The Pink Fairies Albums (7)
'Live at Weeley Festival 1971'
Release Date 5/12/1999
Tracks 5
Label Get Back Rock
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What The Critics Say
As a live recording, Live at Weeley 1971 is frustrating. The Pink Fairies were just hitting their stride as a live act, and the record captures a frenzied, pounding set as the band tears through classics like "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "The Snake." The band is in peak form and the songs, though extended into psychedelic jams, never become tedious. Unfortunately, the sound quality is just a hair above that of an audience-recorded bootleg, and that seriously hampers the listenability of the record. It's a shame, because the Pink Fairies made their reputation as a fearsome live show, yet no truly definitive concert recording of the band has ever emerged. Live At Weeley 1971 could have served as a great introduction to the formidable live energy of the Pink Fairies, but instead, because of the muddy sound mix, is a wasted opportunity that is best left for the diehards. ~ Victor W. Valdivia, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The back of this album contains a reproduction for the White Panther Party U.K. Place any of the first tracks from this compilation next to anything of the White Panther MC5's Kick Out the Jams and you find the material uniquely mated for message and visceral rock energy. This compendium of live recordings from 1969-1971 includes two versions of "Do It!," covered by Henry Rollins on his first solo album. While these '60s superstars played as part of huge, outdoor festivals, the Pink Fairies denied all pretense and jammed outside, entertaining for free. Twink (ex-Pretty Things), drummer and vocalist for this most idealistic of the era's hard rock acts, wrote liner notes for this album chronicling the hippie philosophy of this time period and its decline on many levels. ~ Tom Schulte, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
For any other artist, a live recording consisting of just six songs would barely qualify as an EP, and would contain the most famous songs in the artist's repertoire. The Pink Fairies, however, are not any other artist, and Uncle Harry is not a typical live album. Two tracks are selected from three concerts the band recorded in 1970 and 1971 (two for the BBC), and apart from the legendary "Do It!" the selections are somewhat obscure. Furthermore, in keeping with the Fairies' legendary excesses, the songs are long, psychedelic raveups. The band turns "The Snake" into an extended tribal jam, renders "Johnny B. Goode" into a thundering proto-metal assault, and cranks out two different (and very lengthy) versions of "Uncle Henry's Last Freakout." If the selection seems odd and the sequencing disjointed (and would it have killed the band to actually issue all of the BBC sessions in their entirety?), there is still plenty of classic hard rock here. Certainly, great effort was put into the record's packaging: the fourth side of this two-LP set is decorated with engraved flying pigs. Ultimately, it's a curious release that would be out of place for anyone else but the notoriously eccentric Pink Fairies. ~ Victor W. Valdivia, All Music Guide
'Kill 'Em & Eat 'Em'
Release Date 5/20/1997
Tracks 10
Label Demon Duplicate
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What The Critics Say
These Brit grunge madmen don't disappoint in the least. It's the most familiar Fairies lineup (Larry Wallis, Duncan Sanderson, and Russell Hunter), along with original Fairies skinman Twink and ex-Warsaw Pakt stringbender Andy Colqhoun, and they go kicking and screaming into the night blasting away with the same kind of garagey acid-laced greasy proto-metal that made them hippie-era cult icons. With occasional neo-beat lyrical barrages from writer/performer/ex-Deviant Mick Farren, this is simply heap big fun all the way around. ~ John Dougan, All Music Guide
'Live at the Roundhouse'
Release Date 1/1/1982
Tracks 5
Label Big Beat
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What The Critics Say
Live at the Roundhouse was recorded in 1975, at a concert the Pink Fairies gave in London which featured all five members who had ever played in the band. The sound quality is impressive, especially for the mid-70s, and the band is in peak form, with guitarists Larry Wallis and Paul Rudolph trading fiery leads and the twin drums of Russell Hunter and Twink driving the band. Considering it is such a landmark recording in the band's history then, it is rather mystifying why the album is so short and so padded with unnecessary covers. The versions of "City Kids" and "Uncle Harry's Last Freakout" captured here are definitive, bursting with ferocious energy. How, then, could the set not include the Fairies' most famous song, "Do It," or their second most famous, "The Snake"? The covers, which include the Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man," are nice to hear, but it would have even more of a treat to hear this once-in-a-lifetime lineup tear into some of the Fairies' most classic tracks. (And why only a single album? Considering the band's affinity for stretching out their songs onstage, a double album, especially for the CD reissue, would have been spectacular ) A worthwhile release, especially for fans, but not nearly as stunning as it could have been. ~ Victor W. Valdivia, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The third and final Pink Fairies studio album, Kings of Oblivion, welcomed guitarist Larry Wallis to the brew, bringing with him some of the band's most remarkable -- and concise -- material yet. The opening "City Kids," famously recut by Motörhead during Wallis' sojourn with that band, is as dynamic an opener as the Pink Fairies ever had, while the album's two epics, "I Wish I Was a Girl" and "Street Urchin," similarly catch the band as they made a sharp turn away from the rockin' riff jam basics that scarred their second LP, What a Bunch of Sweeties, and moved instead into the affirmative guttercat stance that so effectively predicted the rudiments of punk rock. Indeed, if any album could be said to have been born ahead of its time, Kings of Oblivion, conceived in 1973 but sounding just like 1977, is it. In common with the rest of the remastered Pink Fairies albums, Kings of Oblivion divides its bonus tracks between unfamiliar versions of familiar material (most pressingly, an urgent alternate mix of "City Kids") and non-album material. This includes two versions of the loping "Well Well Well" and the country rock-ish "Hold On" dating from 1972, and a single cut with Wallis' short-lived predecessor, Mick Wayne, and it's gratifying to have them on CD at last. Truly, though, Kings of Oblivion could exist just as happily without the extras; greeted at the time as the Pink Fairies' best album, it remains a tightly coiled, furiously adrenalined beast, the summation of everything that the Pink Fairies promised and all that subsequent reunions have continued to deliver. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide
'What a Bunch of Sweeties'
Release Date 1/1/1972
Tracks 11
Label Polydor
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What The Critics Say
The best-loved of the original Pink Fairies' three Polydor albums is also, contrarily, the lesser of them all. Recorded in 1972 at a time when the band's own reputation as hippie hell-raisers was already being eclipsed by the soaring Hawkwind, What a Bunch of Sweeties found the band realigning themselves with the twisted Americana rock sensibilities of the latter-day MC5, high on noise but, sadly, low on the blistering commitment that was the hallmark of their debut album. The loss of founding member Twink may or may not have contributed further to the collapse, although there is no denying that, in full instrumental overdrive, the three-piece (plus guests) incarnation of the group was at least as dramatic as its predecessor. Indeed, a nine-minute assault on the Ventures' "Walk Don't Run" rates among the finest Pink Fairies recordings of all time, while the bonus inclusion of an even longer version lends this reissue even greater gravitas. There's also a hot version of the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There," the twisted country opus "Pigs of Uranus," and, rounding off the bonus tracks, a grimy reinvention of Don Nix's "Goin' Down." Elsewhere, however, What a Bunch of Sweeties founders on too many weak ideas drawn for far too long and too much reliance on churning rock jam riffs that could have been peeled off by any half-competent festival bill-filler of the era -- a status that the Pink Fairies should never have been reduced to. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide
