HW: Voiceprint, and How do you like your Hawkwind sir?

[Doug Pearson]

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002 18:06:25 +0100, Jon Jarrett
<jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> wrote:
[re: Bat Chain Puller]
>        They have, but none of that's coming out either... no releases
>from ZFT for more than two years now I believe. But anyway. This JWB
>person's opinion was the first negative in the group after about four
>people going "Wow, I've got _Bat Chain Puller_, I think he was the first
>one with the boot to give perspective, and there were more negative
>opinions soon after, but I grant you this is coming off a fangroup full of
>fanatics and it's interesting to have your more moderate view :-) I'm now
>wondering whether I should risk the money after all.

Doesn't sound too different from the kinds of differences-of-opinions we
have here.  Some people are overly-incredulous, and others overly-cynical
(and some manage to combine both at once!).  Tell you what, if you do pick
up the OzIT 'Bat Chain Puller', and are annoyed at the tape hiss (or other
sound issues), I'll gladly burn a copy of the boot for you. :^)

>        Oh, half of my EBS CDs' indexing is screwed up, and every single
>one has a typo somewhere in the sleeve, but there's only two real faults
>with them and none have more than one indexing error. The ones that annoy
>me are that damn nasty pitch-shift in `Rocky Paths' on the EBS _Sonic
>Attack_ and the lack of split between `Choose Your Masques' and
>`Dreamworker' on CYM. That one annoys me because I'd quite like to leave
>off CYM and begin the album with `Dreamworker' :-)

Ah, OK.  I never picked up any of the EBS *reissues* (to be honest, SA, CoH
& CYM are three Hawkwind albums I never listen to), so I wasn't aware that
the indexing was screwed up on those.  That IS bad (especially since I
pride myself on indexing stuff well when I transfer from tape or vinyl to
CD).

>But yeah, the
>information is correct, by and large, just the technology is beyond
>people. All the tracks have their names given, which is more than you can
>say for the Kingdom Come re-releases on Voiceprint. And IYA is a horrible
>mish-mash, but only because the person doing the sleeve and the person
>doing the indexing clearly got told different things about what the tracks
>were. The actual information is still right. Sloppy but they give the
>impression of being concerned anyway :-)

At least those of use who are fans can figure out the way it was *supposed*
to work, although I'm always amused when I hear college radio DJ's back-
announce the wrong song title because a CD was mis-indexed (at least these
Voiceprint ones are far from the only ones in the industry as a whole).

[re: Yule Ritual]
>        Yes, I remember talking to Alan about that when Bedouin played
>Cambridge, and there was some reason they couldn't use that tape; I'm not
>sure it had everything on. But on the other hand that was while they were
>still talking about it so I don't know whether that was eventually the
>case or not.

But was the overly-processed bass sound printed to the tape they *did* have
to use?  (Where the heck did that tape come from, in that case?)  It's not
*that* difficult (especially for a pro like Alan) to re-record the entire
bass part for a live album, if necessary (just ask Phil Lynott or Gene
Simmons [probably Gene Simmons' bass tech, actually]).  Oh well, it comes
down to the fact that one of these days I need to obtain an audience tape
of the gig, after which I'll probably never listen to 'Yule Ritual' again.

>> The recent 'Nottingham 90' release is quite excellent...
>
>        I'll get it at some point. Hard to be too fussed when _Palace
>Springs_ exists.

Ah, but Simon House is only on two tracks of 'Palace Springs', while he's
on almost an entire CD of 'Nottingham 90'.  (Also, you get Bridget on N90,
but that isn't nearly as big a deal to me ... and probably a minus to some
[but not me!].)

[re: Glastonbury 90]
>> My point is, that for this particular tape, there's nothing that you can
>> really do until you invent a time machine, go back, and shoot the dog.
>
>        Fair enough. If it wasn't in the HMV racks at full-price I would
>probably love this album anyway, the band were very clearly On. But it is.

I'll concur with that summary (Harvey's "piano solo" on 'The Door' cracks
me up, but I enjoy it all).

>        Well, we have a kind of middle ground here, where Voiceprint
>haven't signed HW as far as we know (they don't do that sort of thing
>anyway, do they?) but are e. g. doing promotion and merchandising for
>them. They're quite at liberty to consider HW a cash cow of course but it
>smarts that the band are happy to do this too. Can't say I blame them
>given the cash involved, so I have to blame Voiceprint, simple :-)

Fair enough, but it looks to me like all parties involved are out to make a
quick buck (which I have no problem with, but it does make me want to
assign the "blame" more equally).

>        Andy Gilham reckoned, some time before his site was pulled, that
>around the time of _Epoch Eclipse_ there might have been an EMI deal for
>HW had they not then flooded EMI's potential market with substandard
>product priced below HMV's.

This would certainly be nothing new for Hawkwind, since, allegedly, the
reason why they haven't had a major label deal in two decades is because of
all the stuff that was released through Flicknife while they were signed to
RCA.

