Mandies And Mescaline Round At Uncle Harry's

An excellent gathering of classic Fairies rarities, this 1998 compilation might merely rope together a bunch of tracks that are familiar from a clutch of other releases (both official and underground), but it does so with an eye for detail and sonics that renders it the last word on its subject.
Things get underway with a couple of cuts from the band's BBC radio debut in 1970, including a fabulous rip through the mainstay "The Snake." Seven minutes of high octane madness wipe the floor with the familiar single version. "Johnny B Goode" and "Uncle Harry's Last Freak Out" follow, this time from a 1971 John Peel session, before we return to the original four-piece Fairies for two tracks hitherto available only on the super-scarce Glastonbury Fayre triple album, a clattering "Do It" and a dyspeptic reprise of "Uncle Harry" -- nineteen minutes of free-form assault whose only downside is it ends too soon; when the Fairies locked into a groove like this, you wished it could go on forever. There's still room on the shelves for the Pink Fairies to be properly anthologized; still a heap of odds and sods out there that demand to be placed in their historical context. Until that happens, however, Mandies and Mescaline offers a taste of what we're missing. ~ Dave Thompson|