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Pink Fairies - The Roundhouse 16 February 1975 (1975)

Track listing:
  1. Intro 2:08
  2. City Kids 4:11
  3. Do It 5:35
  4. 3-5ths Of A Mile In 10 Seconds 3:10
  5. The Snake 8:25
  6. Lucille 2:55
  7. Waiting For The Man 10:46
  8. Audience 1:37
  9. Uncle Harry's Last Freakout 12:07
  10. Street Urchin 17:04
  11. Bye Bye Johnny 5:10
  12. Going Down 7:34

Notes

Chalk Farm, London

Larry Wallis - guitar, vocals
Duncan Sanderson - bass, vocals
Russell Hunter - drums

with (?):
John Twink Alder - vocals, drums, percussion
Paul Rudolph - guitar, vocals (?)
Nik Turner - sax
Lemmy - guitar(?)/bass(?)

audience

I'm not certain about much information regarding this. It arrived, identified only as "Roundhouse 75 with Nik Turner and Lemmy". The better-known Pink Fairies Roundhouse show from that year was July 13th, which was recorded professionally and (partially?) released as 'Live at the Roundhouse' on Big Beat. This is NOT that performance (among numerous other differences, the most obvious one is that Nik is clearly audible on "Waiting for the Man", and there's no sax on the 'Live at the Roundhouse' version). However, the Pink Fairies also opened for Hawkwind at the Roundhouse on February 16th, and the Hawkwind set is known to have been recorded in comparable sound quality. That would explain Nik and Lemmy's presence (Lemmy would not likely have been either playing with the Pink Fairies at July 13th show, since the lineup included Paul Rudolph, his replacement in Hawkwind after his May sacking, nor would he have been playing on the same stage as Nik, who broke that bad news to him). That being said, I certainly don't hear any bass that sounds like Lemmy, so perhaps he played rhythm guitar. There definitely are two guitars on much (all?) of the set, but I don't know whether the second guitar is Paul Rudolph or Lemmy.

I'm not positive about the lineup ... I thought that the Roundhouse show from July 13 was the first time the five-piece "reunion" lineup played together, but (as previously mentioned) this is not that performance. There are clearly two drums, and definite Twink vocals (not positive about Rudolph vocals, and I don't hear either Nik or Lemmy's voices).

Sound quality is not awful, but it is typical of an audience recording made in an English train shed in 1975, i.e. not very good. It's hissy, distant, there's too much audience, the guitars aren't defined enough, and there's barely any bottom end. There are a number of small drop-outs that I didn't have the patience to repair. But this is the Pink Fairies ... what other options are there?