HW: us gigs

[Dan Witt]

Info from Strange Daze:


First off thanks Jim for the great event!

The grounds were great, really nice place for a muscic fest.

Day 1, the bands I saw warm up were ok but didn't really thrill me
except F/I, F/I was pretty good. Then Nik hit the Stage,WOW, Nik I think
blew everybody away the entire weekend. I was worried when I saw in the
afternoon, since he had a broken leg, but when he got on stage you
couldn't even tell. He had a white face with black to hi-lite his
eyes(but not the same as the last tour I saw him) and he was wearing
some kind of rubber suit with horns sticking out of his back. It looked
like he was from, well I don't know where. Also he had an alien and an
astronaut dancer. The music was great too, his vocals were very high in
the mix and very clear, really showed off how great he can sing. Tommy
Grenas played with nik and the rest of the band I didn't recognize, but
I guess they were "far flung". The band sounded great, one thing I
noticed was the bassist didn't appear to know the intro to d-rider, at
least he didn't play it.

Day 2:

Saw Dave walking around numerous times, I got to salute him once once, I
think I snapped a few photos of him that will turn out. Hawkwind started
at about 9:55pm started off with some pollution number sung by captain
rizz(who I really don't know much about). It was ok but wasn't really
what I thought it would be. They moved on to some better material; love
in space, sonic attack, needle gun, reptile man?, and a few more which
don't come right to mind know(little sleep last 3 days). Anyway the
hi-lite of this show was when Dave asked Nik onstage to do part of
Brainstorm and ejection(ejection was a 10). When is the last time these
two shared a stage?  Dave made a few funny remarks that seemed to ease
things up a bit, like telling nik to make sure he plays that sax in tune
this time. Hawkwinds light show was pretty cool, even though I guess
they weren't able to bring their own over here. Lemmy didn't show, Dave
said something about the flu and that lemmy promised to come for next
years strange daze. I heard a different rumour but I guess I'll go with
what Dave said. Anyway Hawkwind quit at about 11:05, this shocked me.
They came back for an encore and quit for good at around 11:25pm. That
really shocked me, only about 90 minutes, I expected a full 2 hours.
After that fans were going nuts for another encore and didn't give up
even when roadies began tearing down equipment 10 minutes later, finally
they were rewarded when Nik came out and treated us to a 40 minute solo
set of just him, utterly amazing fellow. Nik made a lot of people feel
very happy.

Again everything was very cool, especially taping (audio/video) being
allowed, great being able to tape these gigs.

Met a few list members too that was fun.

Only complaint, F/I was called for an encore by the audience but the
people in charge of such a thing said nope. Booh, not very nice. F/I was
great and deserved an encore, not just because I liked them but the
audience really wanted an encore.

Anyway I'm starting to ramble and its hard to concentrate so I'll sign
off.



Oh yeah Strange Daze 2, both NIk and Dave said on stage they were
willing to be part of it next year-great.

How about we get Steve Hillage(he's still arounfd right?), Helios Creed,
Lemmy, BOC. I bet they'd all play, and draw fans.
--
Standing on the runway waiting for take off

Dan Witt
MInneapolis, MN USA