HW: Blackheath

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On sön 8 jun 1997 16.21 "Andrew Gilham" <Andy.Gilham at BTINTERNET.COM>
wrote:
> I didn't think Huw's acoustic set was very good; he got quite a
> good reception, but I felt it was more out of affection, than
> appreciation of his performance on the night.

     I concur.  People cheered and applauded at the end of songs, but
didn't pay much attention in between.  Part of this may have been due to
the fact that the sound was _very_ low and I had difficulty hearing it
clearly much of the time.
     On the other hand, Huw didn't really catch fire up there thought his
playing seemed all right.  He also played a few fairly dull songs, though
not surprisingly the HW covers went down well.

> Brock was messing about with his
> electronics before every song, sure, but playing guitar during most of
> them.  And grinning almost all the time!

     Brocks electronics did some screwing up of their own.  Something he
had seemed to be making vile noises at various points in the set.  That'll
teach him to rely on complex equipment ;)

> Light show was minimal, but the fire-eaters were there.  The bloke
> dropped one of his torches in Jerry's monitor and set it on fire, which
> was a bit alarming, and left us gagging on fire-extinguisher, but I
> think that's ahazard you accept.

     From about 10 feet back though it looked really cool :)

> "Sonic Attack" was a bit of a mess,
> but they all seemed to enjoy themselves;

     I enjoyed that Sonic Attack.  It relied heavily on gruesome squeals
and feedback from both Jerry's and Ron's intruments :)

> and "Needle Gun" was all over the
> fucking shop - how they kept it together at all I don't understand - but
> no-one seemed to mind!

     The vocals were practically gone from the mix, but the audience was
just going nuts anyway so it hardly mattered.

> This is possibly the heaviest Hawkwind have been since the halcyon days
> of Lord Lemmy.  This is a good thing!

    I'm close to concurring, though some of the early-90s shows also seemed
fairly heavy to me.  Nevertheless, they did *rock* most extrordinarily.  It
should be a year of good shows for everyone.

Cheers,
Carl