T. Rex: Classic or Dud?

The problem with T. Rex anthologies is that there's *never* been a true career-spanning collection in all the endless series of them that have come out and presumably will keep coming out. It all comes down to issues of rights and the like -- essentially, all the Tyrannosaurus Rex stuff and T. Rex material through _Electric Warrior_ is now issued by A&M Europe (_EW_ itself is, I think, still handled by Warners in the States, though this may have finally changed). Everything from _The Slider_ through to his death, meanwhile, was most recently handled by Edsel in the UK and Polygram in the States. Even though A&M and Polygram are now all part of the same massive monolith (Vivendi/ Universal), though, no coordinated collection is still forthcoming. Short answer -- the Bramleys, who have had the rights to all the later T. Rex stuff since shortly after Bolan's death, aren't letting it happen. They've instead cagily allowed for an endless series of reissues of the material they do have on various labels and the like, with only the Edsel/Polygram series really being the best for serious collectors -- everything else has been astoundingly shoddy. The Bramleys are regarded by most serious T. Rex fans these days as being scum not fit to pick garbage off the street, and that's putting it very mildly.

Your best bet is to find the _Bolan Boogie_ collection for a hunk of the earlier singles and some fun B-sides and the _Great Hits: 1972- 1977_ collection for the later A-sides. _A Wizard, A True Star_ makes for a good three-disc overview of the later material as well. After that, you're pretty much on your own.

I never rated them but I bet I'd love them now if I could just find a good best of.

Best Lyric : "Have you ever seen a woman coming out of New York City - with a frog in her hand?"

If you want a clue about where Marc got the "T-Rex sound" from have a listen to The Kinks "King Kong" from 1969 (bonus track on the "Arthur" re-issue), or even "Act Nice and Gentle" ,the b-side of "Waterloo Sunset".

I'm not saying that was the only influence, or that it even matters, it just gave me a laugh, that's all.

As for "King Kong" being a blueprint for T. Rex's sound, that's weird because I've always thought that too. Not that Bolan ripped it off, but just that "King Kong" has a lot of similarities to the classic mid-era Bolan stuff.

And of course, everyone knows that the Smith's "Panic" is just a straight ripoff of "Metal Guru", eh? Brilliant nonetheless...

A couple of years later, Johnny Marr talked about in an interview how much he loved T. Rex and admitted various clonings and borrowings for Smiths songs. I can only hope that the clown I dealt with read that and had several heart attacks.

It slightly surprises me that fewer people have drawn the analogy 'twixt Bolan and Adam Ant (teen idols at the start of a decade who'd come through the dominant subculture towards the end of the previous one); both were also overtaken by brasher and more obviously manufactured (not necessarily an insult) takes on the same thing.

I like them. From my point of view they're the band who make the word 'groovy' get up and groove.

*there is this New York Dolls song 'Frankenstein' that goes 'I'm asking you - as a person - do you think you could ever make it with Frankenstein?' so it has always seemed to me really funny to use the phrase 'as a person' or variants thereon

This DID finally change:

A 4-CD box set covering Marc's career from his early solo work in 1964 through his work with John's Children, Tyrannosaurus Rex and T. Rex 108 tracks all digitally remastered including 3 previously unreleased tracks, early demos, rare 45's ultra rare recordings with John's Children and cuts from all of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and T. Rex albums. A 64-page booklet containing rare and previously unseen photographs as well as an introduction by Tony Visconti.

If you're made of money and need a starting point, go for it.

http://www.borntoboogie.net/Pages_other/update_oct04.htm

Project takes Sanctuary!

Since this site was launched in June 2004, great progress has been made with the Born to Boogie project, leading closer to the realisation of the definitive Marc Bolan & T.Rex visual experience.

The release label chosen for the project is Sanctuary. Their recent achievements include returning Morrissey to the top of the charts, two number one UK hit singles (Mad World from Donnie Darko and the Ozzy & Kelly Osborne duet) plus best-selling DVDs for the Who (The Kids Are Alright) and The Undertones. Sanctuary are taking every care to produce the finest quality product, to work with the people who were close to T.Rex in 1972, and to employ the best engineers, editors, directors and producers.

