“I’d said, ‘All that weird stuff is crap!’ When I came back I said, ‘Can you play me all that weird crap I was rude about?’” Alien Sex Fiend’s mushroom-powered path to prog appreciation

Hawkwind and Alien Sex Fiend’s Nik Fiend.

In 2018 Alien Sex Fiend co-founder Nik Fiend told Prog how an experience with mushrooms on the Isle of Wight turned him on to progressive music, not long after he’d told his wife Mrs Fiend that he never wanted to hear any of it again.

“I started getting into Hawkwind when I was cleaning windows. Some of it was a bit too far-out for me when I was 13 or 14, but I’d heard Silver Machine and picked up this sampler that had Master Of The Universe on. That was the beginning – I wanted to find out more.