HW: NZ/OZ tour log

[Bernhard Pospiech]

Hi folks

Found this on JIM LASCKOs page

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                                                                   "ON TOP
DOWN UNDER"
                                                             HAWKWIND

ARRIVAL IN UTOPIA

    When I heard the news that Hawkwind was making plans to tour New
Zealand and Australia, I quickly called Dave Brock and volunteered The
Solar Fire Lightshow and the use of my services. He
   graciously (whooo hoo!) accepted my offer and I was soon winging my way
to the other side of the world. After a grueling 20 hours of plane rides
(the seats are definitely not made for large people) and
    various airports I arrived safely in Auckland, New Zealand with the
bare essentials of The Solar Fire Lightshow in 5 large, heavy and slightly
smashed cardboard boxes. Seeking visual efficiency AND
economy of shipping I had only brought the unique-to-me equipment that I
needed to interface with the existing house lights at each venue and round
them out into a good, solid light show. I hoped everything

was OK

  After collecting my gear and going through customs, I was met at the
airport by John Attard and Jordan Morris. John is the English promoter who
got the ball rolling and made the NZ/OZ dates possible by
financing a large chunk of the tour, purchasing the necessary plane fares
and arranging the NZ gig dates with the help of Jordan's mother Wendy. The
Morris's (Andy, Wendy, Rainbow, Jordan and Cristen)
     also went deep into their pockets (and big hearts) to help out with
the financing in addition to putting up the whole band and crew at their
Tanglewood Farm homestead and moving us around NZ.

If you are ever down that way give them a call at (64) 09 833553 and ask
about their more than reasonable rates for renting a caravan. They will try
their best to help you out. They sure fed us well and took
  care of us like we were family! We are very grateful to them and anyone
who was happy to see Hawkwind down under owe these kind folks and a few
others in Australia (more on them later) a very big
                               thank you because it never would have
happened without them. Ready? All together now .....1...2...3...... THANK
YOU!!!

As we were driving to Tanglewood Farm I was immediately aware of the
sub-tropical humidity in the air and of the fact that I wasn't upside down.
That's right...even though you are on the bottom of the other
  side of the world and you should be upside down, you're not! It
definitely took a little getting used to. Although Orion is in the night
sky, he doesn't quite look the same and there is no North Star. You have
   the Southern Cross instead. As Harvey would later put it, we were
"upside down and backward in a parallel universe". And what a beautiful
universe it is! Sandy beaches, refreshing water and hilly green
                                                      country, plus sheep,
Sheep and MORE SHEEP! I just loved it!


NZ is not very crowded and a laid back feeling permeated the air. Kiwis
(as they are wont to be called) are a freedom loving people and believe in
the live and let live philosophy. I was pleased to see that the
"cookie cutter, track housing, everything looks the same" way-of-living
hadn't yet made big inroads here. I enjoyed seeing the simpler, square-ish
house designs (indicative of do-it-yourselfers) rather than the
pretentious phony lines of the new homes that we are now mostly seeing
built in the US. It really was like a breath of fresh air and perhaps more
similar to the America of 40-50 years ago. Steve commented
                                                 that it reminded him a bit
of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

  Arriving at Tanglewood I meet the band for the first time since I went to
England in October and it was great to see them all again! For this tour
Hawkwind was Dave Brock (guitar, synth, vocals) Richard
  Chadwick (percussion) Jerry Richards (guitar, vocals) Harvey Bainbridge
(keyboards, vocals) Simon House (violin) and my fellow Clevelander Steve
Taylor (bass). A very promising line up! Rounding out
the crew was Kris Tait doing stage visuals and fire eating (blowing some
immense fireballs for being such a wee lass), sound engineer/equipment tech
Lofty McCrusty, monitor man/equipment tech John Oddy
  and myself, Jim Lascko, on lights. On board to help with the
merchandising was Holly House, Simon's charming and capable 14 year old
daughter. It was also my pleasure to meet Asaf Shlomo, an Israeli
  living in London who came along with John Attard to video tape the tour
for a possible future Hawkwind documentary. I found him to be a very
knowledgeable, sensible man and I enjoyed his company.

