HW: All the Christmas Parties No. 2: HW at Walthamstow

[Jon Jarrett]

        Dear All,
                  this one I write fresh now, which means of course that
it will be much shorter as I don't remember so clearly. But anyway. We
were late in and had seats on the balcony, which meant that we weren't
allowed downstairs and saw no-one else from the list. A pity but as Litmus
had already started more or less as we came in I didn't stop to worry.

        They, well, they're really quite good aren't they. As I searched
for descriptions I could only come up with, it's like there was a bunch of
punks who got so bored with both punk and all this modern heavy metal
everyone wanted them to play that they stopped for a bit, and the one day
when they were all stopping round the bass-player's place for a smoke
someone they didn't know very well had a copy of _Space Ritual_, played it
at them once and vanished leaving them to try and recreate it only using
what they could vaguely remember and what they could already do. I realise
they must have a good few copies of it between them but it sounds like
they were trying to do that but without being able to copy it
properly. They had very drawn-out shouty vocals which I found a little too
loud, but the song structures were choppy and metal and moved a great deal
within a slower-changing dynamic from song end to song end. I enjoyed
their set very much. They promise an album next year, and I can't wait. I
don't know if they will be the band that will save space-rock now that
Farflung have quit, and they won't make the music I want to have someone
make, but their doing what they want will do very nicely meanwhile. I
highly recommend catching them if you possibly can.

        The bill had been rather confused, as it listed Tim Blake and
Arthur Brown separately and we weren't sure how they would fit four bands
in in the time. In fact next band on was Hawkwind, including Messrs Blake
and Brown onboard, and so that was OK and put an end to my worries about
having to leave early for last train and so on. The sound was OK for once,
but there was one spot stage right that shone right in my eyes for most of
the set and did cause me some synesthesic can't-hear-properly
problems. Bah. Anyway. First thing that must be said is Dave played
guitar. Lots of it. It sounded damn good. I was happy just with that. May
be just as well as Tim Blake wasn't all that. Everyone else was fine, and
Arthur Brown was very himself, but the band don't really know what to do
witgh him any more than they do with Blake sometimes. The songs don't
*need* a man with a three-octave range singing them, they were never
designed for that sort of voice and he doesn't have anything much he can
do with them. I'd have been much much happier with Ron singing. And it's
nothing against Arthur Brown, whom I think is fantastic, it's just that
there was no need for his talent.

        Song by song is the only way for anything more detailed,
anyway. If my recollection falters forgive me, but the set-list I wrote
down at the time was like this, played by Tim Blake, Richard Chadwick,
Alí Davey and Dave Brock, and there was someone sat by the drum-kit all
set and I couldn't work out if he was emergency roadie, switch-doctor or
extra swoosh or what. If the last he wasn't audible. Anyway. They opened
with take one at `Earth Calling', the take at it that has lots of noise
wash and spoken vocals, some of which had come from the _Spacebrock_
version however, and this turned into `Aerospaceage Inferno'. This rather
proved my point that Arthur Brown is not the man to sing songs whose vocal
line is a monotone but it was far from bad. Just that the Ron-fronted
line-up made this one its own. The mid-section that Ron built into
`Ejection' turned up here too, only briefly and without the words but it
was there which I found slightly odd.

        Next was `Angels of Death', and well, this was as good as it has
been. I think *this* incarnation has taken possession of this song. No
complaints. Dave did the vocals as is right and proper. Also, it had
developed a new break at the end, which spoke of new things to come, only
short but there.

        Then, `Out of the Shadows'. Well, I mean,. I'd been playing
_California Brainstorm_ before we left to get into the mood, and the song
hasn't changed much in the twelve years it's been in the wardrobe. Missed
Harvey but Dave was there in full force, and there was even a bit where he
wasn't playing what was on the record :-) Not that I minded at all, that
sort of playing is very good medicine for this head and it's great to see
Dave letting rip like that. I think having neither Simon nor Huw to do
lead brings him out of his shell, or stops him being able to retreat into
it. If I didn't love them so much I'd wish they never come back. As it is
I want Simon to manage to appear with Bedouin when I can see them at
least... But I digress.

        Arthur Brown returned for `Time Captives', which wa sprobably
quite good from the floor where Brown standing on an amp to give a
something like nine-foot height to solemly declaim from would have made
the whole thing very haunting. From above it all though I was rather bored
with it. The lyrics were lame; I was expecting better by Arthur Brown, and
it has no progression either lyrically or musically. Oh well. They played
it well enough, it seemed.

        Then, `Master of the Universe', and well, I've seen better. Arthur
Brown did seem to be, if not remembering the words, at least singing words
of his own he was prepared to remember, which weren't as good, and
everyone was on form all right, but it was nothing special. But then,
hell, I liked the Hawkestra version which was nothing like as well-played
so what would I know, right? But it wasn't quite there I thought.

