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My love for the Deviants extended through all the subsequent incarnations, the juiciest of which was the Pink Fairies adventure, which originally included the entire deviated lineup of the third album with the addition of the strangest, most stoned, and legendary figure of the entire English underground universe of the seventies: Steve Peregrin Took. But the bands of that era were not like those of today, where the members seem like employees with a permanent job, punching the clock to earn their daily bread. Too much of a bunch of hippies to seriously last in a musical project, especially hotheads and restless ones like Steve and Mick Farren. Thus, with a stable lineup only in Russel Hunter on drums and Duncan Sanderson on bass, while guitarist Paul Rudolph came and went from Hawkwind, the Pink Fairies produced three albums between 1970 and 1973 that represent the British connection point between what could be called trip rock (hard rock traversed by psychedelic branches) and the punk that would explode a few years later.
The concert at the Roundhouse in 1975 represents the group's farewell to its faithful with the three founding members plus guitarist Larry Wallis from Motorhead and the legendary honorary member Twink on drums: a blazing performance. As blazing was the last studio album "Kings of Oblivion," stuff from 1973 but at least four years ahead of what would happen next. And so one of the flying pink pigs on that cover now wears a tutu and treads the wooden boards of the old Roundhouse in Camden Town ... I wonder why they didn't catch fire from the hot sparks flying from the five's instruments!
The opening is entrusted to the blistering "City Kids", a tectonic riff that recalls Steppenwolf but with a ragged singing that folks like Strummer would bring to worldwide attention a few years later. And it’s immediately hard and violent rock, streaked with psychedelic influences with long guitar solos that uplift the listener. No, it’s definitely not a record to enjoy comfortably lounging on the couch, it’s practically impossible not to start bouncing around the room: the long cover of "Waiting For The Man" is a hard molotov cocktail spiked with punk venom injections and the guitar is always drawn with accents of metallic distortion.
The t-shirt is now drenched in sweat and the tribute to the sixties classic r&b "Lucille" transformed into an electric ride must have driven the crowd wild in the pogo. But there's not a moment's respite because the five unleash the most wicked dances again with an obsessively hard version of their classic "Uncle Harry's Last Freakout". The rhythmic power of the two drums, Sanderson’s pounding bass, the hallucinogenic carousel put up by the two guitars with Wallis’s lead guitar generous with metallic effluvia from blast furnace, package a colorful pill capable of taking us back in time to the field of one of the first hippie festivals in Glastonbury.
When rock meant visceral emotion.
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