  I discovered that Tanglewood Farm was about 10 acres (or is that
hectares?) of rolling hillside on the outskirts of Auckland. Scattered
around this land were numerous caravans. These are what they called
anything that once had wheels and was outfitted to live in like a camper.
Some were still running and others were immobile, molded forever to the
ground by the passing of time. From buses and house trailers
to Beverly Hillbilly type shacks on the backs of old pick up trucks. The
one assigned to me was the classic hillbilly type on the outside but
extremely nice on the inside. It was cunningly made all of wood and
  fitted together with care towards matching the grain and contrasting the
colors of the wood in a manner pleasing to the eye. Very cool! All of the
others were scattered about in various caravans while Dave
                and Kris rented a small modern motor home (by this I mean a
caravan that actually MOVES) so they could go off and enjoy some of the
island's sights by themselves.

  By the time I arrived Hawkwind had already done 2 shows in NZ. The reason
for this was that if I didn't return within 30 days of my departure it
would cost TWICE as much money for my airfare to NZ.
    Doing all of the shows would have taken closer to 35 days, so it was
decided that they would do without me for the first two dates and hire a
local lightshow instead. Although I wasn't there to see it, I
                                  understand that they did a bang up job
for the first 2 shows (Auckland and Waihi Beach) and the lights looked great!


Because of the massive expenses involved in taking a band halfway around
the world, I wasn't surprised to arrive in the middle of a discussion
involving the problem of a low cash flow. I don't know if you can
appreciate how unbelievably fast the money can go when you are moving
almost a dozen people around the world and putting them up in hotels and
eating out in restaurants. It's like having a vacuum hose in
  your pocket sucking out all your money! You have to pay for airfares, air
freight, visas, vehicles, sound system, equipment rental, food, fuel,
hotels and much more. I guess it's the price you must pay for not
licking the grease off of corporate fingers! We would just have to tighten
our belts and expect only the essentials. It was at this time that I first
heard of the possibility of the South Island gigs being cancelled.
We all hoped that it wouldn't come to that as we sat and tried to iron out
the logistics. The South Island was supposed to be a virtual hot bed for
freedom loving, laid back, old time, crusty types. You know...
            your typical Hawkwind fan! Unfortunately, it was not to be and
we ended up canceling the South Island leg due to logistic clashes with the
Australian tour. Maybe the next tour!

I spent the next few days recuperating from my flight. Seeing that I
wouldn't have any voltage converters until we got to New Plymouth I didn't
even bother to unpack my boxes leaving them unopened so they
would be easier to transport. I figured I'll get to my first gig early and
sort everything out then. During this time Andy took some of us to Long Bay
beach. Inside of this big beautiful bay is where the America's
Cup boat races are held. In fact the cup races were going on during the
time we were there with New Zealand ending up victorious. The Kiwis were
all pumped up and kicking ass, but seeing that we weren't
                                                           exactly the
yachting set we didn't really give a shit!

In a few days we were on our way to the first gig in New Plymouth. Going
inland the terrain starts to quickly climb and the country is hilly. Sheep
paddocks abound and you can see why the lamb chops are
so cheap there. Our first stop was to be a crater lake that used to be an
active volcano that erupted about 5,000 years ago. The consequent flooding
of the crater that was left resulted in a gorgeous lake that
was now home to a resort community. It was a very pretty and idyllic spot.
The motel we stayed at boasted mud baths and water slides but we arrived
too late, and left too early, to take advantage of them.
We had a lot of driving ahead of us to get to the gig. The roads in NZ are
mostly of the 2 lane black top type. They necessarily have to twist and
turn as they wind around the hills. This swerving left, right, left,
right, left, right and on and on and on and on eventually started to make
me a little queasy. Things got even worse when we ran out of paved road and
we had to close all of the windows to keep the dust out.

