HW: Swindon

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 11:16:29PM +0300, Alice typed out:
> > Dave's comment was that Bob Calvert had written the song over 20 years ago
> > about dollars & oil and it's still going on today (that's the jist of it).
> > Actually, that doesn't make it relevant, does it? Unless you want to get
> > into conspiracy theories, and that's *not* my glass of Coke, thanks...
> >
> > But, hate to be be negative...still a fantastic gig
>
> I agree with Dave Brock on this. It's really relevant today. And a great
> song! Why should they drop this song because of recent events? Maybe Ali
> should turned from Islam then?

        Well, let's look at two points of view. A member of a newsgroup I
make it to occasionally said in a thread on the WTC attacks that he'd
really like everyone to let itr drop for a bit as he'd known someone on
the secodn plane to hit and had thus seen that friend's death televised
about a hundred times just lately and was not doing well with it. So maybe
singing songs glorifying Arabic murderers and terrorists could be
tactless.

        On the other hand, let's take the viewpoint of Bob Calvert, who
penned the song right after the Black September attacks and was performing
it within a few months of them, no? Presumably feeling that there was
something to say. I started off with the first point of view and came
round to the second. If it was OK to sing it in 1976 it's OK to sing it
now. The only reason why not might be that that Bernhard gave, to wit,
that they haven't not sung it for fifteen years, and none of the stuff
they've written in that time has been in the setlists.

        My only real problem with it is that there really *was* any useful
comparison between Hassan i Sabha and al-Qaeda then it would just be Bush
and possibly Blair that were dead, or their more intelligent
functionaries, and not thousands of people who were naff-all to do with US
policy in the Middle East or wherever except as pencil-pushers to the
money-men. But hell, it's a good song.

> HW is a band of freedom and they should do what they want.

        Except for Nik, Jerry and Ron obviously. Who told them they were
Hawkwind anyway, hey? Yours,
                             Jon (fortified with politics and irony)

--
        Jonathan Jarrett                Birkbeck College, London
                 jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
        --------------------------------------------------------
  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)