Not A Bummer

The last clip from ‘Marc’ for now features his dancetroopers ‘Heart Throb’ jiggling about to the current T-Rex single ‘Celebrate Summer’. It’s a dull routine with a boring backdrop which nevertheless contains some elements that the girls quite obviously struggle with, particularly the sudden backwards arching hand to hand shift that accompanies the ‘summer is heaven in 77’ segment.

I feel a bit sorry for them, really, and for Marc as, despite featuring this song virtually every week on a popular television show, it didn’t chart. Oh, and then he died.

Nowadays, of course, his passing would have catapulted the single to Number One, but people were a lot harder in the olden days.

The Spirit Of The Age

From the velour goldmine that is ‘Marc’, here’s Hawkwind with the quarky, strange and charming ‘Quark, Strangeness & Charm’.

This incarnation of the group was fairly new, so when Marc refers to them as his ‘best mates’, he may just mean that they shared a manager. Dave Brock of the band doesn't appear as he couldn’t stand Bolan and didn’t want to be anywhere near him, which tells its own story about just how friendly they all were.

The man with the strap on bird of prey is Robert Calvert, a poet and songwriter who was an important but intermittent presence in the band’s history. Calvert was frequently hired, frequently fired, but he lends a very contemporary edge and style to this appearance.

I Will Be King

In 1972, about five minutes before 'Ziggy Stardust' came out, Marc Bolan said of his sort of mate David Bowie: "I don’t think that David has anywhere near the charisma or balls that I have. Or Alice has. Or Donny Osmond has got. He’s not gonna make it, in any sort of way."

Five years later, in what would have been a humiliating reversal of fortunes for anyone less insanely egotistical than Bolan, Bowie appeared on 'Marc' and promptly blew everything and everybody else that had appeared on the show so far into tiny shards of insignificance. David's presence always reminds me of royalty visiting a youth club, then cajoled into playing table tennis or deejaying for the press. The difference is, of course, that Prince Charles can’t DJ but David can, most assuredly, sing.

As Pretty As Me

Here's a rather good performance from pop art punksters Generation X on 'Marc'. Shame it was necessary to cut them off in their prime whilst Marc's crappy dance troupe, Heart Throb, got four minutes and a plug for their terrible single. 'Godfather of Punk', indeed.

Tip For The Top

Finally, a halfway decent record on 'Marc'. Bolan knew Radio Stars lead singer Andy Ellison well, having been in pop art group John's Children with him for all of four months in 1967.

John's Children never had a hit single, but were famous for two things, the violence and aggression of their stage show and their musical ineptitude. When Punk started to make an impact, Ellison thought his time had come. It hadn't, but it was worth a go.

Triers

Yet more from the cultural landfill site that is ‘Marc’.

This time his guests are Mud, Mud, glorious Mud, dressed like lorry drivers at a Beach Boys concert and doing their best to have a laugh as they promote their latest single ‘Just Try A Little Tenderness’. They needn’t have bothered: it wasn’t a hit and they never had another.

I'm not saying anything about the semi-naked kid in the introductory segment. If I'm honest, I don't know what to say.

You Gave My Love Harmony

One of the regular features of Marc Bolan's show ‘Marc’ was a routine from his very own dance troupe ‘Heart Throb’. Most often used to perform routines to records by artists who decided NOT to appear on the show, here they tackle a late Bay City Rollers single ‘You Made Me Believe In Magic’, a track which demonstrates the move into the lite white disco sound which was designed to sustain their career but ended up killing it stone dead.

Funnily enough, the Rollers appeared on the show in person to promote this very record the week after this routine. I have often wondered if they had meant to appear the week before but had to cancel, or whether they saw this piss poor dance routine with its eye gouging day-glo colours and bleeding chroma key effects and realised that it was doing their cause more harm than good. Enjoy, but please have some Optrex to hand.

Blogger would lead me to believe that I have readers in Germany. Bitte entschuldigen sie, but this video is not available to view in your country.

I Had To Flop

Another extract from Marc Bolan's 1977 TV show 'Marc', this time featuring expressive no hit wonder Denis Conly, ably supported by Marc's dance troupe, Heart Throb.

Forevermore

Marc Bolan may not have been pushing any musical boundaries in 1977, but he hadn't entirely lost it as evidenced by this frenetic and entertaining cover of the 1958 Jody Reynolds hit 'Endless Sleep', a death disc where no actual death occurs. Good stuff, and ten times better than the Verne Brothers.

I Confess

Awful cash in single from Robin Askwith, as promoted on the 'Marc' show broadcast on 14th September, 1977. Marc died two days later.

There was always something brutish about Robin Askwith and this song and performance gives us an indication of what it might be like if a chimpanzee released a record but is nowhere near as funny. Nice of Marc to briefly mention Robin's latest X rated film to the thousands of children watching, particularly as he has positioned a trophy between his legs to represent an erect penis.

Scream, That's Your Dream

"It's so real, it remoulds you". Canal boat in tunnel omitted.

Dandy In The Afterlife

Marc Bolan died on September 16th 1977, two weeks before his thirtieth birthday. This is going to sound awful but, at the time, I was glad. Why? Well, because for several weeks before his fatal Mini crash I had been greatly troubled by a recurring nightmare where Marc was pursuing me around a canal boat as it made its way slowly through a tunnel. After he died, the bad dream went away. In hindsight, it's easy to see the root of the unease as a conflation of my incipient claustrophobia and my regular and nervous viewing of Bolan's ITV music show 'Marc'.

'Marc' may have been a kids TV show, but it was the most exposure Bolan had enjoyed for some time and he went all out to make the most of it. That said, it's pretty poor, and Marc is terrifying in it. Tiny, skinny, pale, whispery, narcissistic and in a selection of revealing trousers, I now realise, of course, that he's just camping it up but I still think he's an incredibly androgynous and ambiguous figure to be in charge of entertaining children, especially as he seems lost in a private reverie most of the time, a mocking and lacivious look on his elfin face. Perhaps most disturbing to a young mind was that the last two episodes were broadcast posthumously, one a mere four days after his death.

The music is fairly average, too. I'm not a massive T Rex fan by any means, but I do listen to them and understand the pop appeal of their best stuff. Here, Marc mixes new and banal material with pre-re-recorded sludgy pub rock versions of his greatest hits to underwhelming effect and his guests, carefully picked never to outshine the underperforming star, are, for the most part, either forgettable, regrettable or unforgivable.

I have several clips I intend to share with you but, first off, do you remember one of Marc's very early hits, 'Oh Deborah, you look like a zebra'? Yeah, that one, the whimsical, quirky acoustic number with hippy dippy charm and an interesting time signature. Well, watch it die.

Here's an example of one of the guest bands on the show, most of which sank without trace. Sub Bay City Rollers band Rosetta Stone's main claim to fame was that they featured Ian Mitchell, a baby faced guitarist from Northern Ireland who had been in the actual Bay City Rollers for seven troubled months. Ian Mitchell's main claim to fame is that his brother Tony wallpapered my front room.

More soon, same Marc time, same Marc channel.