Cocaine Blues (Wayne Kramer & the Pink Fairies, 1978)

I can't speak from experience, but I'm sure there is a certain rush of emotions one feels upon release from prison and for Wayne Kramer, he's feeling GOOD! (James Brown inflection intended here.)

As the 1970's wore on, seemingly different groups of around 1970 were finding common cause. Wayne Kramer's band, the MC5, fizzled early on, sending its members in all directions. Hawkwind spawned Motorhead, which in turn attracted a later member (Larry Wallis) of the Pink Fairies into its ranks, which isn't all that strange as that band had moved toward a more stripped-down heavier sound. For what it's worth, in addition to brief stints with the Pink Fairies and Motorhead, Wallis also played a few gigs with UFO which went nowhere. For a guy that was all over the place it seemed to make sense that by 1978 he would find common cause with newly-released Wayne Kramer. As just about anything associated with the MC5 would end up being extremely combustive, this pairing didn't last particularly long. In fact there's not a whole lot of data on this particular live recording, which has been heartily augmented with pre-drug bust Wayne Kramer solo material of varying quality. According to some on-the-fly research I just did, Kramer's career was largely a series of short-lived collaborations with various rock notables, this is when he was in the music biz, which was shaky during the 1980's.

This release is highly unofficial in a number of ways. Incidentally, it would be until 1991 that Wayne Kramer would release a proper solo album.

Kings of Oblivion (Pink Fairies, 1973)

The Pink Fairies were one of those bands that seemed to be everywhere but on the historical record ended up in the shadows of the various collaborators. The band has roots in two distinct sources: a rugged British band called the Deviants, and the various adventures of a drummer named John Alder, better known as Twink.

The Deviants still remain a bit mysterious to me, but Twink is hard to escape. His earliest appearance was in a small-time band called The Fairies (no relation to the Pink ones, except that Twink was in both), but quickly gravitated into the churning British psych scene with Tomorrow (of "My White Bicycle" fame) and then with the Pretty Things, in both cases hitting both bands at their artistic high points. He even laid down the beat for one of the most bizarre supergroups, the Santa Barbara Machine Head, featuring Jon Lord on the organ, Ronnie Wood on guitar, and Kim Gardner on bass. The various members of this group recorded three songs and promptly shot off in all directions, with Twink angling toward the most aggressive and direct style, first with a solo album, then drawing in the charred remains of the Deviants to form the Pink Fairies.

I had previously noted that bands of these breed tend to be highly unstable, and the Pink Fairies were no exception, with no lineup surviving beyond a single album. Twink himself quit the band after the first album, leaving a unstable trio of ex-Deviants, who then replaced guitarist Paul Rudolph with Larry Wallis, who wrote the bulk of this album, just a scant two years after their debut. The fierce lineup shifting also changed the band sound from a heavy post-psych style that fit well with co-conspirators Hawkwind into a more stripped-down outfit that heralded the beginnings of the NWOBHM, so much so that after a brief stint with UFO, Wallis would join the original form of Motorhead and associate with Wayne Kramer of the MC5. In fact, the lead-off track for Kings of Oblivion, "City Kids", would be adopted by early Motorhead.

So, isn't it interesting that amidst all of these other well-known bands, the Pink Fairies seemed to have slipped into...oblivion? There were a few more albums released long after this one, mostly of questionable quality and dictated by the whims of a highly fickle Twink and ex-Deviant Mick Farren who lurked behind the scenes but was never officially in the band.