T. Rex - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1970-1971

On this, the fourth volume of T. Rex performing for the BBC, the band finally sounds like the T. Rex that one hears on the radio. The three previous volumes had a more acoustic sound. This volume starts acoustic, and turns full band electric partway through. But also, main band member Marc Bolan changed his songwriting, writing simpler songs that aimed for the charts. 

He had success right off the bat. The first song here, "Ride a White Swan," reached Number Two in the singles charts in Britain, his biggest success by far at that point. Two other songs here reached Number One: "Hot Love" and "Get It On (Bang a Gong)," with "Jeepster" just missing at Number Two. So this is much more commercial than the previous albums. If you're only a casual fan, you might want to download this even if you missed the previous volumes.

As with the previous volumes, this is sourced from the official box set "Marc Bolan at the BBC." All the songs come from that. However, I made changes to three songs, the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles. That's because they had the common BBC problem from that era of BBC DJs talking over the music. I got rid of the talking with the usual method, using the UVR5 audio editing program.

Note that there are two versions of the song "Hot Love." I kept both because one is acoustic and the other is with a full band. Other than that, there were surprisingly few repeats. There also was a second version of "Jewel," but I didn't include it because that version was almost identical to the version included here.

There are two bonus tracks, "Funk Music" and "My Baby's like a Cloud Form." Although they're from the box set too, they both come from a BBC session that apparently was poorly recorded, because their sound quality is a lot worse than everything else here.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Ride a White Swan (T. Rex)
02 Jewel (T. Rex)
03 Elemental Child (T. Rex)
04 Sun Eye (T. Rex)
05 Hot Love [Acoustic Version] (T. Rex)
06 Summertime Blues (T. Rex)
07 Woodland Rock [Edit] (T. Rex)
08 Beltane Walk (T. Rex)
09 Hot Love (T. Rex)
10 Jeepster [Edit] (T. Rex)
11 Get It On [Bang a Gong] (T. Rex)
12 Electric Boogie [Edit] (T. Rex)
13 Sailors of the Highway (T. Rex)
14 Girl (T. Rex)

Funk Music (T. Rex)
My Baby's like a Cloud Form (T. Rex)

The download link has been removed due to copyright issues, but look at the comments.

The cover photo shows T. Rex on a British TV show in February 1971, probably "Top of the Pops." I picked the photo to show how the band, previously an acoustic duo, evolved into a full band by 1971. There's another drummer who is out of the frame.