There was a crush of Mick Farren CD’s in the mid-1990’s. Under the artist name Mick Farren and Jack Lancaster, 1995 brought yet another side of Mick with The Deathray Tapes, a live performance consisting mostly of spoken-word material – but this is no 1960’s flower-child poetry reading. Lancaster had co-founded Blodwyn Pig with ex-Jethro Tull guitarist Mick Abrahams in 1968; the eclectic band here includes Wayne Kramer and Andy Colquhoun, and actor Brad Dourif plays didgeridoo (!) on one song. “Disgruntled Employee” imagines what might drive someone to shoot up their workplace, with the final straw being an unsuccessful date with a co-worker and then seeing her the next morning laughing with her girlfriends: “And I knew . . . that they were talking . . . about me!!!” Most of the performances go on for 6 or 8 minutes, while “Envy” is just a short verse:
I used to envy Elvis, but then he got fat and died.
I used to envy Marlon Brando, but then he got fat and his kid died.
I used to envy Jim Morrison, but then I got out of the tub.
Now I don’t envy anyone, because it causes bloating, and far too many funerals.
The 1996 CD Eating Jello with a Heated Fork is one of my favorite Deviants albums of them all – the band name is given as Deviants ixvi (“96”), and the line-up is basically the same as on The Deathray Tapes.
