The story of an amoral asshole who slept with all of your women, illegally advertised himself all over the city of Cincinnati, danced with 30,000 crazy motherfuckers, questioned the roles of race, sex, disability & freedom of speech in society and made some folks smile along the way... ALL WHILE TRYING TO CURE CANCER. FUCK. YOU.

Is there any excuse for buying an album of re-creations of old T. Rex hits that don't feature T. Rex mainstay Marc Bolan? To be cut and dried, nope, even if that band happens to feature two T. Rex alumni, Mickey Finn and Paul Fenton. Recorded in late 2001, all but a couple of these songs were T. Rex chart hits in the 1970s. Lead singer Rob Benson does actually sound like Marc Bolan. But to state the obvious, what's the point in hearing remakes that differ from the originals principally in the slightly updated arrangements, featuring (to their considerable detriment) more slick and modernized technology than was heard on the old T. Rex recordings? None, that's what, especially since all of those original versions remain easily available. The overall effect is that of hearing a faithful T. Rex cover band, albeit one that has more legitimacy than some cover bands due to the ties of two of the members to the original article. ~ Richie Unterberger

A lusciously presented two-LP package revives the earlier Electric Boogie CD with revised and corrected source information -- famously among Marc Bolan and T. Rex collectors, Electric Boogie was heralded as a long-lost recording of the band's summer 1971 Weeley Festival showing, only to emerge a collection of cuts from four other shows entirely. Bearing in mind that these shows were taped before the epochal Electric Warrior album, and, thus, concern themselves primarily with material from the transitional Beard of Stars/T. Rex period, it was a fascinating document regardless of provenance. Nevertheless, I Danced Myself can only be applauded for correctly identifying Wolverhampton (May 1971), Lewisham (July 1971), Bournemouth, and Rotterdam (August 1971), and for reprogramming the tracks accordingly. The heavyweight 180 g virgin vinyl, meanwhile, seems to have eased some of the problems out of the CD's sound, giving the entire performance a far fatter feeling. The Electric Boogie material consumes two and a half sides of vinyl; for the remainder of the set, we are treated to a February 1972 American radio broadcast, a solo Marc Bolan airing tracks intended for his next album, The Slider, plus a couple of Electric Warrior standouts. (This material also appears on the Till Dawn and Spaceball albums). The transition in mood between the live and radio material is abrupt -- though a mere six months separated them, an awful lot had happened in that time, and Bolan's style was changing fast. Still it's a gripping performance, with Bolan in fine voice and cheeky mood, and can one ever tire of hearing "Ballroom of Mars"? ~ Dave Thompson