After three albums of raw, rabble-rousing psychedelic street punk with the Deviants, and an esoteric solo album (1970’s Mona – The Carnivorous Circus), Mick Farren put his musical activities on hold at the dawn of the 1970s, and focused instead on his writing. By 1976 Farren was making his mark as a staff writer at the New Musical Express, where he was instrumental in chronicling, and to some extent nurturing, the nascent punk rock movement as it jerked awkwardly to life in the streets and pubs of London. Farren felt a natural affinity with the new youth fashion line of pimple-faced punk aspirants, full of piss, vinegar and amphetamines, ranting about anarchy and boredom over a simplistic rock ‘n’ roll backbeat.

Inevitably, it wasn’t long before Mick was off the sidelines and back in the musical fray. Farren got a call from Logo Records who had just acquired the Transatlantic catalogue and were re-releasing the Deviants’ third album. Mick suggested they also release a new solo album, and to his surprise, after some initial hesitation, they agreed.

Andy Colquhoun, the Warsaw Pakt’s lead guitarist, soon became his primary musical foil —in fact, some of the songs on this album were originally intended for the Warsaw Pakt. Also, Farren put a band together, including guest musicians: Wilko Johnson of Dr Feelgood, Chrissie Hynde who was still in the process of forming the Pretenders, Sonja Kristina, the lead singer of Curved Air, and Will Stallibrass who’d played with Graham Parker, Lightnin’ Slim and Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers, to name a few.

Due to the limited budget, they ended up spending most of their time working on a half-dozen of their favorite tracks, while the rest were “banged down as little more than jamming, art-school R&B, with only a thin coat of metalflake.”

Unavailable on vinyl for quite some time, we are now happy to present the reissue of “Vampires Stole My Lunch Money”, regarded as one of Mick Farren’s finest albums. In Trouser Press, Ira A. Robbins called it “Farren’s solo masterwork… a harrowingly honest collection of songs about drinking, dissolution, depression and desperation.”