HW: RFH comments.

[Jon Jarrett]

        Dear All,
                  Nick and others have said a lot of things I meant to say
but I'm going to post a review anyway :-) In a rare burst of actually
posting on something up to date... (I am in fact catching up, fear me).

        ANYWAY. I thought Add N to X were on to a good thing, having had
no idea of them at all before then; they understand the blanga concept
even if they're trying to do it exlcusively with 303s and Wavestations and
a (very well-played I thought) theremin. But I didn't think their ability
was quite up to their imagination. Still they were worth seeing as a
support act.

        So, Hawkwind. To get the facts out of the way before the opinion
starts in, line-up was Dave B., Keith K. (no hat this time!), Tim Blake
and his computer, Richard "Two-Stone" Chadwick, Ali Davey, Simon House and
Huw Lloyd Langton all playing what you'd expect them to play, plus Jez
Huggett on some numbers (* in the list below) and excepting `New
Jerusalem' which was played with only Tim and Dave on stage, and the first
number of the encore which was only Simon :-) `Space is Their Palestine'
was actually done live, as far as I could tell, by way of total
reversal. Michael Moorcock was also supposedly doing phone-in vocals on
numbers marked !.

        And set-list was: Lighthouse -> Levitation/ Spiral Galaxy 28948/
Moonglum/ New Jerusalem/ Angels of Death/ Sonic Attack*! -> The Watcher*/
Motorway City -> Hurry On Sundown/ Damned By the Curse of Man!/ Assassins
of Allah -> Space is Their Palestine -> Assassins of Allah/ Ejection ->
`Tree Fall' -> Ejection // The Star-Spangled Banner/ Assault & Battery ->
The Golden Void -> Void's End

        Where we were the sound was actually not bad. By the end of the
set. But by that point I'd damned the soundman to every kind of unpleasant
death I could envisage. As it started all we could hear were drums, bass,
and vocals, and Tim's and Dave's synths but not really Keith's. The drums
were perfectly miked again which is really nice to hear but not when
there's nothing else. Dave's guitar became slowly more audible through the
course of `Levitation' and the soundman clearly became aware that that
ting Simon was playing was an instrument in the first few notes of `Spiral
Galaxy' after which he was sublimely and wonderfully audible for all the
set. Huw was quite clearly switched into the PA only halfway through
`Moonglum' and had gone again by the start of `Motorway City', during
which he was brought up again only to be inaudible again by `Assassins'. I
suspect that those who actually could hear him were close enough to hear
his amp, which looked bloody huge for all the good it did him. Keith I
only heard three times in the whole set, none for longer than a
minute. It's not good enough, in the RFH, really. They must have had a
sound-check, what happened to it? Jez wasn't too audible either but then
he hardly seemed to play. Huw also seemed to lose heart several times
because he couldn't hear himself, and I can't say I blame him.

        Everyone except Jez, who really seemed pissed off, having a brief
argy-bargy with Huw when he first left the stage, was playing really
really well. Dave especially riffed the hell out of almost everything, Tim
was astounding, I've never rated him as an accompanist compared to his
solo work up to now and now I know better, Simon was *incredible* and
Huw's solos that I could hear were as impressively unexpected as anything
he's done on record with Hawkwind. And Richard and Alan^H^Hi were
eerything we expect. Huw was also in pretty good voice I thought
considering what he sounded like last time I saw him (when however he
played like an angel).

        But. You knew there'd be a but, didn't you. But. It wasn't very
good. The sound killed a lot of it; but though everyone was on form at
times, the places where they were all doing it together were relatively
few, and there were a few horrible clunks where someone came out of a
break a few bars too early or late. Alan and Richard are beginning to tire
me as a rhythm section; everything is starting to sound the same in tyheir
hands. If Alan would stop playing bass like Lemmy in Motorhead and get
back to playing like Lemmy in Hawkwind this would help (he was doing the
machine-gun bass thing as he came back on too, if he can find any more
ways to imitate Lemmy I'll be impressed); everything seems to be in the
same key and time signature now. In particular `The Watcher', fantastic
though it was to hear it, was caught halfway between the pacey Motorhead
version that Ali wanted to play and the atmospheric eerie version tat
everyone else seemed to be geared up for. Also, I don't know what Dave was
doing trying to replicate Ron's out-tro to `Ejection'--he did about two
lines and then gave up. Moorcock was sadly not worth the bother; he
sounded as if he was giving it his best but he was inaudible below the
band if they were actually playing and they clearly couldn't hear him on
stage or he them. Which is a pity as I've not even heard `Curse of Man' on
record and I'd have liked to know what the words are. I also did think
that just this once they might have dropped `Assassins'. They could have
played something from the last fifteen years instead.

        No, I was quite heavily disappointed. They're all great, but they
weren't doing it right. I thought some of the problems arose from not
having fully worked out how to incorporate Tim fully, especially using his
percussion machinery which seemed to be doing the wrong thing a couple of
times. And there's no question that the soundman got almost everything he
could have got wrong wrong. But next time anyone cares to tax Nik & Trev
with advertising people who don't turn up (no Arthur Brown, no Graham
Coxon) and being scrappy and under-rehearsed, let's not forget that the
real band can do it too. Better luck on tour fellas.

        I will be going to the GTP2001 gig also, which I should point out
I expect to be *awful*. But I can't pass up the chance to see ICU. I just
wish Nik and Dave would stop doing things in such a way as to piss the
other off. Nik didn't have to use the same date for this Hawkestra as last
year or allow Mick Farren to call them "Hawkwind in all but name", and
Dave didn't have to try and stop the gig being advertised. Grow up the
pair of you. And for Gods's sake settle with Doug, and get a switch doctor
and a record label and a new manager. That's my stance and I'm sticking to
it. Yours,
           Jon

ObCassette: Rainbow - _Rainbow Rising_
--
           Jon Jarrett                     "Two men say they're Jesus,
          (01223 514989)                   One of 'em must be wrong..."
   jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk              (Mark Knopfler)