HW: Back to this side of the Pond - Derby/SD

[Stephen Lindsey]

Right,

well I made it !  Could only read email while I was in the UK and
been hectic catching up when I first got back, and tomorrow we're off to Strange
Daze so I'd better write this now !

So you travel 3000 miles for a festival, and they cancel the damn thing......

Not a good start to the holiday.......

Thanks to the wonders of boc-l and some excellent helpful posts from

Kris and Jill (thankyou both wherever you are), I was able to figure out
in short time where the hell HW were playing, and make alternative plans
(just) in time !

So Derby Rock & Blues turned out to be a very fine thing once we'd got there.

Hawkwind were great, really damn good.

It was great to see them play in front of a laaaaaarge crowd  (there were at
least 10,000 in the audience at that point  and I could almost believe
the organizers claimed 15,000)

Most of the bands stuck to the "hits", never a bad idea in front of a
crowd of bikers....    Our boys on the other hand came out and were just plain
downright wierd and strange, in other  words everything you'd want them to be.
The sight of Ron reading a poem that probably 3 people recognised (not me at the
time I'm ashamed to note)  from
a scroll while wearing a fluorescent dayglo outfit combined with god knows
what on his head, as the second song of the set, well that set a pretty
adventurous tone.

I got the impression that Rons been practising more than a little, he seems
to be playing more adventurous bass now, I think I even remember a bass solo
of sorts in AerospaceAge Inferno.

High spot was Utopia, utterly brilliant  maybe even more relevant today than
when it was written.

They couldn't get projections out front (too big a crowd) so there were some
projections from the side of the stage which were a little dim, too make up
for that we got heavy involvement of the dancers and props, excellent work there
I must say, don't want to give away all of the tricks but  there was some
really imaginative stuff that again probably had half the crowd going
"what the f..." and the other half going "Woooaahh". Maybe this is more standard
on recent UK tours, but we haven't normally had the dancers on the American
side of the pond, so very interesting to see...

Great set, pity about the curfew,  lets see you're Hawkwind playing in front
of a field full of bikers, and its time to pick an encore..... hmm tough
choice...

I realised from descriptions of Cornwall that Capn Rizz wasn't at Derby,
maybe they figured the Reggae wasn't going to fit in as well for the biker
crowd.

Saw Richard & Jerry at breakfast, they looked pretty knackered, but pleased with
themselves. Of course I forgot to say anything intelligent, like "Come and
see us in Canada sometime...."

I was quite suprised at the size of the Derby festival (Buxton was only supposed
to be 5,000 people tops) and the organization (bikers with walky talkies !)
I would  go again, and if you're a motorbike fan then you'd be in seventh heaven
I would think.

Didn't manage to meetup with any of you UK boc-lers which was a pity, but
given the upheaval hardly suprising.  Jill I did hang out by the beer tent
(Oh go on, force me !) a bit but didn't see you. I had acquired a broken
hand just before leaving, so if you saw someone with a cast on his left hand
that was almost certainly me.

The Stranglers were playing the next night and I was having fun, so decided
to stay rather than drive to Newcastle and see Bedouin (sorry Alan, next time !)

So now its off to Strange Daze, I've got the cast off now !  If anyone
doesn't know who some of us loonies are (and wants too ?), I'd suggest finding
Kieth and Jerry at the Aural Innovations booth (and if you're not
subscribed to this fine publication - you should be!) and they can probably
point out all sorts of poeple.  See you there !

Steve L