Friday, July 22, 2016

The Heart of Rock and Soul # 905 T. Rex


'Marc Bolan is often perceived as a sort of poor man's David Bowie: They shared producer Tony Visconti, flirtatious androgyny and an affinity for the early seventies British style known as 'power pop'. Each began his career by making florid albums although Bolan's flower power poesy had far more groove than Bowie's West End theatrics.

When they turned to making rock and roll in the early seventies, Bolan again had all the best of it - at least in singles terms. While Bowie sometimes scored with stuffy, spacey funk. Bolan ripped into ripe, simple riffs, exuding in open expressions of sexual passion: 'Bang a Gong' uses ' dirty sweet' as its ultimate term of endearment, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Coupled with the honking guitar line (so biting it makes the Chuck Berry reference he whispers at the end seem earned). Bolan's overheated yowling and groaning makes the record a comic-erotic masterwork.'



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