HW: Wembley

[rich.warren]

What can I say, most has already been said ;-) But here goes anyway

This was a Heavy Full On Blanga Set from Start to finish. The Band decided to go at it like a Freight Train.

Tracks:

Ejection
Angels of Death
Motorway City
Hurry on Sundown
Master of the Universe
Song of the Gremlin
The Watcher
Assasins of Allah
Silver Machine 

Crew Members:

Dave Brock
Huw Lloyd Langton
Alan Davey
Richard Chadwick 
Tim Blake
Arthur Brown (Vocals Master of the Universe+Song of the Gremlin, backing Vocals Silver machine)
Lemmy - Bass/Vocal (Siver Machine)

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Ejection really started it the way they meant to go on, the heaviest I think I've ever heard the band, probably necessary with an audience constructed of 50% NU Metal Kids, and the rest of grizzled old Motorhead fans (with us handful of true believers ;-) Angels of Death followed with a very 'wall of sound' feel, I think the sound was very distorted at this point...but others might disagree!)

Motorway City really shone, Huw was certainly having one of his in form gigs, and enjoying himself (though there did seem to be problems with his monitors being up to high through parts of the set)
Hurry On Sundown, never fails to get me bouncing, it's as fresh as the day it was written (though I'd love to hear it acoustic sometime...broken record)

A very Heavy storming Master of the Universe, which even with Arthur reading the lyrics off, left me reeling.

Song of the Gremlin, how often do we ever hear that :-) What can I say about Arthur Brown!! He was a superb performer, a real showman.  Lemmy might of started Motorheads set with 'we're going to f**k you up', but I think Arthur got there first :-) He truly is the God of Hellfire

The Watcher was pretty much as played on recent dates, though as people have already said this was closer to an instrumental version, because Alans Vocals just weren't audible, he suffered from this through other parts of the set as well.

Assassins of Allah, I think it's impossible for this song not to be a crowd pleaser, no change here.

And then Back on after a little foot stomping, for Silver Machine:

Lemmy looks larger than life, he always seems to fill the stage :-) A crowd already enjoying themselves muchly went wild.  Have to say he looks his old self again.
And yet again the sound guys blow it, the first few seconds the whole band was only on monitors, before the sound was switched back on. When it did come up, it was by far the best performance of SM I've seen in the gigs I've been to. Arthur was singing backing vocals, and Tim leapt up from his synths to join Arthur at his Mic.

A fitting and great end to a fabulous 50 minutes. It's a shame not as many people made it down to Wembley, because you missed the heaviest Hawkwind set I can remember.  I don't know what the NU Metal kids were expecting but they got well and truly Steamrollered

Thanks to Kris and co. for the excellent firebreathing, it's always fabulous to see :-)

Tim looked like he was having a wail of a time inserting keyboards when and where throughout the set, he looked like a Hippy(sorry Alisa couldn't resist) Island in a sea of Metal.

The audience came away happy(more converts for the Church of Hawkwind),  and it looked like the band did too (Mission Accomplished)  So Roll on December!!!

Wembley:

What a rip off, the merchandise is all sold by Wembley personnel, at a huge markup.  They seemed to be marking up a fiver on all the T Shirts. I saw Trev briefly and he looked like he was struggling to even get merchandise onto the stands.  Some Festy T Shirts Eventually appeared, but at 20 quid each !!!!!! (Good job I already have 2 ;-)

In fact the whole place was plain odd, like an aircraft hangar with bars around each side.  Wouldn't ever be my first choice of venue, they seemed very strict about everything, far too commercialised, basically a money generation machine, without concern for the content...ugh

(There are probably 2 audience recordings ;-)

It was great to see everyone I managed to catch up with, Colin, Rob, and Nick, and hope to see you all again in December for Walthamstow(and wherever else I can drag myself to) 

I'll skip the support bands, since they weren't the reason I went ;-) (And we did skip Anthrax literally)


Cheers

Rich W(Dismayed at failing to buy a single CD after visiting 10 record shops..I must be losing it ;-)