NYC Till Dawn Meet-up 1998

New York City, USA. 31-May-1998.

Way back in the late 1990's I joined a Marc Bolan mailing list called "Till Dawn". This was in the early days of the world wide web when mailing lists were a way to communicate with like minded people. 

I used to travel to the US several times a year on business and happened to mention that I was visiting New York in May 1998. It was suggested that some of us "tillers" could meet up and so it came to pass. Some lived in New York, some flew in from elsewhere in the States and Canada and kudos to Jorgen who flew in all the way from Sweden! This is the story of that gathering.

Breakfast with Jorgen: I cannot remember which hotel I was staying in for work. The company obviously paid the flights and the weekday nights but I would have had to pay the extra couple of nights myself. Jorgen was on a budget and staying in The Malibu Studios Hotel on Broadway. We met for breakfast at nearby Nookies restaurant and re-established our acquaintance from when we first met in real life. That had been at a T.Rextasy gig in Cambridge the previous September.

Breakfast - MarkMcL, Jorgen.

We met in a place called The Lounge: I don’t know who suggested it or even whether it still exists but that was where we gathered, somewhere in the East Village. Some of us wearing our matching Marc Bolan T-shirts. We had a chat and drinks, and someone brought along copies of a fanzine to share out.

Lounge - Ivan, zoom, CliffBro, CliffSky.

Lounge - zoom and soda.

Lounge - Jorgen and Ivan.

Lounge - DaveR and Jorgen.

Lounge - ?, zoom, Jorgen, Elaine, Ivan, DJ.

Lounge - the gang.

Lounge - Jorgen (photo credit Jorgen).

Lounge - The gang (photo credit Jorgen).

Lounge - MarkMcL, DaveR, Jorgen, Ivan, zoom (photo credit Jorgen).

Jewel 2 fanzine.

We dined at Restaurant 7A: again I don’t know how we picked this place but food and more beer was definitely required.

Restaurant 7A - DaveR, Jorgen, zoom, MarkMcL.

Street - Jorgen, MarkMcL, DaveR.

Street - DaveR, Jorgen, MarkMcL (photo credit Jorgen).

Street - DaveR, MarkMcL, zoom (photo credit Jorgen).

We went to CBGB : the legendary New York music venue where a number of famous people launched their careers including The Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie featuring the lovely Debbie Harry. We saw some aspiring band whose name I did not note so who knows if they went on to become famous!

CBGB Club - zoom, MarkMcL, Jorgen, DaveR.

We went for a late (early?) breakfast: apparently it is a New York thing to do after a night out. Not that I was ever one for going to the nightclub into the wee small hours. Anyhow we ended up having a full breakfast at 4 am and then back to the hotel for sleep.

Late Café - Jorgen, zoom, DaveR, MarkMcL.

We had lunch at Katz's deli: I think it must’ve been the following day that we went to the legendary Katz's deli where the famous "When Harry Met Sally" fake orgasm scene was filmed. 

Katz - zoom, DaveR, Elaine, Ivan, Jorgen.

We took the Staten Island ferry: Jorgen and I hung around as the two long haul tourists. We time to spare so we did a return trip on the Staten Island ferry. It was, and still is, free to foot passengers so it was a fun thing to go out and back and get a free view of Manhattan from the water. 

Staten Island Ferry - Jorgen, MarkMcL.

I dipped my toe in the Hudson:  wherever I go, particularly to a foreign shore I like to dip my toe in the sea, or in this case the mighty Hudson River.

MarkMcL dips his toe in the Hudson River.

I met up with a colleague of my brother: My brother worked in New York for 18 months. His office address was One Park Avenue, so that was easy to remember. By the time of this visit he was back in the UK but I did meet up with one of his ex-colleagues for a cocktail.

Bar - MarkMcL and Sheila.

I drink champagne on the roof of the metropolitan museum: I decided to fit in some culture while I was there so went to the Metropolitan Museum. Whilst there I thought I would celebrate my visit with a glass of champagne looking out over Central Park.

Champagne on the Metropolitan Museum roof

My word that was a long time ago!

Note: This post was prompted by Jorgen posting on facebook some photos from this event that I had never seen before! That inspired me to rework the clunky gallery on my website using some more up-to-date technology than Notepad and an FTP client. 

Back then it was chemical film, you posted off the roll and got physical photos back a week later. No digital cameras or smart phones then. Luckily I had access to a scanner at work although it was the size of a fridge. I then shrunk the pictures down to a size tiny by today's standard. That was because many people accessed the internet via dial up telephone connections that were really low bandwidth - tell that to the youth of today! 

Someday I will dig out the archive CD's and post some higher res photos.

My People Were Fair... 50 Years On.

