Michael Moorcock & Deep Fix - The New Worlds Fair - 1975
Leading Science Fantasy author Michael Moorcock enjoyed a long collaboration with Space Rock kings HAWKWIND eventually forming his own outfit Deep Fix to record this conceptual album in 1975. Featuring Members of HAWKWIND and guitarist SNOWY WHITE, “The New Worlds Fair” was a stunning work inspired by Moorcock’s writings and was wonderfully conceived and delivered.
The ESOTERIC reissue is remastered from the original tapes and includes 7 bonus tracks, 3 of which are previously unreleased. TIt an essential release for fans of HAWKWIND, MOORCOCK and Science Fantasy. - Esoteric Recordings Catalog
New Worlds Fair is a 1975 concept album by UK rock group Michael Moorcock & Deep Fix.
Moorcock was an established science fiction author who had contributed lyrics and occasionally performed with Hawkwind. In 1974 he was offered a record deal by Andrew Lauder, Hawkwind's A&R man for United Artists Records, although Moorcock insisted that his compatriots Steve Gilmore and Graham Charnock should have significant input into the album.
The single "Dodgem Dude"/"Starcruiser" had been recorded just prior to the album, but United Artists passed on the idea of releasing it. Some time later as Moorcock was visiting his former manager Douglas Smith, with whom he was in dispute, he discovered the tapes for the single lying around the office. Without Smith's knowledge he took them, passing them onto Frenchy Gloder who gave the single a belated release on his Flicknife Records label (FLS200, December 1980).[1]
The album has received two re-releases featuring various bonus tracks, in 1995 on Griffin (USA) and Dojo (UK), and in 2008 on Esoteric (UK). In 2004, Voiceprint Records released an alternate version of the album as Roller Coaster Holiday. - Wikipedia
"The New Worlds Fair", released in 1975 by United Artists records was Michael Moorcock's first (and to date only), album. The best selling Science Fantasy author came to record this wonderful concept record thanks to his association with Hawkwind for whom he had contributed prose and with whom he guested both on stage and on the album "Warrior on the Edge of Time". The roots of the record go back as far as 1971 when Moorcock recorded the demo of "Dodgem Dude", originally conceived to be an intergral part of the album. In the event, a re-recorded version of the track failed to appear on the record and was only released in IPSO as a limited edition single. Thirty two years on, "The New Worlds Fair", one of the most original records of its era, has been remastered from the original master tapes, and a series of alternate takes and demos have been added for your enjoyment. Long time friend and Hawkwind founder member Nik Turner reflects on his friendship with Michael Moorcock in the 1979's and on the recording of this unique album. Roll up, Roll up and come to the fair.... - Mark Powell
'There were Turkish and Persian lesbians with huge houri eyes like those of sad, neutered cats, French tailors, German musicians; Jewish martyrs; a fire-eater from Suffolk; a barber-shop quartet from Britain's remaining American base - the Columbia Club in Lancaster Gate; two fat prudes; Hans Smith of Hampstead. Last of the Left-Wing-Intellectuals - the Microfilm Mind; Shades; fourteen dealers in the same antique from the Portobello Road, their faces sagging under the weight of their own self-deception; a jobless Polish french-polisher brought by one of the dealers; a pop group called The Deep Fix' - from Moorcock's 'The Final Programme', 1965
'In the early 1970's Ladbroke Grove was and still is crammed with rock and roll poeple and it was almost impossible not to know at least half-a-dozen musicinas who were either already famous or would soon become famous. In this atmosphere, with Islands's amazing studios ten minutes from my house and almost everyone you knew working in some capacitly for the music business, it felt a little weird if you didn't have a recording contract.
I was doing a lot of stuff with Hawkwind at the time, both writing and performing and it revived my interest in music.
I had begun in the mid 50's, doing rock and roll and bluegrass as well as R&B and skiffle.
Those early years in the clubs of Soho, where British rock first began, were fairly similar to the 60's in Ladbroke Grove - everybody knew everybody and it was quite often possible to be involved in a session with someone like Charlie Watts on drums, Long John Baldry doing vocals and Pete Green playing guitar. I cut my first demo with EMI in 1957, and it was, even by the standards of the day, considered too dreadful to release. So it was perfectly natural, living as I did in Ladbroke Grove, to slide back into doing music. Also I was helping Jon Trux (publishing manager of FRENDZ) and others put on concerts under the motorway in Portobello Road - my first performance with Hawkwind was at one of these gigs, and at that first performance I did 'Sonic Attack'.
