FAO Hawkwind Band: NikWar Spam

[M Holmes]

Nick Medford writes:

> Indeed.  Much of it is actually irrelevant to the issues at stake e.g.
> the fact that "XHawkwind" drew a good crowd at Glasto- bully for them,

To be fair: it was the Thursday night of a festival which officially
starts Friday morning and so there was very little going on bandwise.
>From what I could hear of it from outside though, it was a good show.

> >Whoever has written the note that Mike received should really have
> >the courage to identify themselves but I don't think that it will
> >happen.  Of course the Moorcock messages are transcripts of spoken
> >conversations -

I'd reserve judgement on that until Moorcock has confirmed it. However
it does match what I know of Moorcock's views on these things in past
disputes. The one worry I'd have is that these might in fact be
transcripts of conversations in those past disputes, rather than the
current one. People with an axe to grind do, in my experience, have a
tendency not to tell the whole truth.

> Thoughts, for what they're worth if anything- I suppose the issues
> here divide into the Artistic and the Financial.  As far as the
> Artistic goes, I don't think Nik has a leg to stand on.  He wrote a
> handful of great HW songs a very long time ago, and he did some good
> work with ICU more recently- but still a long time ago.  But ever
> since then he has survived by guesting with minor space bands and
> putting together "XHawkwind" and rehashing the same set of old HW
> songs over and over.  He's shown absolutely no sign of having the
> wherewithal to do anything really new or to move on with his life, for
> years now.

Whenever I've met Nik, I've liked the guy. It's also clear from his work
with many bands and festivals that he still has a lot of energy. He also
seems to be pretty good at organisation where getting various ex-hawks
together is concerned.

On the flipside, whenever he's been recalled to Hawkwind, he seems to
get bored and rebellious, reintroducing his rock-circus act and pissing
everyone off. Then when he's out, he competes with alternate bands such
as Kittyhawks, Pinkwind and Ex-Hawkwind. This inevitably leads to
arguments about rights and money. He reminds me of the guy in The
Experiment who wanted to fuck up the whole jail and then once he'd
changed the regime and was part of it, got bored and brought that
crashing down too.

Either that or there's just something personal going on with Nik where
Dave is concerned.

> All in all, another sorry saga.  At least this one's on-topic.  Hope
> they sort it out, preferably in private- the tactic of spamming fans
> anonymously strikes me as desperate and underhand, and if Nik think
> he's gonna win over the fanbase by doing so, I suspect he's in for a
> nasty shock.

I think the worst aspect of this has been the apparent attempt to split
the fanbase across the warring factions. As far as rights to money goes,
that depends on what's in contracts and it's something for the lawyers
to argue over. I dislike the idea of money that could be used putting on
festivals or producing music will be fed instead to lawyers, but I
accept that it's part and parcel of the music business.

On the other hand, there's no getting around the fact that the real jury
out there is us.  We're the guys who go out and buy records and who
travel a long way to go to gigs and festivals.  We supply the money and
support that's being argued over and in the end, our opinion matters.

I for one am not impressed by receiving email badmouthing people. Brock,
by and large has avoided washing that kind of laundry in front of us and
seems to have quietly pursued this through the Courts.

To the extent that I'll choose sides, I'll do it in my usual way: by
buying what's on offer that I want. In that light, I've been a
completist collector. There's one time when I wasn't, and then relented
and caught up: that was in 1987 when Dave Anderson was repeating
compilation after compilation where 12 tracks were selected out of the
same 18 for each. He doesn't even bother with that anymore and blithely
releases renamed copy after copy of Yuri Gagarin, Space Ritual II and
Text of Festival. On one occasion he even released a package of 4 CDs,
two of which were identical. If that's not taking us collectors for
granted, it's hard to imagine what more could be done. So now I don't
bother with the latest renaming of any of these albums (or at least I'm
doing quite well so far in resisting it). The other thing I don't bother
with, post my buying of the Rock Oddyssey 2001 CD, is all of the stuff
that Nik puts out. If it's Anubian Lights, where Nik is at least
producing new stuff, then I consider it and usually buy. If it's yet
another release of Pinkwind Festival at Bluugwerweryyapoughtdale which
sounds like it was recorded on an old tape deck in a biscuit tin located
in a mineshaft, after which a dog chewed the tape, then I don't bother.

So it's becoming pretty clear where my voting Dollars are going.

That said, Nik has managed to put together some of the good guys from
the old days. Seems to me that he should just call them "Brainstorm" and
get on with it. If they produce good music then I'll buy it and take in
some gigs. It seems to me that this would be a better use of our money
than trying to sue Brock for the name "Hawkwind".

If Nik is really trying to get a benefit going to get money for such a
Court case, then that's not an objective that I want to donate to. If
that's "The Spirit of Hawkwind" then I'm Rumpole of the Bailey.

FoFP