"One day we change from children into people."
 - Seagull Woman by Marc Bolan.

It was in the summer of 1968 that the Tyrell Corporation decanted me, aged 15 and a half, with a poorly implanted set of childhood memories. My real life memories started that summer.

It seems to me that even since then I have stumbled through life like a sleepwalker, scarcely conscious of the world around me, in it but not of it. I never had a plan, a dream, an ambition, a goal. Looking at my life and career in retrospect it may look, from the outside, like a carefully planned arc but nothing could be further from the truth. I meandered aimlessly though the next 50 years like a magpie picking up shiny things, letting serendipity guide my choices, trusting in the bounty of the universe to provide. I will never write my autobiography. I struggle to remember what I had for dinner last night let alone what happened in my early years.

I think my school report July 1963 (age 10) says it best "Mark's work is all done rather slowly and he is rather absent minded. With his intelligence he should be nearer the top of the class." The story of my life in a nutshell. Not so much "absent minded" as "in a little world of his own".

Adulthood and memories really began that summer with early morning cycle rides in the sunshine from Kenilworth to Baginton where I spent the holidays helping to excavate a Roman fort (and that is a story in its own right). And on that ride Tyrannosaurus Rex’s new single Debora was playing on infinite repeat in my mental jukebox.

And then in July the magic that was "My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows" with that wonderful cover art by George Underwood (responsible for some of the most iconic album covers ever and Bowie's mismatched eyes).

Growing up in leafy Warwickshire my only entrée into music was watching Top of the Pops. Neither I nor any of my friends read NME nor Melody Maker. I have since met contemporaries who grew up in London and had easy access to see all manner of bands before they were famous playing in local pubs and clubs. They were sneaking out to gigs aged 16 while I was goody-two-shoes doing my homework, watching telly and going to bed early.

It never occurred to me in my naivety that you could actually go and see bands live nor would I have had the confidence to do so at that age. To see anyone well known would have meant a trip to Birmingham Town Hall by public transport.

It was John Peel on Radio One’s Top Gear show that broadened my horizons beyond TotP and introduced me to Tyrannosaurus Rex and I was entranced by the sound. So when the first single was released in May that year I rushed out and bought it. That had to keep me satisfied for a couple of months until their debut album was released in June.

The record shop in Kenilworth was run by an old lady, or she seemed old to me at the time. It was a dark and gloomy store with wooden browser boxes. It was mostly given over to classical music but she did have a couple of boxes for records labelled “File under Pop for Popular”. I must have had to order in this LP as I’m sure she wouldn’t have spontaneously bought it for stock.

When I got it home I played side one several times before I turned over to play the other side. I wanted to make sure I could extract maximum enjoyment, sensation, appreciation, novelty from the first side before revealing more gems on the second side. After all you can only hear it for the first time once and I didn’t want to rush things.

As I have written elsewhere (see my review written in 1999) my copy was missing the lyrics sheet. Being unable to decipher much of the words I had to just let the sound wash over me and interpret as best I could what was going on.

Little did I know then that this was to be the start of a strand running through my life. Buying all the singles and albums for one thing. Actually going to concerts and seeing Tyrannosaurus Rex and then T.Rex live. Then some fallow years, followed by discovering the World Wide Web in 1996. One of the first things I googled in Altavista (remember Altavista?) was Marc Bolan and discovering that I was not the only fan on the planet [Note: I am amused to see that I used lower case 'google' as a verb, a lot like using 'hoover' for 'vaccuum'].

The final few years of the last century were early heady days of connecting with people worldwide and sharing knowledge and enthusiasm. Several hand crafted fan sites and the Tilldawn mailing list united scattered fans. I discovered that there was a Bolan scene that had been rumbling along under the radar all that time and I have since been to several anniversary Bops and met up with a number of fans in real life ([25/55], [Bolan Bop 2009]).

Back then though this was all in the future. The triple vintage of '68, '69, '70 - the Tyrannosaurus Rex years - were halcyon days indeed. Schoolwork was easy, O-levels were a year away, home life was fine, I had my hobbies and books. All I knew was that I was happy, carefree, cycling in the sunshine, listening to the magic that was Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"And your days of love always in a dream, you know."
 - The Time of Love is Now by Marc Bolan.

Castle Rock feat. Tyrannosaurus Rex

Dudley, Zoo, Dudley, Worcester, UK. Friday 05-June-1970

This was the first time I saw Marc Bolan live after listening to him on the John Peel Late Show and buying all those Regal Zonophone singles and the four Tyrannosaurus Rex albums. This was just before they shortened their name to T.Rex and burst upon the pop world with Ride a White Swan.