After more hours than we thought it would take we arrived late at the
Fitzroy Hotel in New Plymouth. The show was in a mid sized sports-type bar
complete with pool tables and tv monitors scattered about.
I discovered that I had no voltage converters due to a communications error
on John and Lofty's part. After a brief conversation with Lofty 2
converters were found locally and were on their way to the venue.

I opened my boxes and discovered that my projecting kaleidoscope, oil
wheel and one overhead projector was broken in transit. The rest of the
night was a blur for me. Sweating like a pig from too much salt
  and beer (that's right - LIKE A STUCK PIG!) I was so busy straightening
out my equipment that I couldn't even tell you what songs Hawkwind played.
All I knew was that the set list I was given was only
good as ass wipe material because Hawkwind didn't play a few of the songs -
which made all the rest of the songs out of order. I saw I would have to
rearrange the slides for a more generic lightshow. Chaos

reigned!

In addition to these obstacles one of the newly arrived voltage converters
took a crap before the show even started. White smoke billowed out from it
and I had to do a quick removal and reroute the cords
on half of my equipment. The sound company boys quickly hooked me up with a
couple of emergency power feeds and plug converters ("no guarantees" they
told me) from a dimmer pack that took the 230
    volt NZ power and "dimmed" it down to 120 volts. This proved to be a
costly mistake as the frequency remained unchanged and I needed 60hz
instead of the NZ 50hz. This resulted in my equipment
  overheating and I slowly started to blow my lightbulbs. Even so, it
turned out to be a good show judging by the audience's response. Kris Tait
wowed them by fire eating and blowing a few huge fireballs so
           that the folks up front could feel the heat in their faces.
There was a good size crowd for a Thursday night and everyone was stomping
and cheering loudly for more when it ended.

    We had the first of two gigs the next night at the St. James Cabaret in
Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. The reason there were two gigs in
Wellington was because Hawkwind had said that they
COULD play two shows there if the audience/fanbase warranted it. What the
ticket sellers heard was that they WOULD play two shows! Since tickets were
sold for both shows before the misunderstanding
was discovered, Hawkwind decided to play both of them rather than
disappoint any fans who bought tickets for the second show. The St. James
Cabaret was a good size club that had a balcony where I was
                                           able to set up the lights. It
was a pretty easy set up for me and an ideal spot for the lightshow.
  The first night was a decent size crowd, but not enough to warrant
opening up the balcony. The house lighting rig (which looked really nice)
wasn't usable at all because we brought a sound system into the
club and they disconnected the lighting rig from it's power in order to
plug this system in. I sat up there and couldn't even give the opening act
much of a lightshow other than a simple colorful slide projection or
     two for a back drop. I had some trouble the show before with my bulbs
blowing and I had only so many spare bulbs left. I couldn't risk blowing
any on the opening band and then not have them for
   Hawkwind. Opening the show was Inangafunga, a band that I understand was
from the South Island. They laid down some pretty solid grooves and were
very easy to get into. I liked them. Definitely a
hard-core, barefoot, hippy band with at least one member sporting the
obligatory dreadlocks and tattoos. Check 'em out! Hawkwind came on after
them and did a two hour set. They were in good form and

  ready to go as the stage set up went a little easier tonight and the
pressure was off a little. The following is a typical set list (actually
from the final Auckland, NZ Power Station gig) and it is a sample of what
                            they played during this tour. It changed a
little bit in order and content from gig to gig as Dave and the boys tried
doing different things

Right Stuff / Coded Languages / Motorway City / Assault & Battery / Golden
Void / new instrumental / Forge of Vulcan / Assassins of Allah / Spirit of
the Age / Utopia / Poem / Free Fall / Experiment with
          Destiny / Brainstorm / Sonic Attack / Rat Race / Shouldn't Do
That / and then back to Brainstorm again! The encore was Ejection / Song of
the Gremlin / and Welcome to the Future.

