Check out “Twink” miming with The Pretty Things for a bewildered French TV audience. Ever heard of Twink? I hadn’t, so I poked around on Google. Nicknamed after a British hair product, Twink was a mime, drummer, close friend of Syd Barrett, and general scenester of the London psychedelic underground. He played drums with an early version of T. Rex, with Syd Barret occasionally, on one Pretty Things album, and with the Pink Fairies. In the early 70’s, he was in Hawkwind with Lemmy. His band The Rings were on the ground floor of the London punk scene in ’77. Some refer to their lone single, “I Wanna be Free” as England’s first punk record. It’s not very good compared to what was about to come from the Damned, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Clash, and Jam.
What led me to this video was my fondness for The Pretty Things, a very good British r&b band who never made any headway in the U.S. Their guitarist, Dick Taylor, had been in an early version of the Stones. Like the Stones, their forays into psychedelia were not always memorable, as you can hear above. You can hear them at their best here and here. Their raucous version of Roadrunner is my favorite cover of that song.
Still trying to figure out how he kept a straight face through that entire “performance.”
And that Rings song would be much improved if it were about 50 seconds shorter. Overstays its welcome as is.
I wanted to see if he broke character at the end, but they didn’t show him.
Twink needs to be the central character in a new horror franchise.
Yeah, after I watched it I was scared he’d turn up in a nightmare, but hasn’t happened yet.
I keep seeing Twink in every music video posted on this blog, and in random scenes in all the prestige TV shows.
This is normal, right?
Yes, once seen and identified, Twink shows up everywhere. This phenomenon is little-known, because so few people know about Twink.