I think it was Dave Brock who encouraged me to do a demo of two songs I'd written, Dodgem Dude and ' Star Cruiser', and I somehow found myself having lunch with an A&R man from Liberty Records who casually asked me when I intended to schedule my first LP. Almost without realizing it, I had a record contract and 'New World's Fair' was the result.
I was already doing some stuff with Steve Gilmore and Graham Charnock - and I insisted that they be represented on the album, which is why you'll hear several of their songs on it. Steve was at the time working with Sam Shepard (now more famous as a film star, but then a writer who had co-scripted 'Zabriskie Point' by Antonioni and whose first collection of poems was called 'Hawkmoon') and it's Sam's lyrics you'll hear on 'Song for Marlene'. It was a very small world, in many ways. The idea was mine and Dodgem Dude, in particular, set the theme for NWF. Ironically, Liberty Rec. never showed any great interest in taking it beyond the demo stage and the record wasn't released until some seven years after the album.
'The Deep Fix' was formed in 1972. By the time we made the album it consisted of myself, Steve, Graham, Pete Pavli (late of the Thrid Ear Band and High Tide), with Simon House (Third Ear Band / High Tide / Hawkwind), Snowy White and Kumo.
The original album was musically a bit more ambitious than it turned out, partly because some of the people weren't happy with doing eccentric rhythms and bar lines, while some tracks were abandoned altogether.
If you listen to 'The Brothel in Rosenstrasse' or even 'At The Time Centre' (music for both songs by Pete Pavli) you'll have a better idea of the flavour I was aiming for.
'Brothel in Rosenstrasse' is in many ways more typical of the The Deep Fix, who gave their final performance (with Adrian Shaw on bass) at Nik Turner's 'Bohemian Love Inn the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, in 1978 - in many ways the Grand Finale of the alternative music scene as we had experienced and enjoyed it.
After that, our music got less and less commercial and times had changed so radically that nobody, except occasionally Flicknife, actually wanted to produce it." - Michael Moorcock, 1995 Re-issue Sleeve Notes
In 1969 Nik was playing in the band 'Hawkwind' which he had formed with some friends he had met in Holland. His mate from Thanet, Mr. Robert Calvert, the space poet [when not working in the local tyre shop], was doing a bit of writing of his science-fiction and poetry, for the Notting Hill Underground newspaper, Trendz'. Robert introduced Nik to the art director of the paper, Mr. Barney Bubbles. They all got on like love at first sight, had a lot in common, and had a very exciting, inspiring time together. Barney was interested in Nik's band, had heard a lot about the whacky, weird, underground, street-level-popular, alternative-cultural, very free and easy collective, playing psychedelic music, and attracting a large following, and lots of attention. Nik invited Barney to the next gig the band were doing, arranged a pick-up time and place, to meet and catch the Magic Bus to go to the gig.
When they met up at the appointed time, [at the Mountain Grill greasy spoon cafe in Portobello road] Barney had Mr. Mike Moorcock with him. Mike was currently contributing to 'Frendz' newspaper, as fiction editor, as well as editing the cutting-edge, new-wave, avant-garde sci-fi journal, 'New Worlds', which had contributions from all the leading sci-fi writers of that time. The band were all great fans of Mike, read his books, had partly inspired the name of the band, [as well as Nik's anti-social habits]. They all had a great time together, the gig was great, the band were an amalgam of diverse styles and influences, from blues guitars, free jazz sax, big band bass guitar, primitive drumming, weird simplistic emotive electronics, and space poetry, playing very psychedelic music. Mike was very favourably impressed with the gig; he saw the band as playing the sort of music that his sci-fi inter-dimensional travelling hero, Jerry Cornelius would listen to. So impressed in fact that he later wrote the band into some of his books, and even dedicated some of his science-fantasy/fiction books to members of Hawkwind. At the gig the band also handed out back-issues of Frendz newspaper, then seen as very revolutionary and re-actionary. Barney later described the gig as something like a Grateful Dead gig at Winterland, akin to a Rick Griffin, Grateful Dead album cover, lots of skulls, everything tinged with flames, completely uplifting, [what can he have been on?]
