This is the seventeenth song in the Play It Again Mayhem series, which began back in 2020. Check out the previous entries along with this new one in the Play It Again Mayhem Spotify Playlist, click here to take a listen! It has only been 7 weeks since the last entry, so it must be time for another, right? Anyway, this is a song that has, perhaps in an ironic way, been in my head for the last couple of weeks given all the rain we have had in much of the UK recently. It is T. Rex with “Celebrate Summer”. After 10 top 5 hits, including 4 UK number ones, from 1970 to 1973, Marc Bolan’s glitter had faded a little. Although in 1977 he championed some of the younger punk bands and fronted his own weekly TV show, ‘Marc’. Some of the new bands he embraced included the Jam, the Damned, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and Generation X. The show also saw appearances by David Bowie and Hawkwind. But sadly his untimely death at far too young an age in September 1977 put to rest any chance of the diminutive former Mr Feld rising to the heights of the early 70s Bolanmania period.
“Celebrate Summer” is a non-album single and the last T. Rex single to be released while Marc was still alive. It came out on 12th August 1977 and he died in an awful car accident in Barnes on 16th September 1977. The song was performed on the ‘Marc’ TV show three times and despite some relatively good reviews, many of which cited a punk/ new wave influence, it failed to get much radio airplay and as a result, it failed to make the charts. Personally, I consider this track to be among T. Rex‘s best.
So to steal some lyrics from this rather wonderful ditty “Hey little punk forget all that junk and celebrate summer with me. Summer’s not a bummer. This is summer. And it’s now” Whatever you are doing and wherever you are I hope you make the most of your summer!
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