he is an outsider in another sense, too. Back when T. Rex was known as Tyrannosaurus Rex, Marc sang of and inhabited a medieval world of wizards and unicorns. Now his subject and medium is rock 'n' roll, and his outsider's stance (chronologically young because historically young) enables him to see things with a special clarity and vision. Marc's lyrics still sound like nursery rhymes, and he sings with a puckish quaver, but he now plays a mean lead guitar.

What Marc seems to be saying on Electric Warrior is that rock is ultimately as quaint as wizards and unicorns, and finally, as defunct. It is a self-contained, completed form, with T. Rex and Black Sabbath, both parodists in their own way, its parentheses. His targets are your common rock & roll cliches, as well as your common pseudo-poetic, pseudo-philosophical rock & roll cliches. E.g. "Monolith," or Stanley Kubrick meets the Duke of Earl: "And dressed as you are girl/In your fashions of fate/Baby it's too late," or "And lost like a lion/In the canyons of smoke/Girl it's no joke."

"Jeepster," which sounds a lot like Carl Perkins, carries the great tradition of Chuck Berry and Beach Boys car songs one step further: "Just like a car/You're pleasing to behold/I'll call you Jaguar/If I may be so bold," while several of Bolan's specific images are Dylan-derived, like "society's ditch," "burning up your feet," "Egyptian ruby," and "Mountings of the moon/Remind me of my spoon."

"Lean Woman Blues," a takeoff on blues-rock, begins as Marc yells to the band, "One, two, buckle my shoe," and then goes on to encounter wrong notes, chaotic over-dubbings, distorting guitar, and an extraneous "And I'm Blue" tagged on at the end of every stanza.

In "The Motivator," Marc considers the aesthetics of government ("I love the velvet hat/You know the one that caused a revolution"), but saves his most profound convictions on you-know-what revolution for "Rip-Off":

In the moonlight

Fighting with the night

It's a rip-off

Kissing all the slain

I'm bleeding in the rain

It's a rip-off

Such a rip-off etc., etc., for 16 stanzas.

Marc's voice, appropriately, is Buddy Holly at several removes; Buddy, notwithstanding his genius, being, via Tommy Roe, the patron saint of bubblegum. At the same time, the combination of an effete vocal and an aggressive back-up is reminiscent of the early Ray Davies a