madonna dollar destroyed by the holy roof

£££££££££ (money for nothing)

On eBay there is a listing for 15 pages of handwritten notepaper taken from one of Bolan’s notebooks. The pages contain a horror-story set in space, a bit like Alien meets Salo. It’s for sale, for £7,150 + £5.50 postage. What’s crazy is that it doesn’t belong to the seller, nor to the person who had originally sold it to the current seller. In September 1977 there were two tragedies, one his accidental bereavement and the other, the sacking of his home and the theft of all his personal possessions. Gloria Jones suffered similarly, with even garments stolen. No investigation has ever been conducted into this shocking act. What was lost was divided up and much of it has never been seen again.
Imagine the stuff:

master tapes
cassettes of demos
books
notebooks of poetry and stories
guitars
clothing
personal private items

The artistic loss is a tough one. Had he lived for another 40 years, like Bowie, who knows how much recorded material there would have been. We know of a mountain already from his short life, because he worked at a frenetic crazy pace. Sadly, much of the material has been scattered and sold to private collectors through auctions (dubious or not.) It’s taken some time for some fans to attempt to correct the wrongdoings and malpractice. At least, there’s been some attempt at returning items to the rightful owners and some compensation, if only sentimental. The tales of some of the tapes are bizarre, with many being discovered unkempt in bin bags in damp garages. Other items have been kept safely by concerned ex-employees of studios, waiting for the right moment to return the material.
Slowly but surely some of the forgotten songs and tracks are appearing. Licensing, though, means that some could never be heard. We could all die before we hear them!

It’s a scandal that a short story by Marc, scribbled on some notepaper, should ‘command’ such a figure. The pages should be returned to his family. Many are watching this listing, but nobody is budging. Sleazy does it. Exploiting the dead, eh?
The there’s the record companies. Bowie’s legacy has been taking a pounding since his demise, with these hopelessly inadequate boxsets suddenly appearing. Glossy, superficial and with very little fresh material. Bowie deserves better.

And it’s lumped in with Record Store Day, to boot, offering the sharks more opportunity to make a quick killing off shoddy second-rate fodder. Bowie fans salivate over concerts which have been circulating for decades when they are released on vinyl. One fan didn’t know that Mike Garson played on Mick Ronson’s albums. Such is the knowledge-base. Another enthused about Drive-in Saturday, wondering why it had never been played live. I have at least four concerts from different tours where it’s played! This must be the target-market, unfortunately.

Marc suffers moreso. For some reason (cost?), his revamped album packages get crap treatment. There have been deluxe versions (and a SACD version of Electric Warrior) of his later albums, but they are often paired. In most cases the pairings are meaningless and don’t match at all, stylistically, culturally or artistically. A shambles.

For example, Tanx was paired with Zinc Alloy, even though there’s a track called ‘Think Zinc’ on the album after Zinc Alloy. There’s a clue there? ‘Think Zinc’ was recorded just as Zinc Alloy was being printed, along with ‘Solid Baby.’ So those two tracks could easily be considered contemporaneous with the Zinc project and, therefore, Zinc could have justifiably been paired with the Zip Gun album. Personally, I wouldn’t. I would keep them separate. But it shows the lack of care and consideration afforded by cash-merchants to the artist. Any old shit will suffice, as long as the £££ come in.

Zinc Alloy (or, as I prefer, A Creamed Cage in August) deserves to be a sole package. It could have been a double album, even in 1974. There were stacks of recordings made and a deluge of alternative versions and interesting outtakes. And T. Rex was now called Zinc Alloy. That’s worthy of attention. Isn’t it time to rethink Zinc?