Saturday, 13 June 2015

Music of the Abstract: The Lilac Hand of Menthol Dan by Marc Bolan (1967/68)

Someone cannot just live off cinema only. There has to be other hobbies, and there are plenty of areas where the term "Abstract" appears quite frequently especially in music. Its fascinated me, through podcasts, blogs and interacting with people, how individuals can be cold to "difficult" cinema yet it is easier to for many to accept and love the more unconventional sounds and genres of music, to the point they can even become Top 10 songs and albums. It can''t be denied music is more universal, and it feels like even the membrane between the mainstream and the experimental is very, very thin, vast sub-genres to trawl through and enough musicians who could fill an entire asylum band on offer in your local media store. It feels apt to indulge in a track a week, and the first perfectly encapsulates the above view, a musician my own mother grew up loving but fitting the site at the same time:



Even as the figurehead of T. Rex, a band that I have fallen in love with as my mother and many in the seventies did, Marc Bolan in his brief tenure in life was magnificently odd in his music, where even hit number 1 and 2 songs in Britain like Ride A White Swan are lyrically and musically unconventional as you hum along with them. The following above, while not directly connected to T. Rex, is unbelievably catchy even with breaking glass as a percussion instrument. 

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