Strange Daze - B0RN to G0 - The SpaceRock Manifesto

[Marc Power]

Hi all, especially Hi to all those that I met out at Strange Daze.

You know who you are.

What an event! I think I was most impressed with the 'Nik at Night'
segment of the show, after Hawkwind didn't come up with a second
encore, Nik Turner, broken foot and all played Ripping Sax, to the
handclap accompaniment of the Crowd.

He played Silver Machine (and sang), In the Mood (yes, the Glen Miller
Standard) and finally a really riffed up version of Master of the
Universe with all the parts, crowd singing and chanting the words,
lasting about 15mins for a 30min total.

Nik is one hell of a Trooper, and he hobbled off the stage to a
triumphant chant of "Nik! Nik! Nik! Nik!"

Niks set the night before was phenomenal. The hottest, tightest
set of the show and it set a standard that In my opinion Hawkwind
didn't top, thought they came close.

But we are talking about comparing the height of giants here.

Quite simply, all of the bands were great, I particularly dug
F/i whom I had never heard before.

Alien Planetscapes gave what I consider their best performance to date,
A blistering mind blast of Cosmic Jazz that set the crowd on fire
and then fanned the flames.

Check out the new CD from each of these bands, I did and they really
matched the quality of their stage performances.

Thanks to Captain Cloud for his nice diary report of events.

Heres what I have to add to his report:

> Born To Go came out.  Their lead singer was an english fellow, who
> rapped with the audience a bit before and between songs.

Yes, I was that English fellow.

> These guys
> don't have as much SPACE in their SPACE ROCK as some of the other
> bands at this festival, but their attitude is definitely in the
> right place.
> IMHO the music needs more of a synth sound, or more
> tonality in the lead guitar perhaps,

Well, we certainly intended to be as SPACEY as possible, it didn't
help that I left one of the synth modules in the hotel room, its
omission wasn't discovered until we set up on stage. Also, there
was plenty of synth sound in the stage monitors, but I understand
that out front of stage all of the stereo synth stuff was panned
left, leaving half the audience with no audible synth. The inimitable
Doug Walker also played his ARP Odyssey & effects with us, but was
subject to the same panning failure as our regular synth/audiogen man
Louis Boone.

C'est la Vie. I only hope that the 24track adat recording that was made
has all the synth stuff on it.

> but the lyrics are dead-on
> SciFi/technology stuff.  Their influences are good ones.  Born
> To Go also deserves credit for having been a vocal proponent on
> the net for the Strange Daze fest.

Captain Cloud:

> (I forgot to get my free drink from the lead singer following their
> set.  They did a song called "Kill -9", and the singer offered a
> "..free drink at the bar for anyone who knows what this means!".
> I knew those years of college would amount to something!)

You can collect your drink whenever we meet, ok? (You were one of only
two people who knew this. and the other guy didn't drink! :)

> I never did see the fellow giving away copies of the "Space Rock
> Manifesto" which I'd heard advertised.  Wonder what that was about..?
>
> 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.

The SpaceRock Manifesto was also my work, when it became clear that
it would not be completed in time for the event, Bob Lennon kindly
offered to print an excerpt from it in his Fanzine, HAWK U.S. #6
which he did, I note you picked a copy of this up but I guess you
hadn't completely read it yet :)

We got a truly magnificent response when we played RADIO CALVERT for
the first time live at Strange Daze, and many of people noticed that
we mentioned Strange Daze in the lyrics.

Total count "Great Gig/Nice Set/I liked you guys etc" was 149!

Total count Nethawks (Yes, I thanked all you guys from the stage) 9

There was definite talk on some Alien Planetscapes/B0RNtoG0 gigs in
NYC, Philly and NJ, so watch this Space(Rock)!

In Space we Trust,

Marc.
Hopefully I will get a chance to update the website soon and put up
some pics of Strange Daze.
--
<http://members.aol.com/B0RNtoG0/index.html>

"Freemasons talk about it all the time, their hands at funny angles,
 In the moonlight, it resembles a biscuit tin that dangles"
 -- The Beast Box, Howard Devoto