I sometimes forget that, before the early 1980s, when new wave and synth-pop bands picked up on some of the most annoying (to me, at least) stylistic elements of David Bowie—the icy sheen of both his Berlin albums as well as his Thin White Duke persona—that he had contemporaries in the 1970s who were more likely to ape the space-rockin’ alien sexgod output of Ziggy and his subsequent “tougher” works. An obvious example would be early Be-Bop Deluxe, a band I feel pretty cool about liking but have yet to be granted “Cool Points” for having done so. I’m calling these artists Fauxwies, like forgotten Fauxwie David Werner, who for some reason popped into my head the other day. He had a late-’70s minor hit song that I liked, possibly the one in the accompanying YouTube clip, and then I never heard of him again. Why? Beside his immediate disciples of Glam, there were others, weren’t there, like that Jobriath guy?

Why did the Teutonic Ice Prince side of Bowie dominate in influence through the 1980s? Why did I have to hold those bands against Bowie for the next 20 years? What was wrong with following the template set by Rockin’ Bowie, as the Fauxwies did?