        `Gremlin Pt. 2', with Arthur Brown on full force on a song that
actually was designed for his voice, however, was a bit more like
it. Again he seemed to have made changes to the words, and while I can
live with this when theuy're Nik's anyone modifying Calvert needs to do
better than that. But I couldn't argue with the performance, except that
with Tim and Dave on synth the final big chords seemed cheesy and
ineffective compared to the rest of the thing. I'm not sure what they
could have done about that but it was sort of anticlimactic all the same.

        The second Brown number appeared next, possibly called `Time To
Time' or something like that, and this I thought was more interesting but
less powerful than `Time Captives' and that's about all you could
say. But, it was followed with a minute or two of new song! Or so it
seemed to me. That sixty-whatever percent of the new album in the can
really making its presence felt tonight, yeah! But no, it was a short
riffy section of something that I didn't recognise and it didn't last very
long at all but it was there, before turning slightly lumpily into `Hurry
on Sundown'. All well and good, little you can do wrong but I'm bored of
it now, sorry.

        `Lighthouse', which I suppose we all knew we'd get, was
good. Tim's voice seemed weirdly different; he was in tune for a start. I
wondered if someone else were really singing, it didn't sound like him at
all, but apparently not. Perfectly good anyway. Not as good however as
`The Watcher' where Dave again put foot to the floor and let rip. I was
forced to wonder if he'd fixed his old Coloursound pedal so 1973 was the
space noise coming from him, I've never seen him play like this. Lemmy's
snotty comments about the lead playing at Hawkestra would have had to be
retracted and replaced with "He never fuckin' played like that when I was
in the band!". Alí should be the obvious focus of this song of course, and
he held it all through, but I was hearing Dave before everything.

        `Assassins' is never bad but it's predictable and we had to come
down somehow. We did so in the techno mid-break which was that Brock-
Blake-Chadwick idea that worked so well last year. Not so well this year,
I think mostly Tim's fault. Last year he seemed to build the shapes that
Dave lopped noises through while Richard found beats for it. This year,
well, it was just unremarkable techno and mostly playd by Richard in so
far as any of it was worth anything. The actual song was very good, of
course, but too short to pick the excitement up as it had been, Got the
younger section of the crowd going perhaps; there was one girl I guessed
was being dragged by a boyfriend who played something with strings on who
only seemed to wake up at this point, but not up to scratch compared to
what I was hoping for based on last year. Ah well.

        I confess I don't really remember `You Shouldn't Do That'. I
remember thinking it was much more like `Do That' off _The Business Trip_
than the genuine article and not being able to work out whether they were
doing the vocals like that or not. I was also looking out for the `Seeing
It As You Really Are' coda and in fact I'd never realised that that's
what the version on the _Space Ritual_ remaster is doing, so when they
just did that, I was hugely pleased and then wondered where `Seeing It'
had gone for a few moments afterwards. Stupid boy . Anyway. THye really
finished it off with a second take at `Earth Calling', another new riff
married to it and more new words, not the _Spacebrock_ version as I'd been
expecting, but still not a full song and still much too short. Also
possibly less convincing than that version but showing a bit more room for
development I thought. We shall see, or more likely not. But again I
digress.

        That was closing number and I have to say that while I was still
being critical, of course, I was having a great time. The encore `Somic
Attack' left me a little underwhelmed; too drawn out, and they did insist
on playing `Spacebrock' under it, which doesn't fit with any rhythm you
can give the lyrics at all. If you must give it a tune give it the one
from _Zones_ that you can chant to... So we got two songs at once which
would both have been fine separately. But they followed it with `Silver
Machine' and that was lots of fun.

        There was even a second encore, which given set-lists I hadn't
expected. It was `Spirit of the Age', and seemed under-rehearsed. I get
bored of this one too now, but if anyone has to sing it it's Dave. Trouble
with that is that I hear the _Live '79_ version, which to my mind is the
best without Calvert, and any deviation kind of spoils it for me. It was
probably very good, but not that good. Not complaining really though.

        Overall, well, I've seen better gigs than this and they've all
been recent. At Canterbury I was explaining to Jill how Carl Anderson was
less bothered about seeing Hawkwind gigs now because he reckoned he'd seen
a good few good Hawkwind gigs and given that one can't be sure one'll get
one it wasn't really worth risking it. Jill said something like, "But you
can never be sure you've seen the best one ever", and given that we were
possibly at it, I agreed. But you know, now I think I probably have seen
the best this version can do, either at Canterbury 2001 or at Walthamstow
last year, or even the Astoria 2000 gig. They've missed the peak point of
this arc when they should have recorded and though there were some
flickers of creativity around that mean I can't do what I was imagining I
could do after Wembley, and just talk about there being two ex-Hawkwinds
on tour these days both covering the real band's material, I'm not as
bothered about them as I feel I should be. It was a good gig. It seemed to
be the best they can do. There was a *lot* of great guitar. But these
people were better than this last year. Oh well. Yours,
                                                        Jon

ObTape: V/A - _If You Meet Sky Saxon On the Road, Kill Him!_--keep a
thought spare for Larry Boyd people.
--
"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)