I bought my ticket somehow, there was no TicketMaster in those days. Off I went by train from the soon-to-be-reopened Kenilworth station to Birmingham and somehow from there to the Zoo. This was my first ever open air concert so it was all very strange and a little bit scary for a non-streetwise schoolboy.

I still have this programme.

Text of the above page.

TYRANNOSAURUS REX Tyrannosaurus Rex are two. Marc Bolan is one. He sings, plays guitar, organ and bass, and writes all of T. Rex's songs. "How do I see myself? I suppose I'm a poet. Well, sometimes." Marc's first contact with top music came when he worked in Soho selling cokes at the 2I's coffee bar—the starting ground for early British rock’n’rollers like Adam Faith, Terry Dene and Screaming Lord Such. "I remember Cliff Richard being thrown out 'because you can't sing' I was nine at the time." Marc is now 22 years old and Tyrannosaurus Rex are two. From their earlier accoustic songs, the group has travelled into electric music. . . . "But 1 don't think about it as 'being electric' I'm into the media power of the electric instrument, to reach as many people as possible." Aiding Marc in reaching these people is Mickey Finn, the other half of T. Rex. Mickey plays bongos. And sings. And sometimes plays bass. "Before I joined up with Marc, I was into painting. I painted the Beatles' shop—actually painted it and organised it so it'd be ready in time. Before that I sometimes played with Haphash and the Coloured Coat. We made an LP and did just one live gig, in Amsterdam. Mickey, who particularly enjoys the music of Jack Bruce, The Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers, is a motor-bike freak. . . . "And I'd like to take up drag racing." Following a chance meeting with Marc in a London macrobiotic restaurant, Mickey became T. Rex's other half. "I wouldn't have put myself forward. He had an ad in the paper, didn't he? It came so easy. We met talked and then went down to Wales for three weeks." "Since Mickey became a part of T. Rex the music has become freer, more relaxed, and we can improvise—which we could not do before." And Marc's songs, those songs of fables and fantasies and dreams and images. "I don't write the songs—inspiration does. I couldn't write those songs—I'm being used." And not badly either. Not badly at all!

I hadn't thought through the transport logistics and ended up missing the last train home. I didn't have any money to speak of, certainly not enough for a taxi or a hotel.

I had somehow picked up from my father the bizarre idea that in an emergency police stations acted like Western Union, that he could go into Kenilworth police station, hand over a tenner and the Birmingham police would give me the same. I told you I was not streetwise, not then, not now! They didn't, of course, and the upshot was that they took pity on me and let me sleep in a police cell overnight. The next morning I made my bleary way home by train again.

I had been sufficiently geeky during the gig to note the set list on an old scrap of paper. That set list eventual found its way into the excellent book Marc Bolan: A Chronology by Cliff McLenehan:

Set List: One Inch Rock, Debora, Hot Rod Mama, Wind Quartets, Pavilions Of Sun, King Of The Rumbling Spires, By The Light Of The Magical Moon, Organ Blues, Elemental Child, Conesuela, Salamanda Palaganda, Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart, The Wizard, Jewel.

The track that has stuck in my memory was an extended version of The Wizard with a long guitar solo to the words "he was a wizard and he was my friend he was [repeat * n]". Ah, that was all a very long time ago.

PDF of the complete programme.

TXT of the complete programme.

Enjoy.

KALMIYH.

Rolan Bolan at The Half Moon Putney

Sunday 29-June-2014.

From the stage version on Saturday to the real thing on Sunday: Rolan Feld Bolan at The Half Moon Putney. Having seen the last night of the London run of 20th Century Boy on the Saturday it was a serendipitous coincidence that Marc's son, Rolan Bolan, was playing the Half Moon at Putney on the Sunday.

We had friends round for Sunday lunch for a five and a half hour, leisurely and boozy lunch with many fine wines. I was in two minds whether to go or not as the thought of a siesta was very appealing but, as Mary pointed out, when would I next to able to get to see Rolan. It was not quite "a once in a lifetime" opportunity as I am sure he will have a successful musical career but Putney is only a 20 minute bus ride away. A quick call confirmed there were tickets available on the door so off I went.

Arrived there in good time, got a beer and a front row seat. I would have expected it to be packed with fans of his dad wishing the son well. There were a couple of T.Rex / Bolan t-shirts on display and I ended up moving back a row to chat to a couple of fans behind me.

It can be a two-edged sword to be the offspring of famous parents. He is writing and composing his own material but he did include three Marc songs in the set. He did them well and it is good that he feels able to honour his dad's legacy.

The Half Moon is a small venue so I was able to have a quick word with Rolan up at the bar afterwards. Thanked him for an enjoyable set and asked if he had seen the musical; he had not.

Then off home having completed a Bolan double bill weekend.

