For those who aren't familiar with this band, especially people outside of the UK, T-Rex was basically Marc Bolan, who help fueled a glam rock movement in British music in the 70s.
Originally Bolan's band, Tyrannosaurus Rex, was a vision of psychedelic-folk acoustic rock, which you'd only have to listen to music in the 60s to know that this was basically the popular music of the time. It wasn't until the band released "Ride a White Swan" under the shorten (and easier to spell) name, T-Rex. The song hit #2 on the UK charts and they had a certified hit song.
Using a similar stanza of electric guitar and hand-clapping, but this time adding a bassy-bass line, Bolan released another hit song "Hot Love". The song soared to number one and was so popular that even lolita pop singer, Lio, did a cover of this song in French, and UK band The Fattellis sang a weird mashup of T-Rex's "Hot Love" and Goldfrapp's "Ooh La La".
Like I said, outside of the UK, T-Rex saw little success, mostly because Marc Bolan met a tragic end at the age of 29. I don't know how true this is, as it is written in wikipedia, so take this with a grain of salt, but according to the entry, Bolan had a fear of flying and chose to travel by car... so it's a bit of an irony that he died by a car accident.
So what does this have to do with Christmas? Well, one of the best Christmas song is T-Rex's "Christmas Bop", originally scheduled as a holiday release in 1975, but eventually it got canceled by EMI records. I don't know the reasoning behind the cancellation, but if you listen to the lyrics, there might be a small reference to the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun".... Whatever the reason, there was a few pressing of the 7" that were made available to Bolan's fan club 7" - but the song was never made commercially available. So when you listen to the song, please note the unconventional soulful backup singers and violins, this is really unlike anything T-Rex that we're used to hearing.
With any good, nay, great song, Bolan made a few demo version of the song to see how well it tested. The first demo I have was released a few years ago under the compilation "Work in Progress", and in this version, you can hear the backup singers doing "Christmas, T-Rex-mas" more clearly than in the final mix, which when I hear "t-rex-mas", it makes the song cheesy. But what it has is more bass, which I wish were used in the final single mix.
Also, there was an even more tragic version of this song. This mix of the song features jingle bells or something and generally more "christmassy" sound.
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Originally Bolan's band, Tyrannosaurus Rex, was a vision of psychedelic-folk acoustic rock, which you'd only have to listen to music in the 60s to know that this was basically the popular music of the time. It wasn't until the band released "Ride a White Swan" under the shorten (and easier to spell) name, T-Rex. The song hit #2 on the UK charts and they had a certified hit song.
Using a similar stanza of electric guitar and hand-clapping, but this time adding a bassy-bass line, Bolan released another hit song "Hot Love". The song soared to number one and was so popular that even lolita pop singer, Lio, did a cover of this song in French, and UK band The Fattellis sang a weird mashup of T-Rex's "Hot Love" and Goldfrapp's "Ooh La La".
Like I said, outside of the UK, T-Rex saw little success, mostly because Marc Bolan met a tragic end at the age of 29. I don't know how true this is, as it is written in wikipedia, so take this with a grain of salt, but according to the entry, Bolan had a fear of flying and chose to travel by car... so it's a bit of an irony that he died by a car accident.
So what does this have to do with Christmas? Well, one of the best Christmas song is T-Rex's "Christmas Bop", originally scheduled as a holiday release in 1975, but eventually it got canceled by EMI records. I don't know the reasoning behind the cancellation, but if you listen to the lyrics, there might be a small reference to the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun".... Whatever the reason, there was a few pressing of the 7" that were made available to Bolan's fan club 7" - but the song was never made commercially available. So when you listen to the song, please note the unconventional soulful backup singers and violins, this is really unlike anything T-Rex that we're used to hearing.
With any good, nay, great song, Bolan made a few demo version of the song to see how well it tested. The first demo I have was released a few years ago under the compilation "Work in Progress", and in this version, you can hear the backup singers doing "Christmas, T-Rex-mas" more clearly than in the final mix, which when I hear "t-rex-mas", it makes the song cheesy. But what it has is more bass, which I wish were used in the final single mix.
Also, there was an even more tragic version of this song. This mix of the song features jingle bells or something and generally more "christmassy" sound.
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Subscribe on iTunes
Subscribe via RSS
Add to Google
Add to Yahoo
____
Archive of this show at archive.org. More information on mypodcast.com
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