The Deviants
Disposable

If in America the subversives, indeed the sonic terrorists, were identified in the Fugs of gurus Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, their equivalent in England was the Deviants of Mick Farren. An anarchic and outrageous way (the motto was: grass-ass-sex) of making music that would seem absurd even today, having seen and heard everything.

But how much creativity in this assault on the musical system by absolute freaks of the underground, underground who blend rock, blues, psychedelia, and nonsense into a highly stimulating cocktail just like the amphetamines they happily consumed. While other psychedelic bands of the period were dreaming of elves and unicorns, Farren and his band, torn from jobs as sales clerks or phone operators, led their political crusade against wars and conventions. Clearly, at the time, lunatics like them, led by a singer with a voluminous afro hairstyle mooing wrapped in black leather, were considered absolutely unmarketable and in 1967 they had to produce their first record themselves, that "Ptooff!" which is underground from head to toe, including the possibility of being bought through the alternative press. But the winds of guerrilla warfare were starting to sweep away necklaces and incense, shaking old Europe with Russian tanks in Prague and flames in the squares of Paris, and consequently, politicized groups emerged like the Deviants. Record companies, as usual, smelled the business and Island signed them through Stable Records, the label created specifically to get "hands dirty" with this type of alternative rock.

In 1968, while Pink Floyd served their "dish of secrets," the Deviants held high the honor of the rawest rock by conducting another sonic assault with "Disposable."

The record executives must have wondered if the same band was always playing! In the opener "Somewhere to Go" Farren's cavernous litany over the insistent bass riff even preludes to the Hammond organ and the piercing solo of Ian "Sid" Bishop's Gibson. Elsewhere, like in "Fire in the City", they place a white soul ballad complete with sax even sung in a small chorus by the group's roadies! There are still psychedelic excursions like in "Jamies Song" that would put specialists of the era to shame or an instrumental like "Normality Jam"" that wouldn't be out of place on the last Beastie Boys record.

But the most incredible tracks are those that also came out as singles: "You ‘ve Got to Hold on ", which is a great garage anthem following the style of Count Five spiced with furious solos from Bishop's guitar and the mockery of wannabe revolutionaries in "Let's Loot the Supermarket". This track is worth talking about because it is a sort of choral divertissement where session men, roadies, groupies, and friends of the band are invited to interact with clamor, laughter, and applause that make it clear how drugs of all kinds were circulating in the recording studio. Well, in the end, you'll be caught up in the general hilarity as if methedrine had also been passed to you.

Ten years later, it would be the Clash with their "Lost in the Supermarket"" to get lost in the supermarket instead of looting it. And it's not quite the same thing.