[luxinterior]

Electric Warrior - T. Rex

I was 13, my parents had just split up and money was tight, and I'm fairly certain I received more than this album for Christmas, but this is the only thing I remember from that year. Right after opening it, I went down to the basement (where I spent the better part of my time for about 2 years) and listened to it for the rest of the day. It was the first album I owned that I thought was perfect, and it remains to this day the most played album in my collection. There is no group more dear to my heart than T. Rex. I feel this kinship with them that makes me approach the subject of the band with ridiculous amounts of honor and humility. Even though I was also listening to Led Zeppelin, Bowie, and Hendrix around that same time, I still favored T. Rex above them all. I really had to work hard at being a T. Rex fan. Their albums weren't exactly easy to find, and I couldn't turn on the radio and hear anything more than the occasional "Bang A Gong," which is a good song, but they have plenty of others that kick its butt. The fact that it took a lot of effort to maintain that level of interest made the whole experience very personal. I didn't have anyone to share it with. Actually, this marked the first time that the kids at school openly mocked the music I listened to. They thought T. Rex was a stupid name. I had a T. Rex shirt that I wore sometimes, so they stared asking me if I listened to Stegosaurus and Velociraptor as well, which was just so clever, I'm sure. They thought my haircut was stupid as well, so my appearance in general was often the target of many insults. Junior high aged kids usually are not very welcoming if you are totally and pathetically into the whole glam rock thing. So if you're trying to cut down on the number of times you get called "fag" in a day, I don't recommend pursuing an interest in glam rock.