Marc Bolan didn’t appear on John’s Children’s first album Orgasm album released in 1967…he did join after the album was completed…although he did write, play guitar and sing the backing vocals on this song.
The song failed to chart in Britain, possibly due to the fact it was banned by the BBC for the lyric “lift up your skirt and fly.” However, the song was a minor hit in Europe. The band consisted of Andy Ellison on vocals, John Hewlett on guitar and bass, Geoff McLelland on guitar and Chris Townson on drums. The band started as The Few in Surrey in 1964.
Marc Bolan joined the group for a time as their principal singer and songwriter as well as several unreleased cuts that have surfaced on reissues. Bolan departed in an argument with Napier-Bell (producer), and the group released a couple more flop singles before disbanding in 1968.
They had promise…not a bad sounding mid-sixties mod band.
Some ex-members of John’s Children were involved with the obscure British groups Jook, Jet, and Radio Stars in the ’70s.
Desdemona
Desdemona just because
You’re the daughter of a man
He may be rich he’s in a ditch
He does not understand
Just how to move or rock and roll
To the conventions of the young
Desdemona, Desdemona
Desdemona Desdemona
Desdemona, Desdemona
Lift up your skirt and fly
Just because my friend and I
Got a jute joint by the Seine
Does not mean I’m past fourteen
And cannot play the game
I’m glad I split and got a pad
On Boulevard Rue Fourteen
Desdemona, Desdemona
Desdemona Desdemona
Desdemona, Desdemona
Lift Up your skirt and fly
Just because Toulouse Lautrec
Painted some chick in the rude
Doesn’t give you the right
To steal my night
And leave me naked in the nude
Well just because the touch of your hand
Can turn me on just like a stick
Desdemona, Desdemona
Desdemona Desdemona
Desdemona, Desdemona
Lift up your skirt and speak
PowerPop... An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture 
entirely new to me – I had no idea what Bolan might have done before T-rex. I’ve heard worse, that’s for sure. The album title alone was sure to get some attention…and probably some bans from various retailers or radio people.
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I found this a couple of months ago…I didn’t know it either but liked it.
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Sounds great, but there is no “relief” in that melody. Bolan was a talented guy. In “Stardust” the David Bowie movie I watched recently, it showed how Bowie was compared unfavorably to Bolan before he had his breakthrough. No idea if it’s based on reality, but that’s how they depicted it.
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That makes sense because they were both glam…they ended up great friends. Bowie was on Marc Bolan’s TV show right before Bolan died. Hope you are doing well.
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I wonder if I could find a youtube of it. I’m guessing yes. Am doing ok but I’m a little agitated. Hoping your project is going alright.
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Yep our email server died…a painful death lol…so I’m cleaning up the pieces.
Here you go…it aired after his death. I think it was recorded either on the same day or right before.
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Thank you for finding it, Max. Nice jamming duo at the end of it. The poignance of knowing Bolan passed within such a short time of this recording 😦 I wonder if he was thinking of Marc when he was singing. They were two colorful feathers from the same bird.
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I like it! It has all the elements that I revere: proto-punk rawness with a catchy melody and laissez faire lyrical attitude. Never heard this, though I should have since I’m a Marc Bolan fan. It’s great!
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Awesome! I had never heard it before and love finding prizes like this that have been overlooked…thanks for listening Pam!
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The first 8″ and I thought we were going to get the theme from “The Pink Panther”!
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It does Bruce… I love that theme, cartoon, and the Peter Sellers movies.
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I liked it, but I would have never spent money on it to buy it.
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I like when you turn up these old cuts.
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Whoops! I think I accidentally unfollowed you. Sorry about that:)
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Thats alright!
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Ive done that to a couple people I like watching. I think my thumb may have slipped on the ol smart phone
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I’ve done that before also…btw…becasue of work I’ve been off the blog really…since Saturday…email server went down for good and I’m IT…so this has not been a fun week….I’ll catch up soon
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I noticed but it’s okay. I’ve been off and on very busy and short handed at work so I completely understand. No worries and I hope things settle down for ya soon;)
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I didn’t realise that Bolan had stuff before Tyrannosaurus Rex. He’s pretty charismatic there.
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I liked it quite a bit…I didn’t know about them either…
I’ve been out …work related…I’ll catch up soon
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I saw you had some email server problems – sounds stressful.
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Yes it is. I had a staff of nine but none now since covid…so basically I’m a Director of IT…with no one to direct lol… I’m moving everything to Azure including email.
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Was it on a local server or in the cloud? I remember the days of having an office server to maintain and doing tape backups.
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A local virtual server in our network center. The virtual server was taken from an old 2010 Exchange server before I was in charge…all that happened was the host that housed the VM had an upgrade in RAM…in 20 years of doing this I’ve never seen this happen. It stopped working and I had an expert look at it…nothing…we were migrating anyway so off I went migrating everyone to Office 365 earlier than expected.
The backups of the VM were in snapshots but by Sunday…it would have taken too long to restore. The mailboxes are combined around 3 TBs. I
We are also moving all of our 2003 servers to Azure…well… getting everything off of them. This company was in a huge need of an upgrade. It’s a huge job and we are in the middle of it. I’m working with a consultant and we are around 3/4 of the way there.
I’m sure this was too much info.
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I’m kind of IT person for my work but it’s small enough that we can all just use Google drives and Gmail (with our own domain).
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That is nice that it’s smaller. I inherited a complete mess. 2003 servers and a local domain with the same domain name.
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I imagine having an in-office server is pretty rare now?
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Yes it is… I kept telling the executives we needed to upgrade… now they are listening. It always takes a disaster.
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