HW: answer to Colin (was: ++++ HW: Covers All Final Call/ Studio album)

[Jon Jarrett]

        Right, I'm clearly annoying people with this, for which I
apologise, and so this will be my last message on the subject to the
list, this only because last night I said I would write it and left stuff
unclear as a result. I'm happy to discuss this off-list with Colin or
anyone, but I'll keep it there after this. I'll also try to be less
long-winded with this one now that we seem to have worked out where we're
disagreeing.

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Colin J Allen wrote:

        <snip stuff about lawsuits>

> > > Jon, when making comments it is rather useful to get one's facts
> > > correct, rather than allowing your own delusions free rein.  I am
> > > sure that you can make up your own mind (you seem already to have
> > > done so).  As usual, your logic is so flawed as to be amusing.
> >
> >         That wasn't logic (because you know what logic is, right?), it was
> > an opinion, but it did contain facts, which you imply, without saying as
> > usual, that I've got wrong. Challenging me on facts can sometimes be a
> > highly effective strategy but not, I think, this time. Let's gather them
> > in.
>
> Yes, I do know what logic is.  Despite the fact that Birkbeck beat Cranfield
> in the final of University Challenge, the latter institution, among others,
> still does some excellent and rigourous academic work, much of which
> involves an understanding of logic.  I quote your comment: "in the course of
> which at least one other notionally `new' Hawkwind album (_Spacebrock_) has
> come out thus using up a precious third of the, what, six at most new tracks
> we've seen the band play in that time."  This is deeply flawed; albums do
> not "use up" new tracks.  New tracks may appear on particular albums or they
> may not. Some of the, admittedly, very few new tracks played in the last few
> years did also appear on Spacebrock; does that have any impact on anything
> else?

        Oh, the academic thing, I really shouldn't use that .sig then
people might not think I thought being an academic gave me an advantage in
argument. Yes, Cranfield's good, University Challenge proves nothing, and
I'm a medieval historian so my academic affiliation really shouldn't come
into this.

        But, OK, you can in fact set this one out logically. It requires
one premise, that there is a limited amount of new material. I suppose
Hawkwind can write as long as they live but since we're looking at
releasing an album there must be a closer limit than that. There can only
be so many tracks ready before the album is compiled, yes?

        Now, we the fans have evidence of only six to eight, which I
listed last time. Of those, two went on _Spacebrock_ and three, or four
if you count `Money Tree' as a new one, were Ron's or involved him
crucially and so I rule them out too. That leaves one version of `Earth
Calling' and `Strange Fruit'. The impact of stuff appearing on
_Spacebrock_ was to reduce the pool of new stuff available for further
albums and thereby to anyone watching the likelihood of this material,
which had taken a long while to turn up, being enough for an album.

        Now, you may say the band have been turning out numbers by the
score the last few months, cool. But there's no way I can know that, I can
only go on what gets played, and that isn't encouraging. I do hope
Hawkwind surprise me.

        <snip cites of Death Generator and recent release list>

> Jon, you appear to be going off on a wild goose chase yet again by replying
> to arguments that I have not put forward.

        <snip list of new tracks>

> Your point being? Apart, that is, from the creation of yet more non-existent
> arguments.

        <snip list of people leaving>

> Although this has no relation to my comment, I will state here that you are
> wrong on at least one of the people you name as having left.  However, once
> again, I would enquire as to the point of your list.

        I'm guessing that would be one of the people I suggested might
still appear then, but let me come to the point in a minute.

> Mike has said that he does not want to be involved in working with any
> Hawkwind related bands; this also appears (more recently) on his site.  I
> would not take everything that Michael says as being literal truth, however,
> for a range of reasons, none of which reflect badly on him.

        Yes, as I said, I don't entirely take his word on his pledge. But
anyway.

        The reason I listed all this was that you suggested my facts were
wrong, but didn't make it at all clear which ones you meant. So I backed
them all up. Now we know what you meant, I can leave all that out.

> Jon, do you really think that, in your words, there are "people Brock pays
> to lie to the fan-base about this"?  I would suggest that is delusional.

