Buoyed by two U.K. number one singles in "Telegram Sam" and "Metal Guru," The Slider became T. Rex's most popular record on both sides of the Atlantic, despite the fact that it produced no hits in the U.S. The Slider essentially replicates all the virtues of Electric Warrior, crammed with effortless hooks and trashy fun. All of Bolan's signatures are here – mystical folk-tinged ballads, overt sexual come-ons crooned over sleazy, bopping boogies, loopy nonsense poetry, and a mastery of the three-minute pop song form. The main difference is that the trippy mix of Electric Warrior is replaced by a fuller, more immediate-sounding production.

Although it has been completely overshadowed by the "official" CD and DVD versions of Marc Bolan's epochal rock and fantasy movie, this original attempt to re-create the soundtrack is nevertheless a worthwhile package. It targets not the full-blown glory of the film, with its dramatic in-concert centerpiece, but rather an overview of memorable moments - the string-powered "Children of the Revolution" that closes the album, the Mad Hatter-style "Tea Party," Bolan and Ringo Starr's madcap "Some People Like to Rock" routine, and so on. Of course, there is plenty of live material here, and the band sounds great - this was T. Rex at the peak of their powers, and while there are better-quality recordings out there, none recapture the sheer magic of the occasion like this one. Again, if you own (or intend to pick up) the CD soundtrack, you have no need to hunt this down as well…

Tyrannosaurus Rex's transformation from oracles of U.K. hippie culture to boogie-friendly rock stars began with the album A Beard of Stars, released in early 1970 when the band picked up electric instruments, and by the time the year was out, Marc Bolan had pared their name down to the more user-friendly T. Rex and dropped their first album with the new moniker. Oddly enough, while the songs on T. Rex bear a much stronger melodic and lyrical resemblance to what would make the band famous on Electric Warrior in 1971, the tone of the album is a bit more pastoral than A Beard of Stars; on most of the tunes, the electric guitars are more successfully integrated into the arrangements so they lack the jarring immediacy of "Elemental Children" or "Pavilions of the Sun," and Mickey Finn still wasn't using a full drum kit, so the tunes don't quite have the kick of a full-on rock band…

Buoyed by two U.K. number one singles in "Telegram Sam" and "Metal Guru," The Slider became T. Rex's most popular record on both sides of the Atlantic, despite the fact that it produced no hits in the U.S. The Slider essentially replicates all the virtues of Electric Warrior, crammed with effortless hooks and trashy fun. All of Bolan's signatures are here – mystical folk-tinged ballads, overt sexual come-ons crooned over sleazy, bopping boogies, loopy nonsense poetry, and a mastery of the three-minute pop song form. The main difference is that the trippy mix of Electric Warrior is replaced by a fuller, more immediate-sounding production.

German compilation features all the T. Rex A-sides released between 1972 & 1978 on disc one & 28 B-sides on disc two, 16 page colour booklet. First, full disclosure is necessary as to what's missing. Ready? On this glorious double-CD collection, there isn't one track from T. Rex's Electric Warrior. That's right, "Bang a Gong," "Mambo Sun," and "Jeepster" are all absent. Why? Simple: it appears Warner is recalcitrant to license that wondrous album to anyone in any form. It turns out that this is simply a small complaint because none of the tracks from Electric Warrior should be separated from its full corpus anyway – it is an album in the purest and more literal sense of the world. Getting to what is here, listeners do get tracks from that beautiful slab The Slider as well as Tanx, Light of Love , Bolan's Zip Gun, Dandy in the Underworld, Futuristic Dragon, and a slew of 45s never issued on LP.

T.Rex Gold brings together the greatest Hits of Marc Bolan & T.Rex across 3 CDs with original artwork. 45 classic tracks including ‘Get It On’, Metal Guru’, ‘Hot Love’, ‘Children Of The Revolution’, ‘Ride A White Swan’, ‘Telegram Sam’, ’20th Century Boy’ and ‘Cosmic Dancer’.