>I don't know if he knew that such a deal had
>been offered or was just hypothesising, but it sounded plausible to me
>then and still sounds that way now.

By now, I wouldn't think that they quite have the commercial potential to
attract much interest from the majors (as is the case with most of my
favorite bands).  Probably the only way it would happen would be if a
certain ex-manager rammed them down the throat of a major because said
major wanted to get its hands on a hot band currently managed by said ex-
manager (pay careful attention to the copyright/performance right
information on the two "new" tracks on that recent EMI 'Masters of Rock'
CD).

>But I agree with you about _Weird
>106_. The same fate befell the GTP release after all (and the
>relevant material is the same isn't it?)

Exactly.  I'm sure they were both pulled for the same reason ... and too
bad, since they'd both be great additions to the catalog.  Interesting that
Voiceprint has no trouble reissuing Man's segment of the GTP album (and the
bulk of their UA catalog) ... I guess that shows that Hawkwind still DO
have enough commercial potential to interest a major label in maintaining
their back catalog, which puts them ahead of Man in that respect (or maybe
there are completely unrelated reasons for this).

>> (the first 3 Pink Floyd singles on one CD ...
>
>        That is very cool, I got it when it came out a few years back. But
>they still haven't done the *next* three singles (with `Scream thy Last
>Scream and `Vegetable Man' as bonus tracks obviously :-) ) and I wish they
>would. It's an obvious massive seller so why not?

At least those two tracks, yes!  (I don't really miss not having a copy
of "It Would Be So Nice", and the 'Ummagumma' version of "Careful With That
Axe Eugene" is vastly superior IMHO.)  From what I've heard, neither
Gilmour nor Waters will consent to the release of "Scream"
and "Vegetable".  Oh well, I've got 'em on bootleg, and Gilmour/Waters
certainly don't need MY money.

>> I guess you get to pick
>> two items out of three when you select your reissue label:
>> 1) Reasonably priced CD's
>> 2) Good royalties paid
>> 3) Quality product
>
>        HW only got (2) though. IMO. I don't know if the US prices are
>better but the 2CD collector sets go for GBP16.99 over here and the single
>CDs for not less than 10. This is local HMV I'm citing, though, I have
>seen them cheaper even in shops but that was second-hand (very soon after
>they came out, too... )

With a few weird exceptions ($25 for 'Spacebrock'?!?), they're very
reasonably priced in the USA.  I think mostly around $12 for the singles
and $22-ish for the doubles, which is about the same as the jewel case EMI
remasters.  While new major label releases are more like $18/$30.

[re: Text of Festival]
>        I was listening to that earlier, actually, and am now
>wondering. Does anyone know who's on bass for the 1970 portion? By my
>reckoning it should be Thomas Crimble but I don't have very good data on
>this and I wonder if I have the date he joined wrong, as I thought he
>wasn't on record. Also, how much of it *is* the 1970 portion? I can only
>hear lead guitar on `Hurry on Sundown' but I thought today there was maybe
>also some on `Seeing It As You Really Are'. And which bits are May
>1971? Is it just the MotU?

As I mentioned in the other message, it appears that "Hurry On Sundown" is
the only cut from 1970, and the bassist is, indeed, Crimble.

>        That in itself raises another question. There are three verses in
>that MotU, the third one muttered while Nik bleats sax over it, but the
>vocals sound like Nik to me. Is there over-dubbing even on this ropey
>release? If not, whose is the voice? And does Nik sing the rest, because
>it sounds like the same voice to me... Confused am I. Any help appreciatd,
>I guess Bernhard can settle my first question at least...

And again, as I mentioned, Maida Vale BBC sessions are "semi-" studio
recordings, so it would be expected for a lead vocal to have been
overdubbed.

>> Fortunately, there's sort of
>> an alternate version of "Wage War" in the middle of the Hawklords (Weird
>> 104) version of "Urban Guerilla" ... the words are almost the same.
>
>        Ooh. I didn't know that. Well then.

They're not *identical*, but I was shocked to hear how much overlap there
was.  (I was doing research for my Hawkwind tribute band, 'cause I wanted
to do the Hawklords arrangement of "Urban Guerilla", with "Wage War" as the
intro, but I realized that there would be too much redundancy for it to
work without a bit of rearrangement ... of course, we never got around to
doing that song anyway.)

>        Yes, we agree about the principle, but I was saying, my _Yuri_ at
>least looks like it's awful, the Voiceprint stuff in some cases looks
>great and sounds lousy, where it's great it looks poor,

At least 'Glastonbury 90' looks pretty cheap (but that's the only real
exception to your theory).

>and these days the
>_Yuri_ clones looks better than the real albums, and Dave Anderson should
>be strung up. I think that's my position, roughly :-)

It definitely would have been better for the investment to have been made
in sonic cleanup (although we both know perfectly well that no amount of
cash can improve an already-recorded performance), rather than pretty album
art ...

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com