you Ladbroke Grovers turn me on

 

Now I thought this lot were one of those typical hairy Grove 'n' Gate freedom fighters in the vicinity of The Deviants and Edgar Broughton Band. Fuzz freakout. Kings of oblivion. 

But this here "War Girl" is gorgeous, lyrical and dreamy - the guitar-tone closer to I dunno Manuel Gottsching. Love that hovering slide in the back of the action, like a cloud canopy shot through with sunset.

It's a Twink song so maybe that's why it twinkles.   

This other Pink Fairies tune is quite dreamy too

Overall they're a lot mellower than I imagined

Taking bearings from Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold As Love maybe, or the ambient guitarscapes on Electric Ladyland. West Coast stuff too.  Spirit? 

Were they all on Mandrax at this point? 

See, this is what I imagined they were like - MC5-ish.  Rock 'n' roll guerillas. 

Although even there the guitar tone is quite reverb-spacy and delicate.

Or like this - a less outer-spacey UFO maybe. 

Bigging up their area

A Pink Fairies tune makes Single of the Week in Sounds, 1976.

Released on Stiff -  Old Wave / New Wave cusp equipoise. 

I was under the impression that this Fairy went fully punk, or at least, pub rock, with this 1977 single on Stiff. But no, it still sounds more 1968. 

It actually sounds a bit like the wimpier things Radio Birdman did. 

Conceptually linked B-side by Larry Wallis is a bit more pubby-rocky

The hair also looks like 1968. These guys all wanted to look like the lead fellow in MC5. See also Mick Farren, who backed the wrong Ann Arbour band.

68-in-77.

Farren gets with the punky program - giving the Lurkers a good run for their money, but still refusing to trim his barnet.

 

Rock critics without much of a voice, pt 48 (cf Lester Bangs efforts)

"We thought, "oh my God, if the whole of society could react in this different way, wouldn't it be lovely - fairyland, in fact'. It was kind of a rude awakening when we realised that fairlyland didn't exist" 

- Farren looks back to the utopian dreams of the late '60s. 

"There was this fairyland... Someone was trying to build a six-foot jelly... There was a new world brewing. " 

- Farren recalls electrifying happenings at the Roundhouse, 1967  

Farren kept his frizzed out hair until the very end. Still articulate too. 

Recurrent use of the word "fairyland" suggests tall tales told and once believed, that now have to be put away like childish things. 

Farren moved into science fiction, like many of the '60s utopianists (Hawkwind, Jefferson Starship). 

Fairy tales for older kids. 

This one, which I own but have not yet read, combines rock and s.f. 

Jacket blurb:

"In the wilderness of Britain little of civilization remains. Decadence and division have overtaken the huddled people of Festival. And faith in the texts of the old gods - Dhillon, Djeggar and Morrizen - is fading fast. Beyond the city walls the tribes are massing, united in evil intent. Hill savages fired by ritual superstition to pillage and slaughter. Satanic horse riders inspired by drugs to rape and defile. And crystal-crazed Iggy at the head of them all - a despot in search of territory. A territory like Festival."

another back jacket blurb

ALL ROADS LEAD TO FESTIVAL

In the Great Hall of the capital city called Festival, the magic ritual of Soundcheck prepares the ancient loudspeakers for tonight's Celebration. It is the distant future, when all that remains of the ancient ways is a collection of sacred black discs which contain the words and music of the great prophets who lived before the disaster: Dhillon, Djeggar, and Morrizen, the fabled lizard-king.

But in the hills and valleys surrounding Festival, a threat builds. An outlaw army, wasted by spirits and speeding on 'crystal,' works its way toward the dying city, raping and pillaging, gathering strength and weapons as it goes. In Festival, the population continues its preparations for the Celebration, unkowing, unsuspecting...

In his first novel, Mick Farren, a leading writer in the underground press, combines the color and excitement of the finest fantasy writing with his own keen vision of a time to come when the Counterculture of today ascends to a whacked-out, chemical-crazed pre-eminence."

Talking of fairy tales and then more adult-oriented tales, Farren was also involved in Nasty Tales, a comic strip for "adults only" (supposedly prosecuted for obscenity)

Farren's work at the New Musical Express includes these pieces said to have ignited punk. 

Julie Burchill's memoir I Knew I Was Right has cameos of the battered-but-beautiful Farren, claims that he initiated her in certain arcane practices

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