HW: Were you at the same gig?

[Rob S]

   Interesting, I seem to be the only one who thinks that
  Saturday's all-nighter was excellent.

   I turned up late for Capt. Rizz, so I'll have to take
  the others' word for it. I really liked Porc. Tree, it
  was a shame that they only seemed to play for half an hour.
   As for RDF, I didn't recognise them until the bass line
  to "Gotta go to a war" kicked in. It seems that they have
  undergone yet another line-up change, this was definately
  not their best performance.
   Back to the Planet were pretty much the same as usual,
  they've got a good sound but there is no quality songs.
   Utah Saints were great and played my favourite "Something Good",
  with the Kate Bush samples.

   Now to Hawkwind, most of the others seemed disappointed
  by them, but I really enjoyed it and ranked it high amongst
  my fave HW gigs. What made it for me was the excellent
  versions of Robot, Golden Void and Lord of Light segued into
  Silver Machine (possibly the best version I've heard of
  the latter).
   Ron Tree was a competent front man, quite a good voice,
  frequent costume changes and that bizarre hair-dryer hat
  made it quite entertaining, and the Lord of Light/Silver
  Machine was definately better because of his singing and
  presence. The robot which he controlled using what seemed
  to be a portable stereo's graphic equalliser added a fun
  element, we all knew it wouldn't be the best in robotics
  technology, after all this is Hawkwind not Pink Floyd.
   The dancers were OK, but not brilliant. I recognised the
  girl as being the dancer with a band called "Me" from Bristol
  who used to support the Moonflowers a lot. The fire-eaters
  were pretty dull as well, they'd have been better doing all
  their tricks at once during one song rather than going off
  and on every few minutes.
   At least Brock is playing his guitar more, and for the first
  time since 91 I've seen a HW gig without LSD (errr, the song
  that is!) or Right to Decide. I even find Hassan I Sabbah to
  be getting a bit boring now, I think they should take out the
  long, ambient keyboardy bit in the middle. I think the reason
  for being so far back on the stage was to allow them to set
  their gear up behind the curtain to allow for a faster
  changeover time after the previous band, but it would have
  been better if they were closer to the audience.
   Overall....excellent!!!

   I stayed till the end, Electric Groove Temple were next
  and tried to play ethnic/techno sounds using conventional
  instruments, not very convincingly. Next were Cybernaut
  followed by Techno Pagan both of whom played straight
  forward techno, I had my dancing shoes on at this point
  and was well into it. I'm not sure what happened to
  Optic Eye.
   The gig finished at five o'clock, they didn't seem to
  take much notice of British summer time so it was off
  to Victoria Station for a coffee and train back to Brighton.

   Nice to put a face to some of the names on the list,
  though a word of warning...don't buy any chocolate from Carl. :)

   bye - Rob