Review by Dave Robbins Note: when reading this somewhat dismissive review it is worth bearing in mind that the UK underground press, for all its right-on rhetoric of freak solidarity, was as riven by petty spats and rivalries as Fleet Street. Although Mick Farren wrote for Oz on a number of occasions, he was primarily associated with IT, the rival gang in town as far as Oz were concerned.

OZ, 43, July-August, 1972, p.43 WATCH OUT KIDS. Mick Farren & Edward Barker (Open Gate Books; £1.50) A couple of years ago, while searching for the Angry Brigade, the police raided the house of an innocent man (and how innocent!). That man was Mick Farren, the author of Watch Out Kids. The dope being hidden, they found nothing but "treated the outline of this book like it was the blueprint for an armed revolution. Silly old police. For those who don't know, Mick is the "dope-fiend, political, ex-rock star and multi-arrested freak leader who don't want to lead no-one", and Watch Out Kids is a penetrating account of how "Elvis gave birth to the Angry Brigade". A sort of English Do It!; a history of the underground in pictures organised around a series of epoch making events (i.e. those in which Mick Farren was involved). Like Abbie Hoffman and Rubin, Mick's prose-style is adventurous and racy. Mick has added a still further-out ingredient however; self-contradiction. One minute he tells us that rock stars are instruments of social control, marketed by the system. Next minute he is praising them as rebel leader and outlaws. Perhaps it's the dope, perhaps it's the dope and beer, maybe just mental exhaustion? There are moments of high drama like the hour-by-hour account of what happened in the IT offices the day the Stones were sentenced. "A couple of groupies were trying to to persuade everyone to go and see Paul McCartney. This idea was turned down". When describing things that have happened to him Mick keeps his head above water. The trouble starts when he tries to fit these events into broader perspective. The pages ring to the sound of crashing sentences and collapsing half-baked ideas; as in "The lemmings have a great and groovy method of population control. The trouble is it's a bit hard on the individual lemming." Wryly humorous it may be, but the punchline "Later for jumping in the sea" sounds rather like a prophesy. At another point he tells us that "it is about time we had a new civilisation". It seems to me we've got one, a civilisation rather like that of ancient Egypt, in that it only exists in relics, record albums, hip history books like Watch Out Kids, handed down myths about the Fillmore East. Meanwhile the vultures circle... To quote somebody or other "it's uncool to vamp on the energies of the community.