        Now, here is the key. As I said to Kris last night, I chose my
words very aggressively here and probably shouldn't have. Sorry. But. Both
you and Rik are presumably being paid to, among other things, pass
information on to the fanbase. And a lot of this information turns out to
be wrong.

        Brief examples, and I'll agree that some of these aren't
immediately fair, see below: War of the Worlds isn't going to happen; two
of the dates on the last tour were pulled at very short notice; there was
before that going to be a Spring tour, or at least it was suggested that
there would be, which was eventually left aside in the effort to organise
Hawkfest; Graham Coxon and Arthur Brown were conspicuous by their absence
at the Forum Christmas Party (or whichever one they were supposed to be
at); I have a Welcome to the Future tour t-shirt on it where two of the
listed venues were never played, and three more including my home
Cambridge were cancelled before that, slightly before the shirts went to
press I assume, and, how this damn argument started, we've been primed to
await a Death Generator album since, as I showed, 1998 at the latest, and
indeed something for passport holders only since 2001 at least.

        Now, some of this doesn't matter much. Okay, no Graham Coxon, we
wren't going to see him really were we. Places cancelled on the 1997 tour
were good and early and no tickets went on sale as far as I know. But some
of it did matter; I remember one person posting here having not only
booked time off work but booked plane tickets, which were non-refundable,
for the two cancelled gigs last winter, so they must have spent a skint
few days being miserable at home and I bet they weren't the only ones. I
also remember all the furore about the free CD at the Christmas Party,
because it wasn't mentioned till after other people had got time off work
and so on to go to the whole main tour, not knowing it would leave them
out of the offer. A few hundred people try to organise their lives on this
information.

        And again, some of it's not the band's fault; War of the Worlds
and various other festivals which failed to get police permission or
enough advance bookings or whatever, you have to blame on councils or
most likely the promoters. But, as it appears, some of it is; the
cancelled gigs last year, as far as we've been told, were because the band
got an opportunity to go to Morocco cheap. And I'm sure Hawkfest was great
but I would have caught one of the gigs on the Spring tour that year if it
had happened. And I'd have bought this ruddy album several times now if
it'd come out as many times as it's been announced. If there's
explanations for these, we didn't get them.

        It all seems as if there's a lot of spin going on. A lot of this
battle for the fans' hearts and minds is Nik's fault, the way I see it, by
starting an argument about who's right and who's not about which very few
people care. But it's come with this thing about only trusting official
sources, and these official sources are often *wrong*. Look at the website
and think how many of these failed ventures have been listed on its
various versions of the news pages, though I grant you this redundancy is
slowly coming out of the site. I can't find anything among the news pages
which is now actually wrong, though this whole argument started round a
bit about the Death Generator project which appears now to have been
pulled. Likewise the out-of-date line-up information. Good. It's
nice to know people read that far into my text. Still, if you look at the
core album discography at
<http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hwind/alb/alb_.htm> you can see the
sort of thing I mean. _Thrilling Adventures_ is from 1976 really, but it's
up as a core release from 2000, presumably because there wasn't one and it
looked a bit empty. Same arguments for _The 1999 Party_ and _Live 90_;
these are archive releases. But you have to put them in somewhere I
suppose. More interesting is what's not there. _Spacebrock_ for one. And
anything from the Collector's Series on Voiceprint *except* _Live 90_. Are
these not "approved" albums then? Even _Atomhenge 1976_ which is the same
tape as _Thrilling Adventures_? Or is it just that they didn't go down so
well with the online fans and the band don't care to own up to them any
more? What do Voiceprint think of the band suppressing their own output
like this?

        Who cares why, anyway; there's clearly a band view about things
propagated through the website and announcements here that needs checking
with reality before you can rely on it. This is my big problem. And it's
why I don't generally believe much of it any more. It can cost you a lot
of money believing this stuff, and much more in expectation.

