Pop culture can be as forbidding as it is inviting, particularly in areas that invite geeky obsession: The more devotion a genre or series or subculture inspires, the easier it is for the uninitiated to feel like they’re on the outside looking in. But geeks aren’t born; they’re made. And sometimes it only takes the right starting point to bring newbies into various intimidatingly vast obsessions. Gateways To Geekery is our regular attempt to help those who want to be enthralled, but aren’t sure where to start. Want advice? Suggest future Gateways To Geekery topics by emailing [email protected].
Geek obsession: Marc Bolan
Why it’s daunting: Before dying in a car crash in 1977 at the age of 29, Marc Bolan saw his band T. Rex become a one-hit wonder in America—and an iconic force in his native England. This imbalance happens often: An artist loses something in the transatlantic translation, but it does make Bolan’s proportionately large catalog intimidating to navigate. During his 12-year career as a recording artist, he released almost 20 albums in various projects and under various guises—and since his death, he’s been the subject of at least twice that many compilations, many of which scrape the bottom of Bolan’s barrel. Complicating matters further is the fact that he’s associated with a single, specific movement—glam rock—but dabbled in everything from ’60s mod to psychedelic folk to arty soul to proto-punk. Before his death, Bolan became one of the first major members of Britain’s rock royalty to openly embrace and promote punk rock. The sharp, primal riffs of T. Rex hits like “Get It On” cut through genres and eras, though, even if they help solidify an erroneous caricature of Bolan as no more than a boa-wreathed dandy who basically wrote the same song over and over, only with different dressing each time.
Possible gateway: T. Rex, The Slider
Why: The Slider came out in 1972, soon after T. Rex’s breakthrough album, 1971’s Electric Warrior. Both discs are essential, but The Slider benefits from not having an egregiously overplayed single—in Electric Warrior’s case, “Get It On” (or “Bang A Gong (Get It On),” as it was titled for the U.S. market). The album also has a cohesive atmosphere and an unhinged symbiosis—without being a concept album—that elevates its beyond a mere collection of great tracks. Snarling, seductively silly songs like “Buick Mackane” and “Metal Guru,” however, are more than able to prance and swagger on their own.
Like David Bowie’s 1972 masterpiece, the more solidly conceptual The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, The Slider features an artist becoming a mythic figure in his own meta-narrative. On The Slider, though, Bolan is flying by the seat of his glittery pants, which makes for an eye-popping, hip-grinding phantasmagoria that varies in tone from the sultry “Main Man” (in which the singer boasts in the third person, “Bolan likes to rock now / Yes he does, yes he does”) to the nursery-rhyme surrealism of “Telegram Sam”—songs that went on to influence everyone from Bauhaus to Guns N’ Roses to Devendra Banhart.