There’re as many ways to figure out where punk came from as there are groups that folks proclaim the immediate antecedent to the genre. There’s obviously no answer to where it came from, but guessing is always fun. And since there were literally hundreds of tangential rock bands in the States and the UK that weren’t punk, but kinda had that thing going on, the game’s all the more fun. Hawkwind gets kicked around every once in a while, which isn’t surprising. But what’s more interesting is the fact that their drummer, a gentleman named Twink, performed not just with the Pretty Things, but also helped found Pink Fairies along with Mick Farren and Steve Peregrine Took (Tyrannosaurus Rex).

No, they weren’t a spiky haired punk group – although, they might have rocked some leather jackets and the like. But they did admittedly kick out the jams. The MC5 could be compared to either the Fairies or Farren’s previous group the Deviants. And while the singer didn’t end up working with Twink’s new ensemble for all too long, the sonic relation between the two is pretty clear. They weren’t clones, but sharing group members goes along way especially at a time when folks were trying to turn hard rock and psych into something more interesting.

On the Fairies first studio disc, the 1971 Never Neverland, the band doesn’t come off as drug fueled and rebellious as some would like to believe. There’re spots of visionary madness, but also patches of Pink Floyd cops – the spacey “Heavenly Man.” What the disc suffers from is the seemingly shambolic musical approach that Twink and company try to work through. No one’s a slouch musically, but that doesn’t mean that every sub-genre of rock needs to get a proper run through. Yeah, guitar solos are nice, but what this band does better than anything is to crank out some heavy bar chords.

After the underwhelming What a Bunch of Sweeties, the Fairies, this time without Twink, go in on Kings of Oblivion. And if just a glancing examination of the album cover is all that you get of it, one might believe the disc to be some over inflated prog endeavor. It’s not. To kick start the whole deal, the band gets into “City Kids,” which would be revisited by Hawkwind a few years on with Twink sitting on the drum throne. But here, on this 1973 album, the Fairies sound as punky as possible for this early date. The vocals might come off as a bit melodic, but the pacing and the cranked up guitar sound is more than enough to have the Fairies mentioned in the same breath as some other proto-punk groups.

This third album is unquestionably the heaviest from the Fairies discography. And even if some of the stuffs here almost come off as hard rock, given the frame and intent of the group, it might be foolish to perceive these tunes as such. Nope, it’s still not a straight punk effort, but it’s pretty damned close.