Subsequently Mike and Barney helped the band organise some free open-air concerts under the Westway flyover on Portobello Road, on Saturday afternoons, near to where Mike ran a stall selling groovy sci-fi bric-a-brac and other exceptionally interesting artefacts, raising funds for New Worlds journal. Pictures of the band at one of these concerts, being stopped from playing by Her Majesty's Constabulary, on some spurious pretext, were featured inside the cover of the Hawkwind album 'X In Search of Space', which Barney designed for them. Mike also wrote the poem 'Sonic Attack' for Robert to perform on stage with the band. Mike was to perform this poem himself, together with others of his poems, when Robert was not available to perform.
In fact Mike became quite a regular performer with the band, in Robert's absence, sometimes even performing together with Robert on some occasions. Nik remembers various performances with Mike, one at an illegal festival in Great Windsor Park, which the police attempted unsuccessfully to stop, and which the Windsor Hells Angels successfully policed, protecting the people there, some of whom would later become the 'gun' convoy.
Another amusing event with Mike was an open-air concert in the park in Harlow, where prior to the concert, Mike finely wined and dined Nik with copious amounts of Italian food and Chianti wine, and returning to the park slightly late, Nik changed into his frog/alien/archbishop costume, and ran onto the stage where Mike was reciting a poem. It had been raining, and Nik didn't notice that the stage was wet. Directly in front of the stage was a large pond. Nik hit the wet stage running, couldn't stop, and gracefully slid, seemingly in slow-motion, right into the pond. The whole incident appeared to be really cleverly choreographed, even down to the lovely Miss Stacia elegantly plucking the now bedraggled frog-being out of the water, much to everyone's amusement.
Another interesting adventure Nik remembers with Mike, was a concert by Hawkwind inside Wormwood Scrubbs prison, where the band and Mike performed to the inmates, many of whom were friends of theirs. The inmates were seated, and not allowed to move, being all the while heavily scrutinised by the requested from the stage that the inmates be allowed to join in, at which point the wardens relented, and everyone was allowed to stand up, and all went absolutely ape-shit, on the spot. After the show the band were able to talk to some of their friends, who offered them all sorts of mind-warping substances, there seeming to be more of these substances inside the prison than on the outside.
Another prison Hawkwind played with Mike was Chelmsford open prison, where things were a great deal more relaxed than the Scrubbs, so less stressful all round. More friends to meet and socialise with, Mike had many fans who had books for him to sign, the band had many friends there, again copious offers of mind-warping drugs, some organic ones grown presumably at the prison. Great to see the friends old and new, and especially enthusiastic gardeners.
At another time Nik was on tour in the USA with his band Space Ritual, playing Austin, near where Mike was living. Nik invited Mike to come to the concert. Mike took nik out to a great re-union dinner with his wife Linda, and the band, before the show, then Mike came and performed his poetry/rant with the band to rapturous audience response. At the end of this concert a guy came to Nik to thank him for saving his life!!?! He said he'd been in Vietnam, and had come home to the USA a hopeless psychotic killer, didn't know what to do about it. Then he said he had found the Hawkwind album 'X In Search of Space', and he claimed it had straightened him out, and couldn't thank Nik enough. Nik signed it for him. This compensated for the death threats Nik was getting over his supposed treatment of the American flag in the song 'Uncle Sam's on Mars', on the Hawkwind video, 'Night of the Hawks'.
Nik remembers Mike making his 'New Worlds Fair' album, the concept of the fairground at the end of time. It reminded Nik of Margate's Dreamland fairground, where Nik had spent a lot of mis-spent youth, and which he had taken Mike to, when Mike had come to visit him one time, when Nik was living in Thanet. Nik had friends in the Wall of Death, and all the other extremely dangerous and frightening rides. Mike wrote most of the songs on the album,, collaborated with the band on some. Nik was supposed to play on it. Mike wanted him to play baritone sax, Mike hired one for the occasion, but Nik had problems with it, it didn't play very well, so nik ended up being mixed off. Barney designed the album cover, he also visited Dreamland when he visited Nik, [Nik dragged everyone there that visited him, it was so atmospheric and evocative]. The 'Deep Fix' band had it's launching and only live performance at Nik's 'Bohemian Love-in' at the Roundhouse in London's Camden Town, an all-day free happening of mixed-media, current happening bands, performance art, things wierd and wonderful, Nik's band 'Sphynx', also launched his album there, the whole event put together by Nik and Barney, with a little help from all their Frendz. - NIK TURNER'S TAKE ON THE MOORCOCK CREATIVE LEGEND
Michael Moorcock is one of Britain's greatest writers and considered also the most consistently experimental author in the world of fantasy literature. He practically invented modern British fantasy and reshaped it’s Science Fiction as an editor. And he is also an exponent of mainstream literature - though he vehemently rejects to be confined into the boundaries of genre fiction.As some very good Brazilian and Latin American writers - Andre Carneiro, Borges among others - he actually writes a kind of literature that has been called magical and/or fantastic realism.
