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"As we were completing this record,
Elvis Presley had the number one single in the global charts,
even though he had been dead for twenty five years and it had
been remixed by a Dutchman for a sneaker commercial. The CD seemed
to say a lot about time, death, rock & roll and many other things
which attract our morbid fascination." - Mick Farren, 2002
The Deviants have not been around
as long as Elvis, although sometimes they feel like they have,
and that it's a miracle he's dead and they are not. The Deviants
heyday was, of course, at the end of the radical sixties when,
described as "the Bash Street Kids on acid", they became the
house band of the revolution, and the 24 hour amphetamine underground.
From the UFO Club to Alexandra Palace, from the Round House,
through the '68 student riots, and the Royal Festival Hall,
to two giant free concerts in Hyde Park, they had their evil
way amid the excesses of flower power, and even found time to
cut and distribute three albums, the first of which, PTOOFF!,
offered a challenge to the music establishment in that they
pressed and distributed it themselves on the counter culture
underground. This first damaged and occasionally dangerous phase
ended when the band attempted to tour North America, and founder
and leader Mick Farren found himself exiled by band mates from
the group of his creating. Without him the Deviants went to
hell and became the Pink Fairies.
During the early part of the seventies,
Farren lay low, publishing the underground newspaper IT and
the comic book Nasty Tales, an effort that put him through a
protracted obscenity trail at the Old Bailey. He compulsively
wrote science fiction and fantasy novels, diatribes for the
NME, and lyrics for any one who wanted them, including the aforesaid
Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Motorhead, and Andy Colquhoun's Warsaw
Pakt. The collaboration with guitar ace Colquhoun would start
a quarter century of partnership that would ultimately result
in the Deviants' current renaissance. When the punks pulled
Farren out of musical exile to record a collection of Deviant
songs for Stiff Records, and a solo album, "Vampires Stole My
Lunch Money", with Colquhoun and Larry Wallis, it seem like
a good idea for the Deviants to become Farren's rock & roll
floating crap game, in which any permutation of the old lags
could come together to indulge in his brand of audio weirdness.
The Deviants only convened a few
times during the eighties. Farren had quite the Thatcherite
UK in disgust and was living in New York, writing novels and
columns for the Village Voice, and doing musical projects with
Brother Wayne Kramer, most notably the off-Broadway musical
The Last Words of Dutch Schultz. Meanwhile, Andy Colquhoun had
joined a refurbished Pink Fairies. The high point was when Farren,
with Kramer and Wallis guesting, took over Dingwalls for two
nights to record the live album "Human Garbage".
The nineties saw Farren and Colquhoun
both living in Los Angeles, and the inevitable could not be
avoided. With other ex-patriots like Jack Lancaster and Motorhead
drummer Phil Taylor, they played festivals and gin joints, and
recorded a Farren/Lancaster collaboration "The Death Ray Tapes,
and studio Deviants CD "Eating Jello With A Heated Fork." A
1999 tour of Japan and a live CD "Barbarian Princes" crystallised
the line-up to the present one of Farren and Colquhoun, plus
Doug Lunn on bass and Ric Parnell on drums, and a sound that
one critic described as sounding like "William Burroughs fronting
a kick ass psychedelic rock band." The obvious need was to get
that sound into a studio with the newly clinched lineup, and
the result is the brand new Track Records CD "Dr. Crow". A plus
was added when a lengthy, night owl, Jack Daniels, red wine
and tequila friendship brought Johnette Napolitano from Concrete
Blonde to the mix of voices, but that's how things have always
been in the Deviants.
Dr. Crow represents the product
of such a long, diverse, and weird experience. Recorded and
mixed through the chaos of 2002, it is the work of crazy veterans,
but at the same time, totally reflects the time and circumstances
of its making. Mick Farren critically lauded memoir of the 60s
and 70s "Give The Anarchist A Cigarette"has recently been published
by Jonathan Cape in the UK, and his classic trilogy of psychedelic
novels "The DNA Cowboys" will come out shortly from the Do Not
Press.
For more on all of the above and
related topics go to the Funtopia website - www.thanatosoft.freeserve.co.uk |
