Strange Daze: day 2

[Doug Bates]

Day 2 of the most incredible space rock festival ever:

thump, thump, thump well my heart is still beating after ten daze.
Too bad about my brain tho, maybe tomorrow I'll get back to normal.
It was truly a great festival, I would think those that attended would
certainly want to come back next year.

Lemmy didn't make it, but Nik Turner did play onstage with HW.

For less than a thousand dollars it could have happened too, what
a shame.

SCATTERED THOTS:

Most bands camped out at the festival, and the guy on stage was
frequently the guy standing next to you when the next band came
on.  Band members from all bands appeared accessible throughout
the event.

Yes very cool. My only regret is missing the Farflung booth, I wanted
a couple of CDs. The shirt they sold with Nik and the UFOs were my
favorite. If anybody has an extra to trade let me know.

HW arrived late in the day on Saturday, and were seen walking around
the area checking things out.  Supposedly Dave wandered past each and
every campsite, to see what was up and how things were.  My guess is
that he was impressed by the American take on throwing a campout
hippie festival.  Dave is reported to have volunteered to come

My favorite quote of the tour: After Ron Tree observed the goings on
of the festival, he said "this is all about Hawkwind isn't it ? At home
I couldn't get a loan, here I could walk up to anybody and they'd give
10 quid and be happy to do it".
That was what was so special every person ( fan or band member)
was a HW fan.


Bob Lennon was distributing copies of Hawk-U.S. #6, which came with
a floppy containing a dozen JPEGs of HW from the 1995 tour (I believe)
and a small color photo of a freaky looking space rock terrarium.

Very, very nice, get this one folks.

The new HW album has been completed and mixed, except for one song
and finishing the artwork.  I didn't get a title, but the band played
a tape of it to some of the folks at Lascko's house following the
Ohio show.  The release date is supposedly in October 97.

This is my favorite memory of the tour: Although Dave stayed at the
hotel, the rest of the band came over to Jim's house. It was a great
party
that went to sunrise. We all crashed around 7am and woke up about 1pm
and started right where we left off. It was thrilling to watch a HW
video
from a show a few hours previous with the band and watch them react to
themselves on TV. I think they had more fun than we did. We listened
to at lot of music, with Richard or Jerry playing CDs they had recently
purchased (mostly Nik or Pressurehed). Anyway, I noticed Richard
put a tape in the deck, but I continued talking across the room. In less
than 30 seconds I noticed a distinctive sound coming from the stereo and
ran to the living room and sat down. Only Richard, Jerry and I were
listening, no one else realized what was going on for about 15 minutes.
When the first song ended I ask Richard who we were listening to, he
said "us" pointing to himself and Jerry. Folks this new album is fucking
killer! Its a different style and perspective. Its hard rocking with
hints of
hard core punk thrown in, yet one could hear threads of the past to help
you along in this transitional leap. There was a _Blue Shift_ ambient
song and a long psychedelic excursion about 8 minutes long. Its in the
same vein as Pink Floyd's Careful with that Axe Eugene, what a master
piece. One song that really stood out was one by Dave, it just left me
in
such a mood of desolate hopelessness, almost sad. His guitar sounded
like it did in Motherless Children. Heavy lyrics. Yes, plenty of lyrics
from
Dave and Ron. One of the 3 or 4 instrumentals was jamming space rock
with Jerry playing over the top sounding just a little bit like Richie
Blackmore. The future looks very good, the creative juices are flowing
from this new lineup and Dave seems revitalized. They already have
enough songs for yet another album. Expect HW to explore the darker
sounds and themes.

Great folks that I met during the show included Chris Raymond (you're
probably on that video of Nik's "HW encore"), Rick and Steve, Pierre
and Bruce from Texas, Eli Friedman and Jim Lascko (incredible people
who thru this bash), Sade the Witch Doktressa, Steve Lindsey, Damon
Capehart, Bob Lennon and Hobbit, Chris and Mary Bruce, Kevin Sommers,
Mike Habiby, and Zendog.  And most thanks to Doug Bates, for all the
tremendous help he gave me and a place to crash.

Thanks for the memories dude. Hey where was I when you met all these
people from the list, oh never mind. :-)

Hopefully, time will allow me to post more comments tomorrow...

Captain Cloud
cjohnson at hpsc.hisd.harris.com


--
Doug Bates
voice:(205) 934-9087   fax:(205) 975-7129
mailto:dbates at uab.edu