HW: Derby Rock & Blues

[Andreas Stuewe]

Nick Lee schrieb:
> Hi,
>
> just got back from the Derby Rock & Blues (via a night out in Manchester).
> After the longest wait between gigs (for me at least, since I've been seeing
> them) HW didn't disappoint.
> They opened with Aerospaceage Inferno, followed by Ron reading Wage War (I
> think, I haven't listed to Gagarin for quite some time), this led into
> Motorway City then (although not necessarily in this order) Assault &
> Battery/Golden Void, Assassins of Allah, Alchemy, a new piece, Master of the
> Universe (with a fantastic trance middle section), Utopia, Blue Skin,
> Brainstorm with Sonic Attack sandwiched in the middle, encoring Song of the
> Gremlin and Silver Machine - featuring Dumpy as guest. I think if the curfew
> hadn't struck we'd have got another song or two, as it was they played about
> 90 mins.

It was indeed Wage War, and Ron was reading it from a giant piece of paper.
Actually it was too long to be exciting, and the synth noodling wasn´t that
inventive. Motorway City was quite a surprise, with brilliant vocals by Dave and
Jerry´s lead guitar sounded great. Assault and battery/The golden void was next.
When it was over I thought a new song began, but it was in fact some 3 min
extended Golden Void fade-out (at least Dave said after that it was Golden Void).
Next was Alchemy, always nice to hear. The new song was sung by Ron and it´s
obviously a Ron Tree song, rather slow one, one which grows with every listen,
and great guitar work by Dave and Jerry. The highlight for me was Arrival in
Utopia, best version I´ve ever heard! Master of the universe was about 10 min
long with some real spacey middle part, a bit similar to I am the reptoid.
Assassins of Allah was played as usual with Space is their. same goes with Blue
skin. But Brainstorm was performed without that reggae piece inbetween which
really was a delight. Instead we heard Sonic Attack which was musically quite
different. After 80 min Hawkwind came back for an 8 min encore of The Gremlin and
Silver machine. One of the better versions to my tastes, feat. 3 guitars.
All in all another great performance by Hawkwind. Though I missed Hippy in the
set, as they have done it at their soundcheck. But I believe they had to do some
of their classics and a more heavy set since this was a biker festival.


Andreas (a mad German who travelled 1200 miles by car to see a 90 min HW set)