Category: Everyday Life

Marc’s TV show

It’s a TV program from 1977 that Marc Bolan MC’d.
From the first the plan was to make only six shows; the shows weren’t taped one at a time: it says they were edited together after they taped Bolan, Bolan & T.Rex, and each of the guests. There are a few times when we see guests behind Bolan when he introduces them; however, there is no talking or singing with the show’s guests except for Bowie.

Instead of that, a dance group called Heart Throb (whose dancing was not so great, and whose costumes also didn’t fit them at all) appeared in every show. Sometimes they just danced along to a tape, and I wondered why we had to watch such bad dancing without any guest performing. It was almost the same time as Saturday Night Fever, so I would have expected them to dance a bit better. At least I wanted them all to dance at the same time. Hmm. Should I forgive them because they have a kind of thirty year old charm?

It says that it was Bolan’s idea to invite punk-era groups such as The Jam and Billy Idol’s Generation X. And this was the first time they appeared on a TV show! However, some strange (completely unknown in Japan) idols and folky singers also appeared. We guess they were not his idea. His only session with Bowie was cut off in the middle because the studio time ran out, and so the building manager or somebody turned off the electricity. Too bad! (The short session is used for the ending roll of the 6th show after editing.)

The DVD contains all six weeks of shows, so sometimes the playing is completely the same, including Bolan & T.Rex. Many performances are obviously them just pretending to sing. But to think about Bolan, who passed away just two days after taping all these shows, and two days after the 4th show was on the air, before he became thirty years old, I felt something with deep emotion. His peak popularity had passed, but he might have come back again. He would be sixty years old this year, the same as Bowie. Ah, the show’s feature song ‘Celebrate Summer’ runs through my mind, with a scene of Marc Bolan running through a park! (In fact that picture appears in the show.)

– YS, 10 May 2007

10 May 2007