HW: Monster Magnet, other rubbish, usw...

[Henderson Keith]

OK, here's a 'catch-all' post, which I prefer for some cruel
'thread-busting' reason, because (I guess) I'm too lazy to call up the
'reply' or 'compose new message' screen five times in one day.

And I'm x-posting here between boc-l and Hawkwind-Yahoo, which may very well
be a violation of netiquette, but I can't even remember who was asking about
what in which list, so, maybe enough my post here is of sufficient interest
to all parties who frequent them separately, and not so much an annoyance to
those to frequent *both.*  And I apologize for writing such a long
introduction with no actual content...the person who suggested I do this in
advance has just been sacked.  And now the person who did the sacking
himself has just been sacked.

So...anyway, where was I?

Oh, yeah, on Saturday, I saw Monster Magnet in Fribourg, Switzerland, which
I write in the "French" way in order to avoid confusion with the larger town
of Freiburg, Germany, which is also not so far away from here.  And plus,
the signs there have French given first, and German below, which would seem
to indicate that it's a Francophone city first and foremost, but really it
lies exactly on the so-called Roeschtigraben that separates the two
languages/cultures (ignoring the Italian part south of the Alps for the
moment).  The club (Fri-Son) I had never been to before...it was your
standard old converted-warehouse, a completely featureless rectangular box
of a place, where one feels perfectly free to dump their used beer cups (and
the beer too, if they've had one too many already) on the floor, as well as
lit cigarettes, etc.  Or fling the occasion thing (or person) toward the
stage during the performance (Dave nearly got clubbed by a plastic water
bottle...must have been a Cleveland Browns fan).

Anyway, Monster Magnet rocked...this was my third MM concert, the first
being as warmup for (the f*cking awful) Korn (we left after two songs), and
then as headliners in Columbus, where the sound was terrible IIRC (the
Newport is awfully echo-y) but the band was solid.  Scott H. has already
posted reviews (and interesting backstage commentary) on A-I.com about shows
earlier in the tour, so I can say that the set *still* seems to be largely
unchanged (Evil (is Going On) still not thrown in, sadly).  But no matter
how tiresome it must be to play the same songs every night ad infinitum,
Dave and crew don't seem to be losing any enthusiasm, that's for sure.  And
the crowd was really pretty crazy...about as 'energetic' as those days in
the late 80s when moshing was still sorta new and I was seeing bands like
Jane's Addiction, Danzig, and Slayer (with Motorhead in the middle slot of a
triple bill).

European crowds are more 'knowledgable' fans (and with longer memories) it
seems to me...I wonder if MM is already half-forgotten in the states (since
their last MTV showing was how many years ago now?)?  I mean, when they
launched into "Supercruel," the crowd went half-nuts and knew the song
intimately like it was their biggest hit from past years...and the album's
like a grand total of six weeks old.  And I doubt that song has even been on
the radio here (but then I've never even turned on the radio since I moved
here, so I have no idea really), because I assume the "Unbroken" (Hotel
Baby) song would have been the obvious first choice for air-time.  So
obviously, (nearly) everyone there had the new album already and 'learned'
all the new stuff...impressive.

For myself, this album continues to grow on me, with the huge "Radiation
Day" being really one of their best moments ever.  It worked great live as
well, as you might imagine.  The encore was (happily) still made up of
Calvert's "The Right Stuff" and a 20-minute "Spine of God."  Hmmmm... while
it was nice to hear this oldie (SoG) featured so prominently, it was a
little odd for them to 'drag' it out soooo long, and esp. as a final encore.
For 70 minutes, they'd blasted non-stop through all their best-known
high-energy stuff from Dopes to present.  Everybody was totally drained,
since they hadn't given anyone much of a 'break' throughout...and then they
do this thing where Dave rants on and on about something (I forget what)
with just 15 seconds here and there of the heavy riff thrown in.  Might have
worked nicely at 12 minutes thrown into the middle of the set for a 'rest,'
but it kinda made for an anticlimactic finish ('denouement' I suppose I
should say!).  Oh well, if they'd left the stage after The Right Stuff, I
woulda been completely happy, so I won't complain.  That said, the only
jamming they'd done thus far had been "Dinosaur Vacume" so to warrant any
thought of 'space-rock-ness' they needed to go on a bit at least once.

