Bowie vs Bolan ROUND 2

Last time I shard my distaste for Marc Bolan’s work with John’s Children in 1967 (Psychedelia-by-numbers and a naff lead singer to boot! Arrg Take it away!).
So Bowie stomped home an easy victory with a whole album and some tunes you could hum all released in the same year. Mind you, neither of 'em charted with anything.

So going into 1968 it’s Bowie 1 – Bolan 0.

Right off the bat it’s pretty easy to see who’s gonna' score big this year.
In 1968 Marc Bolan formed acoustic ‘pixie folk’ duo Tyrannosaurs Rex and released 2 (yep 2) studio albums. The first one even charted (no 15 in the UK) where as the Bowster was still yet to have a hit.









To my ears these first two Tyrannosaurs Rex albums are quite patchey and haven’t dated well. But there are some fairly decent songs in amongst the hippy mumbling, so it all compares quite favourably to David Bowie in 1968. Especially as he released…


…. nothin’. Not a sausage.
At least no albums anyway.

He did do this though......



That’s the promo for the original version of ‘Space Oddity’.
It was part of a 30 min film called “Love you Till Tuesday” which (depending on who you talk to) was either recorded in 1968 or ’69 but was so flippin’ awful that no TV stations wanted to touch it. So it stayed on a dusty shelf until the home video boom in 1984. Here’s the cover of the DVD:




Nice huh.

So all things considered, this round goes to Marc Bolan. Bringing the score to 1 all.

Everything could change in 1969!