Mick Farren
Mona The Carnivorous Circus

It was a particularly disappointed Farren (and in conflict with the world, but that was nothing new), who entered the studio at the end of '69 to file away his first solo grumble. He had recently returned to London after the Deviants' last American tour, but things were not going well at all. He no longer felt the band was his, the freak days of Swingin' London when that shard of pure anarchy known as "Ptooff!" had come to light seemed a century away, and musical England was heading towards very different soundscapes. And above all: he was not at all satisfied with how the last album created with the band sounded: that "Deviants No.3" with - on the cover - the provocative and ambiguous nun intent on sucking her popsicle. That record had stuck with him, for his whole life it would be a thorn in his side: "we had fun with the first two, now we've started making music... somewhere between Led Zeppelin and Stooges".

And sounding like the Stooges (I mean, in '69! And we’re still talking about the Stooges!) was of absolutely NO interest to this Monster of the London underground who left us last July. Whether it was more hard rock or more garage didn't matter much: for him, they were no longer the Deviants. The Deviants were chaos, armed revolt; using guitars in the same way as machine guns, smashing everything, breaking windows, and looting supermarkets ("Let's Loot The Supermarket," was the invitation contained in "Disposable"). But '68 had passed, by then.

As if that wasn't enough, there was that three-album contract signed with Transatlantic, which felt to Mick like a noose around his neck. He had already recorded one - the third Deviants, to be precise. But where to find the anger and motivation to spit out not one, but TWO LPs, with spirits low and inspiration waning? Quite the dilemma. And so it was that agitator-Farren began to "plan" (but what plan...? Let's say "plan" for simple convention) his first solo outing without the slightest idea how to fill 40 minutes of grooves and a little more. But then, SOMETHING came out. And it was precisely that something made unwillingly, just surrendering to the moods of the moment, that revealed the essence of the most psychopathic and unclassifiable Farren imaginable.

"Mona, The Carnivorous Circus". And putting it that way, it would seem quite simple. Bo Diddley's "Mona" to open and close, and a long rambling of instruments, improvisations, and gibberish to fill the in-between. And serving as the watershed: Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" - that of Who, Blue Cheer, Marc Bolan, and dozens and dozens of other rockers of all times. Yet in practice, listening to this "carnivorous circus" is anything but easy: "I was completely wasted and out of my mind during the recordings, I did EVERYTHING my way..." - and indeed, everything reeks of nervous breakdown when listening back to "Mona". "Music" that's acid, distorted, delirious, furthermore deformed and altered by absurd copy-pasting placed here and there, just to make the whole thing even more bewildering; for the record: various noises, extracts from political rallies, and long sections of "spoken word" made not of recited poems, but... of interviews with a member of the Hells Angels and Steve Peregrin Took of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

And thus, at the dawn of the year of "Atom Heart Mother", an idea of SUITE takes form (well, it would be so redundant to put it in quotes that I won't even bother...) that cares nothing for progressivism and various baroquisms, and which instead returns to improvisation and the primitivism of rock ‘n’ roll - hoisting high the flag of the ultimate PRIMATE of the origins of Rock: that Bo Diddley who with his tribal and apish rhythms had inspired a psychedelic wizard like John Cipollina on the paths of total acid-trip.

In the studio, big names like Twink (could he be missing?) make their presence felt and that John Gustafson of Quatermass who we would later find in Roxy Music and the Ian Gillan Band. One of my favorites among English bassists, his touch unmistakable. And Paul Buckmaster on cello (!) on the final fragment of "Mona" ("The Whole Trip", it is careful to specify...), just to win a bet: to prove that, somehow and it's not quite clear how, even Béla Bartók and Bo Diddley can meet. And then endless jams of funk laced with acid, Hendrix-esque wah-wah and pumping bass sprawling over a single chord for minutes. And drugged mantras, animalistic groans, exhausting chants, hyper-distorted blues like those of "cousin" Edgar Broughton. And even acoustic passages, "western" style parentheses like "Calvary" of the Quicksilver on the second side: a window on the California of the era.

But really, what’s the point of droning on with all these words, when maybe you’ve already stopped reading and haven’t resisted the temptation to go listen to HOW IT SOUNDS, all this...? So then I’ll keep quiet.

What...? You’re asking me to give it a rating? As if this record here could be classified with a little number...?

Come now, it isn't a nice joke...