Mick Farren 2

MICK FARREN – Liner Notes for The Sound of San Francisco

Mick Farren – a founder of two of my all-time favorite bands, the Deviants and the Pink Fairies – wrote the liner notes to The Sound of San Francisco, which are entitled “Remember You Heard it Here First”. (I’ve talked about him a lot in these posts, so you should see a photo of him; this is from one of his early solo albums, Vampires Stole My Lunch Money). They started out this way:

Everyone knows the old joke.

Q What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?

A Homeless

Mick Farren was trying to make a point though with this old joke, and it was a poignant one; his liner notes continued: “Maybe there was a utopian time when musicians could expect to support their survival by playing rock & roll, but I don’t recall so much as meeting anybody who could remember such a golden age. Even cats with record deals must sometimes fall back on phonesales, breaking and entering, or find themselves doing 24 months for possession with intent to sell; and the girls might go out lap-dancing or dealing blackjack to make ends meet in hard times or moments of self-inflicted disaster. Such has been the material reality of all but that highly publicized, but tiny one percent of rockers who find themselves elevated to MTV, witless stardom, and access to every vice known to man, woman, and several domestic animals.”

* * *

It was sad, really, to read all of this truth via Mick Farren, who has himself delivered a dozen albums full of fantastic music into my collection: “And every three or four years a new and energetic crop comes out of the garages and into the streets, the serious new meat on those same sidewalks of Hank Williams’ lost highway, earning their tattoos, both physical and meta-physical, until, after heaven only knows how many of these generations, every city on the planet worth a damn; London, New York, Detroit or Tokyo, or, in this case, San Francisco has an awesome talent pool of renegade rock music and rolling musicians discovering that fame is the Crapshoot of the Gods, and maybe the best to be hoped for is a good following around the bars and enough songs recorded to leave a legacy of how it sounded back in the day. . . . I’ve been on this waterfront too long to handicap any musical fates, dire or divine, that’s for idiot TV talent shows. What will be will be for all of those assembled on this CD. Just remember you heard them here first.”

Mick Farren writes a lot of stuff; he has several science fiction novels to his credit, including a trilogy called The DNA Cowboys. Along with Greg Shaw’s ex-wife and business partner Suzy Shaw, Mick Farren co-wrote the 2007 book that cements Shaw’s legacy in the rock and roll universe, Bomp! / Saving the World One Record at a Time. I have seen numerous articles by Farren in the Village Voice and elsewhere. But I can only recall one other time when Mick Farren wrote liner notes; that was for the comeback album for his old band the Pink Fairies, specifically their 1987 release Kill ’Em and Eat ’Em.

(January 2013)