T. Rex, Tyrannosaurus Rex - Bolan At The Beeb - A BBC Recording (Remastered) (2007)

Bolan at the Beeb is a triple-disc set that rounds up all the available Tyrannosaurus Rex/T. Rex BBC recordings (according to the liner notes there are still forty-five performances unaccounted for).

From the formation of Tyrannosaurus Rex in the summer of ’67 through to the height of T. Rextasy in 1971, the BBC regularly featured sessions with Marc Bolan; probably more often than any other recording artist. Allotting any one act such a proportionately large amount of time often led to accusations that certain BBC producers were showing favoritism towards Marc. Biased or not, Bolan final session for the BBC would take place at the end of 1971. It may not be a coincidence that T. Rextasy came crashing to a close shortly after.

Somewhere within the vicinity of forty years have past and the politics of yesterday belong to those that are now retired and dearly departed. The rest of us have this incredible three-disc audio documentation of Marc Bolan recordings while he was at the top of his game. SCORE!!!! There has been a lot of archival T. Rex releases over the years. Many of them have comprised of selected recordings featured on this release albeit from an inferior source. Barring in mind the bulk of these releases are culled from Marc’s endless spools of home demos, Bolan At The Beeb is, by far, the greatest archival T. Rex CD to date.

It shouldn’t go without being said that the obscure tracks, ‘My Baby's Like a Cloudfall’ and ‘Funky Now Jam’, are sonically poor and the obscurity of these songs may have been intentional. The rest of this stuff? Man, Bolan was on fire. Blast it out you car windows. Hang it on your wall. Make a shirt out of it!!!