Michael Moorcock has won two World Fantasy Awards, including one in 2000 for Lifetime Achievement; a Nebula award; The Guardian Fiction Prize; a John W. Campbell Memorial Award and even a nomination for the Whitbread Prize. He also has a collection of six British Fantasy Awards: four August Derleth Awards, one for the short story category and, of course, the 1992 Special Award for his lifetime achievement. Moorcock has about a hundred books to his name and has had his gifted intellectus manifested in any number of media -his comics work is visually stunning and sophisticated and his book about fantasy forms in literature Wizardry and Wild Romance, is one of the best books about fantasy written by a fantasist.
Hi is also a good friend to Alan Moore - who has written an Introduction to his new book The Firing Cathedral - as well as one of the famous “collaborators”to the upcoming homage-book AM:Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman.
Married, two daughters, one son, two grandsons. Born South London 18 December 1939.
Mostly unconventional schooling. Left school at 15. Became professional writer at 16. Edited amateur magazines from the age of 9 (Outlaws Own, Book Collectors News, Burroughsania) and became editor of juvenile magazine Tarzan Adventures at 17. An editor on Sexton Blake Library and various juvenile magazines and annual ‘albums’, then editor of the Liberal Party’s Current Topics, wrote pamphlets and speeches, then editor of New Worlds in 1963, am now publisher of NW which still produces occasional issues. Have been a professional writer (in most areas of writing) since 1956. I’m also a performing musician, having worked with Hawkwind, Blue Oyster Cult and Deep Fix, among others, putting out various records including one solo album The New Worlds Fair... - ALAN MOORE Senhor do Caos
Майкл Джон Муркок (Michael John Moorcock) родился 18 декабря 1939 года маленьком городке Митчэме (графство Суррей) в семье инженера. Еще в детстве он переехал в Лондон и жил там до 1993 года. Детство и юношество писателя пришлись на особый период - распад Британской империи (не так давно мы и сами пережили нечто подобное, - еще вчера жили в могучем государстве, и вдруг за пару лет империя рассыпается в прах). Именно отсюда растут корни одной из главных тем в его творчестве - идея вечной, непрекращающейся борьбы с наступающим Хаосом, история разрушении привычной системы мироздания и долгой, мучительной адаптации к новой.
Фактически рано лишившись семьи (его родители развелись), Муркок ещё подростком начал самостоятельную жизнь. После службы в Королевских ВВС он заканчивает престижный Питманс-колледж, после чего с головой окунается в богемную жизнь. С юных лет Муркок неплохо играл на гитаре и других инструментах, а охватившая в ту пору Англию и весь западный мир битломания повлияли на выбор жизненного пути - он участвовал в деятельности группы "Hawkwind" ("Ястребиный ветер"), в репертуаре которой много его собственных песен и композиций, организовал группу Deep Fix, с которой выпустил альбом "New World Fair". Увлекался Муркок и политикой. В начале 1960-х годов он примкнул к левым радикалам и два года редактировал печатный орган Либеральной партии, журнал "Current Topics". Позже он вообще стал анархистом и даже опубликовал в 1983 г. резкую публицистическую книгу "Отход от свободы: эрозия демократии в современной Британии".
В начале 1960-х будущий редактор и писатель в первый раз женился (всего был женат 4 раза; последний раз - в 1983-м) - на журналистке и нф-писательнице Хилари Бэйли. С ней он прожил 16 лет, став отцом двух дочерей и сына. Хотя группа "Хоквинд" выпустила около 50 альбомов, а во время пика популярности собирала немалую аудиторию поклонников, звёздный час Муркока наступил не на сцене. Фантастику будущий писатель жадно поглощал (и пописывал) ещё с раннего детства. При этом Майкл весьма рано обнаружил в себе довольно редкий дар - он оказался талантливым редактором. - Танелорн: всё о Майкле Муркоке