The great clean-up begins

On 6 September 2004, the old cans of film were transported from a warehouse in Middlesex to a facility in Wardour Street, Soho, for cleaning: removing dust, grime and old bits of glue, bathing the films in chemicals to repair scratches, and bringing them up to the best possible standard for transfer to digital.

An original colour negative of the second Wembley concert has been located. This is being worked on to restore the picture quality and to reveal the movie in high definition rosy-cheeked glory for the first time. (There will be no changes made to the actual content of the original movie.)

Editing work is underway to construct and re-construct the Wembley concerts for the second of the two DVDs. Split-screen technology is being utilised to show performances from different angles at the same time: stage left, stage right, front of stage and the rear of the Empire Pool. Some of the film is in colour, some in black and white, and when mixed together they make an amazing effect.

You can see Marc, Mickey, Steve and Bill from multi-angles all at once. The colour picture quality is better than anything seen before. Cadilac, Girl and Summertime Blues from the second concert – missing from the original movie – have been located and matched to sound tapes.

Work has yet to begin on restoring and mixing the sound, but when it does, the legendary Tony Visconti will be at the controls. We are delighted to have Tony on board for this project.

New documentary

An additional element of the DVD will be a new documentary about the making of Born to Boogie and the DVD project itself. BAFTA-nominated Mark Allen, director of the DVD, began filming for this on 11 October at a television studio in Bayswater, London W2. Rolan Bolan interviewed Tony Visconti, Mick Grey was interviewed with Emperor Rosko, and several fans who were at Wembley on 18 March 1972 recalled their memories of the day. All were treated to a special screening of previously unseen footage: fans outside the Empire Pool, a new edit of Jeepster with four-screen imagery, and a rehearsal edit of Tutti Frutti from the Apple sessions.

Provisional Release Date

Other major figures from 1972 in discussion with the producers to work on the project include Keith Morris, BP Fallon, and Masayoshi Sukita. Additional key people have been contacted in the hope that they, too, will come on board.

There is still a long way to go and the initial production process will take another two months at least. The provisional release date is May 2005, with a serious marketing campaign being lined up to ensure that everyone knows about Born to Boogie.

Can You Help?

If you happen to be in possession of any original super-8 or cine-film of the band in 1972, please contact us via the website email address. We would also be interested to hear about any rare items of memorabilia specific to 1972 which might be of use for illustrating the booklet or other elements of the DVD.

A further update will be posted on-site later this year so please check back with us. Thanks for your continuing interest in Born to Boogie.

I hope you got the reissues of these.

I was too busy working on Richard Nixon's campaign for president.

"Beard of Stars", as I remember, was heavier-sounding than "Unicorn", and the arrangements on those second 2 albums were lush compared with the first 2. I like those, but they're fairly extreme.

It's a fair part of it but not all of it (as the box set includes some of the early *earliest* stuff, like from 1965 and so on).

As for the mid period stuff, it's so good. As already said up thread, the most amazing is that it all sounds so minimal and it's basically always the same thing... but it works !

And about the Smiths/Metal Guru, yeah it's so obvious. Funny that it's not as well known as Oasis/Get it on, for instance.

Twenty years back, on the Pulp fan listserv (oh the memories) there was a guy insisting, loudly, constantly, that Johnny Marr was a totally original artist influenced by nobody. I pointed out the T. Rex connection and he continued to loudly deny it. I kinda hope, assuming he's still a megafan, that he's eaten plenty of crow over the years given Marr's many comments on the matter.

Eheh that was particularly stupid of that person since The Smiths have always declared their love for their numerous influences (60s girls groups, first period Rolling Stones, TRex, NY Dolls...).
As for Dandy I was surprised by the duos with a female singer : that's something new to me !

I spent quite a bit of time going through the Bolan clips on youtube.

