock star Patti Smith was a poet, inspired by other poets, and apparently not just by their work but also by their style and appearance. Arthur Rimbaud She worshiped the eighteenth century French poet, Arthur Rimbaud , and describes the shopping she did before undertaking a pilgrimage to his birthplace and grave in Charleville, France. On the Bowery I found an unconstructed raincoat of kelly green rubberized silk, a Dior b...