HW: Review - Chronicles of the Black Sword

[Sebastian Welton]

>
>I'll add your review (and any other's .... come on all you 'review
>lurkers') to my WWW pages.
>

Alright, and this is for everyone seeing them at Brixton soon...

Hawkwind
London Brixton Academy (NME 28 August 1993, Johnny Cigarette)
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 "You lucky bastards! You spawny, grizzled, coffin-dodging, brain-
frazzled old gits!" This is undoubtedly what God is thinking as he
cringingly watches this grim spectacle through his fingers. Hawkwind
filling Brixton Academy in 1993!
 Hilfe! Hilfe! It would seem that people once more believe that singing
about space bandits and making swirly mystic hand movements says more
to them than just, "I was that tosser with jam-jar glasses reading
'Forests Of Gor' at the side of you class at school - help me,
please."
 Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. The word kind of loses its
significance the more you think about it, and at an event like this,
where you're stoned, tripping, speeding and having your constipation
suddenly cured within ten minutes of breathing the air, you can
almost forget. But anyone with a tentative grasp of sobriety will
soon realise what wonders chemicals have done for Hawkwind. You see,
they are, essentially, Bryan Adams on 25 years of really bad acid.
 This means they play lots of three chord pub rock chunders which
fizzle out after two minutes, replaced by lots of spacecake keyboard
FX sounds going 'ktikkaktikkaktikkaktikkaktikkaktikka' for another
nine minutes. It means that instead of the songs being about feelin'
alright on a Saturday night they're all about flying to Saturn in a
VW van. It means the backdrop features a huge child's drawing of a
futuristic city from a Daily Star 'What Your Town Will Look Like In
The Year 2000' feature. It means that lead singer Dave Brock doesn't
look a day over 134.
 But you can't deny they've tried to update their act. The slightly
fumbling fire-eaters you see at every festival on earth cavort across
the stage during the more inexcusably tedious moments. They even play
a couple of revamped techno-ised numbers at the end of the set; the
same bollocks as before with an inappropriate 'Hooked On Classics'
thumping beat behind them. Somehow, though, a nagging, moral voice
pierces the boredom saying "Bloody hippies - string 'em up."


Cheers

Seb

 S.J.Welton  MVS & VM Operations and Automation Analyst ECNOD/CS/MGCS
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