I met Richard Stockwell (from Cranium Records) and his wife Chrissy at
these Wellington gigs as well as my NZ pen pals Shane Palmer and Des Hunt.
It was really good to see friendly faces and finally meet
     the people you have only written to before. After the gig there was a
lot of happy chattering and milling around going on as the band hung around
visiting with folks and signing record covers, female
  mammalian protuberances, and other such things. The second night was
similar to the first except with fewer people (just as we had feared) and a
wee bit darker lightshow. I had blown the bulbs in 3 out of
  my 4 colored spotlights the night before (making the stage very dark
indeed without the use of the house lights) and on this night one of my
slide projector bulbs blew up early in the show and shattered the
                                                         inside lens right
next to it. That was it for that projector!

    I unplugged my rigged NZ "120 volt" power supply and didn't use it
again. I had blown every one of the five spare projector bulbs I had
brought by my third show. I put everything on the one power
  converter I had left and tried not to run it all at once. It still wasn't
a bad lightshow as the darkness only enhanced and defined the 150+ slides
of stars, space and alien civilizations that I brought with me. By
the final song of the evening the power converter finally overheated and
blew an internal fuse from being overloaded. I was left with only some
white strobes which I used for all they were worth. It seemed to
                                  work for the audience because folks came
up to me and commented on how they liked the "lightning effect" at the end.

              The astounding thing to me was that I ended up running the
whole lightshow on one cheap little house extension cord....and it held out
to the end! God sure watches over us.

  After the last show in Wellington we headed back towards Auckland by way
of Rotorua. Wendy had arranged for us to visit a park there that featured
sulfur springs, geysers, boiling mud and other things
indicative of volcanic activity. It seemed much like an open wound on the
skin of the earth and it made the whole town smell like rotten eggs. Many
of the motels had hot mineral baths where this boiling water
  is piped directly into a wading pool. The one we stayed at had 2 pools
and we soaked in hot water that night, floating around on our backs and
looking up at the stars. Jerry Richard's was suffering a little

because his back was hurting from riding all day and getting in and out of
the vans. This soaking helped loosen him up a bit and it did him a world of
good! I burned one and had a little vino - and THAT did
                                                                      me a
world of good!

  Although the water did feel good on my festering sores and alligator like
skin I couldn't help but wonder what effect the sulfur smell may have on
your lungs over a long period of time. To me it was like the
   odor you get when you strike a match and it flares up as it burns off
the sulfur. It seemed to make my lungs feel "heavy" after a while. I really
noticed this more the next day when we went to the park and
spent a few hours wandering about the walkways that snaked around the
various points of interest. I took a few photos while there and got a
pretty good picture of Richard standing in front of a smoking pit.
                                                  After a while we loaded
into the van and headed for Auckland once again.

On the way home we stopped at Cranium Records. This is a small record shop
owned by Richard and Chrissy Stockwell. It is attached to their home and
laid out beautifully, all neat and trim. As we walked
  in and looked around we saw a whole slew of our favorite artists featured
on the shelves. We all had a ball going through the records saying
"remember this one?" and "I used to listen to this when I was...."
and other such things as we uncovered goodie after goodie after goodie! The
Stockwell's have a love for good music and are great supporters of
spacerock in New Zealand. If you ever get a chance to visit
their shop, please do! You sure won't be disappointed in the quality of
music that you will find. I'm sure they would be happy to do mail order for
those things you just can't find at home. For more info email
                                                                   them at:
"Stockwell, Richard"

Once back at Tanglewood Farm we had a few days to rest up and then it was
off to Australia. Kris Tait was busily making arrangements all week so that
everything would go smoothly over there. The band
was looking forward to seeing the country and everyone's spirits were high
as we got our equipment ready for shipping. By this time the cardboard
boxes I was using to haul my lightshow around in started to
  have the look and feel of finely tanned buckskin! Andy helped me find
some new cardboard boxes and with the help of a couple of rolls of duct
tape I was once again ready for whatever abuse the ape like
                                                      baggage handlers
could dish out. So off to the airport we went.

                                                     STAY TUNED FOR PART 2
of "ON TOP DOWN UNDER"...
                                                                   HAWKWIND
                                                             IN THE MERRY,
MERRY LAND OF OZ!