June Child, his wife, was quite an interesting character: boyfriend of Syd Barrett, and then left her boyfriend Mick Mulligan (presumably the Mick Mulligan of George Melly's 1950s jazz era!) for Marc the same day he gave her a love poem, whereupon they spent their first few nights sleeping in a van on Wimbledon Common.

*girlfriend of Syd Barrett rather.

Bolan and her together look like a really strikingly beautiful couple.

Aw but Futuristic Dragon has got this wild cokey energy that I love.

Futuristic Dragon is SO much fun.

I love the entire T.Rex catalogue. I have no idea how the post-Slider records ever came to get such a mediocre reputation.

The aerie-faerie-elvenbollocks has aged fuckin' horribly, IMO.

I like Electric Warrior and The Slider, although my enjoyment of them hinges on whether or not I'm in the mood for Bolan's voice.

Marc Bolan, pre his vibrato, = Jake Bugg

Futuristic Dragon rules. "All Alone" maybe topping the "Young Americans" style. "My Little Baby" is great bubblegum pop.

i got vinyl copies of Zinc Alloy and Zip Gun, both albums i love despite the flaws. i like the stripped down production on Zinc Alloy tho i do think him ending his collaboration with Visconti as producer was a bad career move. those later records just don't sound as good as the earlier ones.

the post-Slider stuff is fine and there is some great stuff in there but the lows are really low. something like "Girl in the Thunderbolt Suit" or "Zip Gun Boogie" yeah he's always trolled that dumb bubblegum thing but some of these songs make you feel stupider for hearing them. it just doesn't work anymore. or it doesn't have the appeal it once did.

imo by the time he did "Dandy in the Underworld" he had found his footing again but too late and too tragic.

Jupiter Liam IMO is just the greatest, most genius Bolan number ever. The "you are my love, you are my baby section" is just heavenly pop music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxZqtAVZzNI

*LIAR

Girl in the thunderbolt suit do do do do...

I adore "Zip Gun Boogie". Dumb as fuck and it rocks.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/GloriaJones76.jpg/800px-GloriaJones76.jpg

"Jupiter Liar" is so good. he has this shimmery 70s wall of sound thing on here that makes me think of 70s Spector like Death of a Ladies Man. helps that Gloria Jones is singing on it.

"Space Boss" feels like it could be on side 2 of "The Slider".

are you are you are you are you now
are you are you are you are you are you now
the space boss

Definitely need to revisit Futuristic Dragon, as it's definitely been a good decade since I heard it but as soon as I fired up the youtube of "Jupiter Liar" I got the holy-shit-THIS-fucking-song! chills.

Basically there are no bad T Rex albums just don't listen to them all in a row.

The aerie-faerie-elvenbollocks has aged fuckin' horribly, IMO.

― more Allegro-like (Turrican)

it hasn't aged, we have.

unsurprisingly, Turrican is wrong yet again

Mmmmm..

It was a difficult listen at the time, those albums, but.

Those Tyrannosaurus Rex singles were actually hits - its easy to think it all started when Marc got the pop smarts w/ "Ride a white swan'

All the early Tyrannosaurus Rex stuff is of its time in the worst way I can possibly think of.

who cares it rules

my favorite early tracks are "Graceful Fat Sheba", "Iscariot", and "Like a White Star Tangled and Far Tulip That What You Are"

there is so much variety in the early stuff. weirdly beautiful trippy folk tunes like "Chateau in Virginia Waters" bumping up against elven bop like "Mustang Ford" a song bragging about having a car made out of alligators.

Adam otm

The stretch of songs on Side Two of Unicorn is one of my favorite stretches of songs on any record.

From "Evenings of Damask" to "The Misty Coast of Albany" in particular. Amazing.

"Unicorn" is so good. i like "My People Were Fair and Had Stars in their Hair..." a lot as well.

"Frowning Atahuallpa (My Inca Love)" is really good unless the hippie chanting is a dealbreaker for you. Marc was so good at conveying the proto-hippie Tolkein trickster magician a la Radagast the Brown, ie "I come from a time when the burning of trees was a crime" is a great fucking lyric.