The most blatantly, and brilliantly, portentous of Marc Bolan's albums since the transitional blurring of boundaries that was Beard of Stars, almost seven years prior, Futuristic Dragon opens on a wave of unrelenting feedback, guitars and bombast, setting an apocalyptic mood for the record which persists long after that brief (two minutes) overture is over. Indeed, even the quintessential bop of the succeeding "Jupiter Liar" is irrevocably flavored by what came before, dirty guitars churning beneath a classic Bolan melody, and the lyrics a spiteful masterpiece. While the oddly Barry White-influenced "Ride My Wheels" continues flirting with the neo-funk basics of 1975's Bolan's Zip Gun, the widescreen sonic majesty of Futuristic Dragon was, if anything, even more gratuitously ambitious than its predecessor.

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.

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…

The most iconic band of the U.K. glam rock scene of the '70s, T. Rex were the creation of Marc Bolan, who started out as a cheerfully addled acolyte of psychedelia and folk-rock until he turned to swaggering rock & roll with boogie rhythm and a tricked-up fashion sense. For a couple years, T. Rex were the biggest band in England and a potent cult item in the United States. If their stardom didn't last, their influence did, and T. Rex's dirty but playful attitude and Bolan's sense of style and rock star moves would show their influence in metal, punk, new wave, and alternative rock; it's all but impossible to imagine the '80s new romantic scene existing without Bolan's influence. In 1977, Bolan was killed in a car accident, and the band disbanded. "Great Hits" is a compilation album, initially released in 1972 on EMI label.

These "Final Cuts" are an odds-and-sods collection of music Marc Bolan had been working on – and it's in various stages of completion – before he was killed in 1977. Some of the music here appears on other recordings of late cuts; some are reworkings of tunes or alternate takes of tracks that appeared on Futuristic Dragon or Dandy in the Underworld; some never appeared at all. You have to be a hardcore T. Rex and/or Bolan fan to want this music. There is a weird version of "To Know You Is to Love You" with a vocal by Gloria Jones (the disco star who was Bolan's wife), and the rest has either new tags, or more or less guitars, or reworked melodies. You get the picture. Usually Edsel is spot-on, but this is dodgy. About the only thing you can really compliment the compilation producers for is good-quality sound – it's top-notch for what it is.

Recorded during Marc Bolan's U.S. visits during 1971 and 1972, Spaceball is the first full re-counting of four American radio sessions previously made partially available as a bonus LP within the Marc label's Till Dawn compilation in 1985. Eight songs, taped in L.A. in 1972, are reprised from that set; 11 more are collected here. The overall mood of the two CDs is sparse, but astonishingly dynamic, with the earliest session – taped for WBAI, New York, in June 1971 – especially remarkable. It opens with a pair of unaccompanied Bolan performances, previewing the as-yet-unreleased "Cosmic Dancer" and "Planet Queen." The guitar heavy "Elemental Child" follows, a surprising inclusion given the song's freak-out dynamics, but it's an effective piece, all the more so after bandmates Mickey Finn and bassist Steve Currie join in a few minutes into the song.

Having reinvented himself as a bionic soulboy across the course of 1974's Zinc Alloy, Bolan's Zip Gun was less a reiteration of Marc Bolan's new direction than a confirmation of it. Much of the album returns to the understated romp he had always excelled at – the delightful knockabout "Precious Star," the unrepentant boogie of "Till Dawn" and the pounding title track all echo with the effortless lightheartedness which was Bolan at his most carelessly buoyant, while "Token of My Love" is equally incandescent, a playful blues which swiftly became a major in-concert favorite. But the essence of Zip Gun remains firmly in the funky pastures which characterized Zinc Alloy, with the only significant difference lying in the presentation.

T. Rex were an English rock band, formed in 1967 by singer-songwriter and guitarist Marc Bolan. The band was initially called Tyrannosaurus Rex, and released four psychedelic folk albums under this name. In 1969, Bolan began to shift from the band's early acoustic sound to an electric one. The following year, he shortened their name to T. Rex. The 1970 release of the single "Ride a White Swan" marked the culmination of this development, and the group soon became a commercial success as part of the emerging glam rock scene. From 1970 until 1973, T. Rex encountered a popularity in the UK comparable to that of the Beatles, with a run of eleven singles in the UK top ten.

A new T. Rex box set called simply 1972 brings together studio recordings, broadcasts and performances by Marc Bolan and T. Rex and is available to pre-order in 6LP coloured vinyl and 5CD editions, with limited quantities being available with a print of The Slider SIGNED by producer Tony Visconti.