HW: Emperors New Clothes

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On tis 9 feb 1999 13.58 +0000 "Ted Jackson jr. s2h2"
<tojackso at LIBRARY.SYR.EDU> wrote:
>> I would personally say that some of the trance stuff they did during the
>> height of the rave scene was phenomenal and gathered a whole new young
>> generation of audience - the age range of the audience for a while was
>> extraordinary.    Not sure what it would be like today - it's been a
>> long time between live shows and a year is a very long time in the music
>> business!
>>
> And we've made similar observations about BOC in the past as well.
> Most of the BOC backers on this list are youngsters, many of whom
> never even saw Al or Joe in the group.  And at recent gigs, there are
> plenty of young'uns present, who are familiar with the HF material...

     Not sure how young I count as anymore, but I never really knew
about either BOC or HW until the beginning of this decade, and first
saw BOC live in 1992 (I think) and Hawkwind in 1995.  I think I've
seen the Brain Surgeons at least as much (if not more!) than BOC!

     Naturally, everyone will disagree wildly on which HW-era they
like best :) but so far they've popped back fairly strongly from
whatever bad patch one picks.  Time will tell if they keep it on.

     I find it ironic that they've steered away from the "hyperblanga
pounding into oblivion" style which has been somewhat trendy in
recent years.  I suppose no one can accuse HW of "selling out"!
Or would it be "a return to form" ...?  I found myself musing on
this last weekend as Cathedral (not a spacerock band by any means,
but with acknowledged HW influence) started their set with swirling
analogue swooshy noises that could have been straight off of _Space
Ritual_ (the swooshes returned for a track that was more like space
rock than the others, and at the end of set).
     No live swooshy noises from Orange Goblin, but there are some
on record :)  Terra Firma, BTW, were excellent.  The singer was
just recovering from laryngitis and it showed, but threw himself
into it with gusto.  The people I went to the gig with were
extremely impressed.

     Monster Magnet are fairly drenched in HW influence, swooshy
noises and all, and have top bloody 40 hits!  When I watched them
doing "Bummer" (which is a straight lift of the "Time We Left"
riff, after all) at the London Astoria and the crowd was going
nuts, I had to think "This *ought* to be Hawkwind!  Why am I not
seeing this and hearing this with Admiral Brock on stage?".

     Well, Hawkwind will plot their own course, that's one thing
for sure!

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/