Tyrannosaurus Rex. Pick your favorite album

The other best 'Tyrannosaurus Rex' album is 'Best of T.Rex' named to ride the success of T.Rex. Maybe this was my first Tyrannosaurus Rex album - its full of great songs from start to finish and some fantastic bonus non-album songs, to boot.

 

Do you like Zinc Alloy?

 

I don't mind it, but it's the start of the T. Rex albums I don't play much. There's no T. Rex albums I don't like, but the albums from Unicorn - Tanx and the singles from after that on compilations are what I usually listen to. The rest don't get played very much. Zinc Alloy sounds like it's trying to hard to be something. I don't know what! Most of the songs aren't memorable.

 

I think it's far better than the first two Tyrannosaurus Rex albums and as good as Unicorn at least. One of my favourites. It does sound great.

 

My favourites are the ones with Steve Took on. With his involvement the music had a weird, other worldly quality that disappeared when Micky Finn joined. Surely nobody created such a psychedelic ambience with so few material resources as Steve Took. They were truly equal partners, whereas Micky Finn seemed more like an employee. Of the albums with Steve, my favourite has always been Prophets Seers and Sages, followed by My People Were Fair, which seem to me to be the most magical. Unicorn is great too..but seems slightly different to the first two. The magic gets fainter and fainter from that point on.

 

I bought the "5 classic albums" set last week (as a result of reading the Uncut Ultimate Music Guide on T.Rex) which has all four of these albums in it. So far I've listened to each album once, so my verdict at the moment is more of a "hot take".

I enjoyed "Prophets" a lot and thought that would be my favourite, but then I played "A Beard Of Stars" - that's the one. It's clear that Marc had found out that nobody could understand a word he was singing, so on this one he makes the effort to enunciate more clearly, and in the process invented his T.Rex voice, and the wonderful melodies and general electric-ness point the way to Electric Warrior. It's the one that's likely to get its second listen first.

I struggled a bit with Unicorn, but it didn't help that I was getting tired during the second half. Of the three acoustic albums I found Prophets to be the most instantly accessible. I'd rate them in the order Beard > Prophets > Unicorn > People at the moment.

 

A Beard of Stars. It's not the same 'band' anymore though, closer to the self-titled T. Rex album.

 

With you on this. Loads of love for 'Zinc Alloy', but back to the original question.....probably 'Prophets' because of Stacey Grove, Salamanda Palaganda and Consuela.

 

A BEARD OF STARS.

 

Lovely songs.

 

Beard for me.

My first T Rex album was a cheap compilation:

• Ride a White Swan
• Debora
• Child Star
• Cat Black (The Wizard's Hat)
  Conesuala
• Strange Orchestras
• One Inch Rock
• Salamanda Palaganda
• Lofty Skies
• Stacey Grove
• King of the Rumbling Spires
• Elemental Child

 

And that would be my pick.

 

Yeah, bought that at the same time I picked up the Bolan Boogie compilation. Both are ‘must have’ I reckon. Wonderful LPs

 

I like Zinc Alloy too. It's incredible dense and a bit confused, but funky and fun. Cocaine funk at its best.

 

Or is Beard of Stars a T.Rex album in all but name?

 

Or is the first T.Rex album still a Tyrannosaurus Rex album?

 

A Beard Of Stars is the only album I really like.

 

Same here, it's a great album. On a fair a couple of years ago somebody had the numbered version witth lattice sleeve but I felt 350€ was just too rich. Still, that's the version I'd like to have!

 

In general?

 

You figure it out.

 

Why are people voting for T Rex Albums. A different band apart from Bolan.

 

Very true. But I couldn't help myself when Zinc Alloy was mentioned.

 

Heheh. That's the received wisdom I was deliberately contradicting with my post!

 

When I first noticed T.Rex and the poetic wackiness, I found that I preferred the acoustic numbers on Electric Warrior and Slider. It took years before I discovered the earlier albums, and in them I found everything I'd ever wanted from T.Rex. It was my favorite T.Rex parts undiluted and multiplied by 1000 unicorns.

 

"Apart from Bolan"? Who wrote everything. And Visconti. Who was the main sonic architect of the Rex sound.

Personally, I wouldn't call it "a different band". It's a slow organic transformation.