        Thing is, and I have nearly finished honest, it's so
irrelevant. There are 249 people on the list, and maybe two thirds of
those are here for Hawkwind? Still fewer of them in places where they can
buy stuff or go to gigs. It's nothing. I imagine the website gets hits
more like four figures, although many of those must be repeat visits. But
you, know stack this against sales of _Space Ritual_, and it must be a
vanishingly small figure. Or, maybe more relevantly, against sales of
_Epocheclipse_, which is the last Hawkwind item that had any real
promotion effort put behind it, presumably because of EMI having money. I
appreciate Hawkwind by themselves can't get reviews into _The Times_ and I
don't expect them to. But that's your target audience. The people you can
reach through the 'net are a thinly-spread fraction of the buying public,
and more importantly, especially here, we're the ones who'll buy stuff
and go to gigs *anyway*. I know I do, and I must be about the most
vicious critic on the list, who speaks up anyway. There's no point wasting
this effort on convincing us of good guys and bad guys and stuff, we are
already on Hawkwind's side in as much as our money will come to the band
anyway (if you make it possible). But this raft of people who never see
this stuff, whom you have to hope will come to the gigs or else get only
fifty at each one, they only know about Hawkwind from the papers, the
radio or posters or most importantly CDs in shops. They won't see the
moral arguments, but if they see Hawkwind are playing nearby, or see a new
Hawkwind album in the racks, they may pick it up and you've got them
again, if it's any good. And that's what gets people saying to their
friends, "oh, yeah, Hawkwind, got their new album the other day and it's
really good, they've still got it". You can't get people thinking this by
telling it them over and over with no evidence.

        Point: when I bought _Distant Horizons_ I did so the week it
came out in a Virgin Megastore, and it had, and still has indeed because I
found it so amusing, a Virgin chart sticker on it and was being sold at a
discount. Being in Virgin it was still twelve quid but you could tell this
was a new Hawkwind album and it was placed in the high street with an
offer on it. Even EBS could do this. And I bet Hawkwind shifted more
copies of that than they have of _Spacebrock_ or even _Yule Ritual_.
That's what counts: actual product, stuff I or they can see or pick up.

        I don't know. Maybe Hawkwind is like Fairport Convention or
Caravan or Gong (especially Gong) now aware that their real fans are
their core market and the people they need to aim for. But the hype reads
like they are still aiming for the bigger market. That bigger market
isn't here and the battle for hearts and minds won't break them into it.

        Anyway, nearly finished. Last bit.

> Basically, your position appears to be that you are upset that Hawkwind
> have:
>
> 1. Not released a studio album for a long time.
>
> 2. Not kept the fans up to date with what is going on with the album.
>
> On point 1, I agree that it has been far too long since an album was
> released; however, your view that there will not be an album is an illogical
> extension of your disappointment.

        I'm not saying there won't be one: I'm saying, in stronger terms
than this, that I'm not holding my breath for it. As I said in my message
to Kris, even if all recording is finished I know from waiting for albums
from other bands and indeed Hawkwind that it takes a while to get the
things out anyway for some people, because of labels or stoned artists or
incompetents at the pressing plant or whatever.

> On point 2, I agree that information has not always been updated as
> regularly as it could have been.  However, once information appears, your
> reaction is to denigrate the information; where is the logic in that?

        Well, as I say, some of the information is wrong, which makes it
all more difficult to trust; and it's also all positive. This will happen,
something else will happen instead, plans that don't happen are replaced
by new ones. If there were ever a message that explained why things hadn't
gone to plan that would be something; but really I'd much rather that what
information we got was actually on the mark, whether that means holding
back till things are fixed or just not floating every second plan that
runs through someone's head, whichever or whatever is behind this. And
then you wouldn't hear me going on about how you can't trust anything but
results because there'd be more of a link between them and information.

> Strangely, many of our views are not that far apart; you just seem to be
> obsessed with replying to arguments that have not been made.

        Oh, I'm just obsessed generally. And I've finished now. Probably
made enough enemies for one lifetime. See people at the gigs. Yours,
                                                                     Jon

ObCDs: Harvey Bainbridge - _Red Shift_ and Hawkwind - _Family Tree_ (this
mail has taken a while to phrase right)
--
"I recognise that I have transgressed many of the precepts of the divine
law, and that I am subjected by various vices and iniquities, disobedient
to the words of the divine mystery brought unto me and a worshipper of the
delights of this military age." Marquis Borrell of Barcelona, 955 A.D.

             (Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College London)