#Pink Fairiers

[musicmedkit-blog]

The Album Unicorn by Tyrannosaurus Rex.

T. Rex is best known for glam metal, the screaming sound of Marc Bolan's guitars (and, at my most capricious, I imagine his screaming sound as he died in a car crash whilst being driven by the best performer of one of my most favorite northern soul song. How prescient that he called his last album Dandy in the Underworld.). But his roots in English rock and psychedelic music run far deeper than turning on some amps and instructing listeners to thrust a meaty drumstick against a large, loud bronze sound making object and then begin copulating.. This is more than evident in Unicorn, which is my personal favorite of Bolan's output, not least because it features much more mythological and romantic influence than the most successful part of his career would. Somewhere between a falsetto Dylan and an albeit-just-too-literary Donovan is this entry into the word of folk/psych/rock. The album even features the full name of T. Rex before the short form became an entirely new sort of band. Here we have Marc Bolan collaborating with Steven Peregrine Took. The music is acoustic guitar and various types of percussion played by the two men, and it sounds like they were given the keys to the studio because being only two, they could not do much damage. 

And oh, the way they title the tracks! My personal favorites are the title track "She Was Born to Be My Unicorn", which features the trademark reverb heavy vocals that seep throughout this album, and some lyrics that come directly out of an intelligent if awkward high schooler's visions of a pretentious rock opera. This is followed by another favorite, the fadeout to side one, "Like a White Star, Tangled and Far, Tulip That's What You Are". I just like to say the title out loud, but the music follows through, making an awkward verbal construction seem meaningful. This is romantic rock and roll at its most sublime: a man, a guitar, another man, a bongo, and the creation of some tranced-out folk influenced mystical music. The whole album, which feels like an initiation into a strange cult that upholds Blake and Wordsworth above Mick Jagger and/or the old blues men the best rock and roll rips off, is one of my personal favorite entries into the loose association of musical acts called the British Underground. 

See Also:

Arthur Brown

Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

Gong

Hawkwind

Pink Fairies

And so on.