HW: Recent v Old/Poll

[Doug Pearson]

On Sun, 19 Dec 1999 23:17:40 +0000, Jonathan Jarrett
<jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 15, 1999 at 12:14:52PM -0800, Doug Pearson wrote:
>> I recently heard a recording of the Maximum Effect's (Steve Pond, Fred &
>> Mick Stupp post-ICU, pre-Krankschaft/Calvert) last show that is
incredible...
>
>        Blimey. Is _this_ on record, or is this a bootleg? First I've
>knowingly heard of this band...

Steve Pond sent me a CD-R made from an old tape he had; it IS bootleg sound
quality, unfortunately, but an amazing performance with a few ICU classics
(some thrown together in bizarre medleys) and some cool originals (two of
which were released as the "Espania"/"The Wrecker" 7" single back in '86 -
I think Steve still has several boxes of these in his house and gives away
free copies on request).  If you ask nicely, Steve might put up MP3's of
this show on his website (and if you've been enjoying the MP3 downloads,
please drop him a line - he'll be psyched to hear from people listening to
them).

>        Ah, I see! I was more sort of lumping the two concepts together.
>To my mind an HW keyboardist has to swoosh more than play the old joanna,
>which is why I rate Harvey so highly, and also Tim; they really add
>something to the sound but it is, admittedly, synths.

If it weren't for Simon House, it would be a lot easier to lump "keys" and
"synths" together for Hawkwind, but Simon is a great *keyboard* player
(very talented!) without being much of a synth player.  OTOH Del Dettmar
probably couldn't play "Chopsticks" if his life depended on it!  (And then
there's someone like Keith Hale, who wasn't really any good at either one.)
 I'm also concerned with the distiction because I'm a pretty great (IMnsHO)
synth player when it comes to twiddling knobs, but only so-so when it comes
to actually tinkling the ivories ...

>In terms of actual
>keyboard ability I haven't ever really bothered to assess Steve, but he
>still seems to me to have something of an affectation for what Zappa
>called "redundant piano triplets"...

Yeah, I know what you mean there.  That's something that doesn't really
work for Hawkwind in general, but I think it works real well on the
rocked-out 'Hawklords Live' album.

>But if you're rating 'em that way
>then you have much more of the right of it than I, certainly.

That's the great thing about boc-l; we ALL have just as much right to rate
'em on whatever grounds we choose ... or the Right To Decide not to rate
'em at all,

        -Doug
         ceres at sirius.com