HW: Summer Solstice in Cleveland

[Keith A Henderson]

Hi Folks...

I thought I'd post a short review of what went on last Saturday night at the
Phantasy Night Club in Cleveland, OH.  I've waited a few days, so as not to
take your attention away from all the fabulous reviews of the Brixton &
Guildford HW shows... :)

Anyway, the lineup was exactly as on New Year's Eve....Sun Machine (who
remained unnamed as yet on 12/31/95) followed by Milwaukee's F/i.

Sun Machine went on at just after 10 pm, as I was walking in the door, and did
a 85-minute set of Hawkwind covers.  Not very much new from what they've done
in the previous two shows, but they are still 'defining' themselves', if that's
possible from an all-cover band.  The lead singer/poet from the first two gigs
was not present this time (I think his name was Tom Marazita), although I think
his brother was back there playing the drums.  Instead, Scott (?) stepped in as
lead singer/frontman, and did a credible job, depite not looking all that
experienced/comfortable in the limelight (in Brockian fashion).  Scott not only
'guested' on a couple tracks with Sun Machine back in Feb. 96, he was also part
of the touring entourage for the April '95 HW Spirit of the Age tour...so some
of you may know him outside of Cleveland as well.  The rest of the band seemed
to be as before...Steve Taylor on Lead Guitar, and Dan (?) on rhythm/acoustic
guitars/vocals on acoustic tracks, plus whomever on keyboards/synths.  No Sax
player, unfortunately.

The set was something like this.....

Synth intro
Choose Your Masques
Orgone Accumulator
The 5th Second Of Forever
Dust of Time
The Demented Man
Starflight
Ejection
Heads
The Watcher
Free Fall
Robot
Uncle Sam's on Mars
'Urban Guerilla/Lord of Light' jam
Hassan I Sahba

Highlights for me were the 'T5SoF/DoT' excerpt from Levitation....brilliant!!
and the Choose Your Masques intro (I don't think they did this one before).
Heads was done really well this time, whereas it was pretty rough/unrehearsed
back on NYE.  On the other hand, 'The Demented Man' wasn't done that well, and
'Free Fall' was a little off....hard to get that bass line and drumming in
synch (without MIDI, that is).  :)

Rumours of 'original' material were found not to be accurate...although they
did do an improvisational bit (that they admitted to making up as they went
along), which seemed to be roughly based on the Urban Guerilla riff, with Scott
'chanting' along with the lyrics to Lord of Light.

The light show was extremely well done, for such an 'amateur' operation.  On
NYE, the lighting was done by Louise McAuley from Toronto (who's actually a
very fine artist to boot), who has some slide projectors and some of those
spinning wheel projectors as well.  The Feb. gig (lights being supplied by Jim
Lascko) had a bank of 4 or 5 standard 'office-style' overhead projectors, with
various cellophane sheets rotating atop them.  Nice effect for a low-budget
operation, but the damn things lit up the entire club!  For this show, they had
both entire set-ups working together, and Jim's overheads were set up with a
'dimmer' switch such that he could vary the intensity on each, thus maintaining
relative darkness in the rear of the club.  It worked extremely well!!  They
also had some dry ice 'smoke', some strobes back by the drum riser, and also a
funky multicoloured flashing light gizmo above the stage, shining down, that
came on periodically.  Stew Orr (the Wizard) was there again, trying to light
the stage afire, and making it generally very warm in the club....I wish he
would come up with some new tricks, or change his name to the 'Arsonist' or
something - it's a bit old now.  And the 'artist' that was there in February
wasn't there, which was also too bad....he did some neat charcoal drawings of
aliens and such during the Sun Machine performance then.

Anyway, the show was very good.  I would have liked to hear some original
material - I think these guys could probably create some nice music on their
own, if they put their minds to it.  Of course, the band is still apparently in
flux as to who the members are supposed to be, but once they get that all
sorted out, let's hope they do something original.  Still, it's the next best
thing to hearing HW that I've seen (Nik included....).  Just had to put that
in...sorry.

I couldn't hang around much past midnight as I had to head westward, so I only
stayed for about 20 minutes of the F/i set.  I had seen them on NYE anyway, and
thought that they were only average.  Nothing's changed in my mind about them -
they still do the same heavy, slow, grundgy, instrumental material with their
own psychedelic flair.  Doesn't excite me all that much.

I saw a few folks I knew, like Jim Collins and Mike from Chicago (ToE folks),
Scott and Louise, of course, Rick S. who's a list member, and I met Duane there
as well, but couldn't talk long as I had to take off.  I thought I may have
seen Wylie at one point, but then I never saw that person again.  It's a small
place, so you can't hardly miss someone.

Well, I said this would be short, but 'Oh, well'.....

Now, off to Baltimore!!!

Keith H.

PS  Dunno about taping....there was a small video camera set up behind Jim L. -
maybe you could ask him at 'Strange Trips' if you were interested.

PPS The HW display was much the same as before....only thing I noticed there
that I don't remember seeing before was a 'Hawkfan 12' LP....a rare item
indeed.  That and 'Love in Space' of course.  Still no 'New World's
Fair'...I'll have to take mine up next time.