The Prettiest Star

The first time I had the pleasure of listening to this song, it entranced me. I was listening to Aladdin Sane with my father, a Bowie fan, and this song came on. The intro was so exquisite, and was adequate for the production of erect hair upon the rear of my neck. The Prettiest Star was released as a single in 1970, but it only sold 800 copies, so it was re-recorded and released on Aladdin Sane in 1973. When it was first recorded, Bowie hired Marc Bolan to do the guitar work for the single, but in the re-recording, Mick Ronson duplicated the guitar almost perfectly, this is the re-recording that was released on Aladdin Sane. Now I have had two thoughts on the meaning of this song, he wrote and played this song to Angela Barnett over the phone, and then proposed to her, but to me, this sounds like past tense, I think he's talking about someone in his past, but hey, that's one opinion. Tell me your thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Jack The Stripper/Fairies Wear Boots

Well I've always been a fan of early Sabbath in particular, So I was listening to Paranoid, and track eight came up... Now I have a lot of affection toward guitar intros and riffs, and this song is just chalk full of fantastic cutis anserina(goose bump)-forming guitar spiels. This song is composed of two parts, Jack The Stripper, and Fairies Wear Boots. Jack the Stripper is the instrumental intro, and the instrumental part after the first chorus, while Fairies Wear Boots is the verse and chorus of the song. This song was released on Black Sabbath's second album, Paranoid, in 1970, which hit the UK's top album shortly after its' release. The meanings of the song are quite differed, and there are a few different stories to it. According to Tommie Iommi(guitarist), Ozzy Osbourne(vocalist) and Geezer Butler(bassist) were smoking cannabis outside and observed fairies wearing boots, so they later wrote the lyrics to this song. According to Geezer, they were encountered by skinheads, and derogatorily called them fairies, fairies being a derogatory term for feminine males, and wrote the lyrics after that. According to Ozzy, he wrote this song while he was not in his right state of mind, and has no idea what it is about.

Flying

Stepping back a bit from the classic and hard rock, and returning to a softer, more blues influenced band. Flying was released by Faces in march of 1970 on First Steps, and was their first album since the breakup of  Small Faces, when the vocalist/guitarist left to form Humble Pie. To make up for the loss of him, they replaced him with two members from the Jeff Beck group. First Steps was never really popular and was many times regarded as "too soon", this referring to the recent breakup of their last band. this is a soft song, that in my opinion, sounds very preacher-like, probably due to the organ. I believe this song is about dreams, returning to the place to you once were, seeing yourself do past things, almost phantom-like.