Marc Bolan welcomed the advent of punk rock with the biggest smile he'd worn in years. The hippest young gunslingers could go on all night about the influence of the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the Ramones, but Bolan knew -- and subsequent developments proved -- that every single one of them had been nurtured in his arms, growing up with the ineffable stream of brilliant singles he slammed out between 1970-1972, and rehearsing their own stardom to the soundtrack he supplied.
With tennis racquet guitars and hairbrushes for mikes, they stood before the mirror and practiced the Bolan Boogie. Of course, most punks only knew three chords. That was all Marc ever taught them. Dandy in the Underworld, released early in 1977, confirmed Bolan's punkoid preeminence. Still retaining its predecessors' demented soul revue edge (most successfully via the yearning "Soul of My Suit") but packed solid with powerful pop (the previous summer's hit "I Love to Boogie" included), Bolan's personal predictions for the punk scene literally exploded out of the grooves.
The title track and the churning "Visions of Domino" all bristle with revitalized energy, while "Jason B. Sad" cheekily medleys Bolan's own "Bang a Gong" and "Telegram Sam" melodies into a dead-end drama utterly in keeping with the new wave's own belief that the future was futile. By the time the album wraps up with the rock'n'armageddon-flavored "Teen Riot Structure," Bolan was not simply wearing the mantel of punk godfatherhood, he was happily sticking safety pins through it and preparing his next move, the driving "Celebrate Summer" single -- absent from the original album, but included now as one of five bonus tracks appended to the Edsel remaster. Riding in on buzzsaw guitar and thundering bass, it packed a killer chorus and an uplfting message ("Hey little punk, forget that junk and celebrate summer with me") and it really was the greatest record he'd made in years.
It was also his last -- a month after its release, Marc Bolan was dead. Sorrow immediately imbibed Dandy in the Underworld with a dignity that, had Bolan lived, it probably wouldn't have otherwise deserved -- it is not, overall, one of his strongest albums, and the demos and outtakes included on the later volumes of the Unchained series suggest that his proposed next album would have left it far behind. But conjecture, like hindsight, can be a dangerous gauge. At the time, Dandy not only seemed bloated with promise, it was pregnant with foreboding as well. Listen again to the lyrics of the title track -- self-mythologizing autobiography and not a happy ending in sight. Just like real life.(Dave Thompson, allmusic.com)
...and about the ''Alternate Dandy...''
Upon its original release in spring 1977, Dandy in the Underworld was widely applauded as Marc Bolan's best album in three years, a blending of his own recent moves toward a rootsier, R&B-inflected sound and the sudden shock of punk rock. It is no surprise, then, to discover that Bolan's demos and rough mixes for the record echoed those same discoveries. Prince of Players (its title taken from a lyric in the title track) follows the standard Edsel procedure of unearthing each of the original album's songs in alternate form, offering up a glimpse of how Bolan arrived at the final cut, but also showing just how disciplined that process was.
None of the demos vary too much from the finished thing, but they do pack an unexpected freshness -- the distorted guitar solo which bisects "I Love to Boogie" is positively overwhelming, while the speed with which Bolan was moving is illustrated by the fact that several tracks no longer exist in early studio incarnations, and are replaced by live renditions instead. Equally startling is the realization that for the first time in some years, Bolan was actually recording material as he wrote it, rather than relying on existing compositions as he had in the past. Only two songs on the completed album predated the sessions -- the previous summer's hit "I Love to Boogie," of course, and "Visions of Domino," recounted from the earlier "Funky London Childhood."
The regular album is accompanied, as usual, with a smattering of associated singles and B-sides, again in varying states of incompleteness. Most are entertaining, and a couple are vital -- fast-forward, for example, to the rough take of "Celebrate Summer," the last single Bolan released during his lifetime. It was intended as a celebration not only of the season, but also of all the seismic shocks that had shaken British music that year (summer was heaven in 1977) and, if you can get past the tape hiss which betrays the track's homegrown origins, "Celebrate Summer" captures why. Bolan is in his best voice in years, and if you want further evidence of his newfound fire, an instrumental take of the same song is all but indistinguishable in places from the Damned's "Neat Neat Neat."
Neither is that an accident -- the young punks supported T Rex on their final U.K. tour. Prince of Players is the final album in Edsel's re-examination of Bolan's 1972-1977 album catalog, meaning that the six albums that Bolan recorded during that period have now spawned 23 different collections -- and, it has to be said, the barrel has been scraped down to the woodwork on more than a few occasions. The alternate, almost-instrumental version of "To Know Him Is to Love Him" is no better than the completed take, and the closing "Weird Strings" is just that. Weird strings and freaked electronics. But even in the face of material that Bolan himself would never have allowed off the shelf, everything is, in its own way, irresistible. And why? Because everyone still loves to boogie.
(Dave Thompson, allmusic.com)
I remember the first time I heard the Soul Of My Suit single and thought, ''Wow, Bolan is back'' (although he never really left for me). The album could have been the most important of his whole career. But it was his last one.
Marc Bolan was often disparagingly called a pop star for teen boppers during his career. With this reduction to a partial aspect of his career, he was certainly wrong.
For me personally Marc Bolan belongs to the most important personalities of Rock'n'Roll. So, that had to be said as well :-) . Enjoy.(Frank)
To name some of the artists: Evie Sands, Me And You, The Lovenotes, Jerri Michaels, Jo Ann King, Janie Grant, Christine Cooper, The Bitter Sweets, Toni Stante, Patti LaBelle, Antoinette.The collection often (of course not only) moves beyond the ''mainstream'' and on a high class level. My favourite volumes are 4 and 5 at the moment. If you like good pop music, this collection is for you! Enjoy.(Frank)