20th Century Boy at The New Wimbledon Theatre

Saturday 28-June-2014

Strange to tell but Mary didn't want to go to this so I went with friend Ros. The three of us went for a Italian meal beforehand then Mary toddled off home and Ros and I joined what looked like a sell out show.

The musical took a basically linear biographical approach to Marc's life but used Marc's son Rolan as the "narrator" discovering his father's story through Marc's family.

A review from Gordon of Tyrannosaurus Rex tribute band Strange Orchestra:

"On Saturday night I was lucky enough to see the 20th Century Boy musical with a great group of friends at the New Wimbledon Theatre. I saw it 4 times in Ipswich and like everyone else I got caught up in the euphoria and excitement.

I saw it twice in Coventry and was very lukewarm with the changes to the storyline and felt it had lost a lot of it's original momentum and freshness and to be honest I thought it was going nowhere fast. Saturday night was an incredibly huge step up, from everything I'd seen before.

I thought George McQuire did an ok job but Warren Sollars nailed it as good as anyone's ever going to. The new Rolan actor is as good as the original which says something as he had a lot to live up to. The two girls who play June and Gloria are superb, the Gloria actress has been with the show from the start and June's actress is doing her 2nd run after Coventry.

All the actors now seem better and more professional as well as the additional cast who's dancing and singing was spot on and they looked gorgeous to boot!

This show, which has had more than it's fair share of critics, me included, is now something special and the whole theatre rocked its socks off. By Jove I do think it's ready and good enough for the West End. Just sort the fecking shoes out!! It'll shut everyone up and it's not rocket science. So much work has gone into the show it's a shame something so simple still causes so much negative response when it's so bloody easy to correct!!"

Obviously you cannot really end on Marc's death so the coda to his story was an extended encore of several of the best loved tracks to get them dancing in the aisles and send the audience home on a high.

Too Rex and Strange Orchestra at The Half Moon

Putney, London. Saturday 26-April-2104

A chance to see Strange Orchestra and Too Rex on the same bill was too good an opportunity to miss. I have seen T.Rextasy several times but never Too Rex so I was interested to see how they compared.

On the other hand I have seen the wonderful Strange Orchestra at a couple of the annual Bop in Golders Green. They play the music of Tyrannosaurus Rex which is more my era and preference and the main reason I wanted to go.

Mary wasn't interested so she stayed at home and I went with my old friend Ros. We had for a drink beforehand and met up with several FaceBook friends.

Pre-gig drinks

First on were Strange Orchestra who did a set of Tyrannosaurus Rex ranging all the way from "Beginning of Doves" to "A Beard of Stars". It was a magical set, Marc Hartley really nailed the voice spot on. I was getting all nostalgic for my youth.

Next up were Too Rex who did two sets. They are good. It is hard to say how they compare to T.Rextasy as this is such a small venue. "Intimate" is the term often used, and the whole atmosphere is very different to the large scale gigs where I have been to see T.Rextasy. It is good that there is room for two tribute bands. I have since learned there is also a Scottish tribute band called Hot Love.

A most enjoyable evening. At the end I said cheerio to a few people and toddled off home on the bus my ears ringing - but not too loudly.

...and, as always in an Elvish abode, dreams of the gentlest texture.

Marc Bolan 35th Anniversary Concert

O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London. Saturday 15-September-2012.

After our BBQ four of us headed off for a fantastic concert celebrating the music of Marc Bolan and T.Rex leaving Mary with the few remaining guests.


Danielz, Boy George

Quote
This September, friends and fans of Marc Bolan will take to the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire stage to celebrate his musical legacy. The show will be hosted by Noddy Holder and Lynsey de Paul, featuring T.Rex producer Tony Visconti, T.Rex fans Marc Almond and Boy George, John's Children band-mate Andy Ellison, T.Rex saxophonist Howie Casey, glam-rock contemporaries Alvin Stardust and Steve Harley, Level 42 Mike Lindup, Sex Pistol Glen Matlock, Linda Lewis plus many more to be announced. All the performers will be supported by the official Marc Bolan tribute band T.Rextasy with Danielz.

End quote


Danielz, Sandy Shaw

The last one of these was five years ago in 2007 Marc Bolan - a celebration. This was much the same but bigger and better with more guest stars.


Assembled stars finale

For an in-depth review see http://www.music-news.com/ShowReview.asp?nReviewID=8553&nType=3

I took the still pictures above - 20120915-trextasy, a set on Flickr - however a surprising number of people of people have uploaded video recordings to YouTube.



For more see http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=marc+bolan+shepherds+bush.

After that it was home for a nightcap with Mary and our stay-over guests Bob and Lynn. Then bed for a Thames Path National Trail walk on Sunday...