"Seal of Seasons" is very lovely. the minimal percussion and backing vocals is nice, very fitting. it sounds like walking through leaves. it gives it a very pastoral, autumnal feeling. the lyrics for this (and most the early Tyrannosaurus Rex) are very poetic (and maybe a bit William Blake): "A salty shimmered shell of foam."

"Graceful Fat Sheba" has long been a favorite of mine. it is so slinky. it sounds like a spider creeping across a window. or a shadow sneakily crossing a room. Marc was very good at sketching out these bizarre characters, characters out of a psychedelic sci fi comic. that Amaj7 bridge is so spellbinding and forlorn.

there are so many great songs on those early albums. you easily could put together a very solid 2xLP from it all.

tbh of the Tyrannosaurus Rex stuff I've only listened to My People Were Fair etc, and I did not like it at all. Couldn't stand Marc's singing, ymmv obviously.

Of post-Slider T-Rex I think Tanx/Zip Gun/Zinc Alloy are a bit of a drop off but Futuristic Dragon & Dandy in the Underworld are both great.

This topic made me go and fill the hole in my T.Rex catalogue, which was A Beard of Stars from 1970 and the self-titled album from 1971.

I know I've had these albums, or at least heard them in some detail, at some point in the past. I just didn't hang on to them for whatever reason.

Listening to a Beard of Stars now and it rules excessively.

that's probably my favorite of the first five

Amazing record given what he'd lost with Took.

Unicorn is probably my favorite of the early ones.

the first T. Rex album is very much in between the two styles and i think is the best overall ("Ride a White Swan" i consider his best track).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFvf3Pq_9M4

this video is a great live recording of that early sound. Tyrannosaurus Rex at Middle Earth in 1967 playing "Sarah Crazy Child".

I can get on board with swan as a bolan PO1

That clip is 50 years old. Strange to think.

oh, look at john peel!

When I first got an iPod, circa 2005, one of the first albums that ended up on was the self-titled album from 1971 with a bunch of bonus tracks. In those days, loading something like ten of fifteen albums on there, while just a sliver of the iPod's 20GB storage, was totally novel for the fact that I could put that many albums on shuffle. In the past, the most albums I had been able to shuffle at once was five on my old five disc CD changer.

Anyway, this particular version of the band's 1971 album had two versions of 'Ride a White Swan' — the proper single version and an earlier demo recording. Even shuffling that many albums' worth of contents, the same tunes would inevitably pop up numerous times. So, I heard that song a lot. And I liked it a lot.

The iPod's main use was to play music when driving. It reached a point where I had taken on the joke of pronouncing 'Ride a White Swan' as "THE GREATEST MOMENT IN ROCK AND ROLL HISTORY" (yes, in a very over the top, booming, boxing announcer voice) to my at the time wife whenever it would play. That, naturally, evolved into a further joke where I would try to anticipate when the iPod would play 'Ride a White Swan' as one song was ending. I would try to build it up by starting off very calm and monotone when one song was fading out or coming to an end with, "And now, I would like to present to you. . ."

Most times, it didn't work. But, hoo boy, those few times that it did and I got to do the full statement were totally worth it.

^ fav'ed this post in my mind

great post

^thirded

Good Bolan documentary 'Cosmic Dancer' on BBC 4 at the moment. Effective use of extracts from his diary and interviews to drive the narrative.

Conversely, I thought it was horrible. Weird voice-over actor as Marc, an opening car crash recreation which was as absurd as it was insenstive and a few CGI sequences which appeared to straight out of a Creed video. The music itself didn't get much of a look in

Trying the Sky arts documentary now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycUBnk-vcVE

if you're curious

So we've never done a T Rex artist poll have we?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrOLHYD1D84

when Marc Bolan invented Robert Smith

From the last album. What the heck kind of music is this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNvEVcV3OwA

lunacy is legend

Pain and Love sounds like a Strokes/Liars/Gossip era band doing their next phase disco thing in 2005