Now...um...the idea of Hawkwind touring with some other as-yet-unidentified
band (whether MM or not...and I assume *not*)...when I posted about this
idea last year following Hawkfest, I said that the suggestion made to me
involved only bands of similarly 'advanced' age, which immediately made
'newbies' like MM invalid (though they have a 'Best of...' collection out
already...but still).  I guess since there's still no announcement of such a
'double' headlining tour and now we have 'solo' minitours of the UK and two
festival performances on the bill for summer, then maybe this whole plan has
followed by the wayside (?).  Which if so, it would *still* be interesting
to hear who it was *supposed* to be, if Colin (or whoever) was willing to
now divulge that info.

But, of course (!) (in contrast to the suggestion I made above) MM is a far
bigger name in America than Hawkwind has been in at least 25 years (and
maybe ever?).  But it (a support slot by HW, I mean) would be helpful to
HW's bottom line I think, as there are certainly quite a number of younger
folks that either have no clue about HW, or maybe just know the name from
either Brainstorm or Right Stuff, and if just a few of them 'caught onto' HW
by actually seeing them live to finalize that connection, then you might
have a bunch of people that end up snatching up an entire catalog of old HW
works (that is, the ones that actually exist in the marketplace and can be
found in shops or online dealers of any note).  But I wonder if it might not
just be too much touring/travel to go out with MM, who would play *many*
cities in a short time, and of course, the US and Canada are big freaking
countries (esp. from a European/UK perspective).  For that reason, I think
it would have to be maybe just a limited no. of dates over maybe a two week
period or something, to really work.

On the new Ozrics disc...again, Scott H. has a nice detailed review up on
A-I.com.  And I saw Andy Gee posted his favorable reponse here.  I'm still
pondering whether I can deal with the lack of real drums on many of the
tracks.  I guess it was made kinda like Church of HW in a way, if Eddie did
much of it by himself at home (?).  It reminded me a little of "Curious
Corn" (was it?) in that some techno-ish elements from their alter-ego Eat
Static were feeding back into the parent band.  But anyway, yeah, Hillage
and Giraudy appear briefly (track 7)...it seems that Hillage (from 'sound'
alone) add in the textural "whale-sound" delay-guitar bits, whereas the solo
at the end was probably still Eddie.  But actually, there are other tracks
here that sound like Hillage's influence is there in the studio somewhere.
I was surprised when I finally looked closer at the liner notes that I
hadn't already heard him on earlier songs.  They're touring now, but not
down this far south (in the list of dates that I saw.  Interesting that
they're on Magna Carta now...a label known only for 'cookie-cutter'
prog-metal bands as far as I know.

BTW, has a label been anounced for 'Take me to your Leader' yet?  And a
release date?  There were ideas/rumors put forth recently I think, but
nothing official?  I know, I know...when it's official it will appear on
www.hawkwind.com.  If everything we *wanted* know was put up there, then
lists such as these wouldn't exist.  :)

In case anybody gives a crap...I went to visit the HR Giger Museum in
Gruyeres, which is not far from Fribourg, and is more famous for cheese than
for one man's crazed imagination.  It's a cool place, as is the old castle
just a short walk away (and you can visit both for 14 CHF, which is a pretty
good deal in this terribly expensive country), though they don't let you
take photos/video inside.  For krautrock aficionadoes, there was a few
pieces credited (or co-credited) to Walter Wegmueller (including some Tarot
designs, that WW was famous for, along with his double LP of the same name).
And HRGiger was also apparently involved with another "Cosmick Courier"
veteran Sergius Golowin back in those days.  I'll have to read more into
that in the biog. book I bought there, to see how much he was involved in
that old movement...I think Golowin worked on the soundtrack to a Giger film
(that I was unfamiliar with) Necromonicon.  Anybody heard/seen that?  (I
assume this is not-at-all related to the krautrock band Necronomicon that
released "Tips zum Selbstmord" (Tips for Suicide).)

The funniest thing about the Giger museum is the Giger-Bar next door, which
is designed like the inside of the Alien spacecraft and has chairs that fit
the 'pattern' (though they are proportioned for humans to sit in).  And I
won't go into much detail about the personal drawings inside the 'adult'
room...interesting things going inside that man's mind!  Funny that he did
some things that juxtaposed Swiss iconic imagery (apparently during the
700th anniversary of the country in 1991) with crazy alien-pseudo-sexual
creatures.  I didn't see any original album artwork though, which was rather
odd...some things that looked quite a lot (stylistically) like ELP's Brain
Salad Surgery, and those warty dudes that were on that one Magma cover, but
the 'rock' element wasn't really obvious when touring the museum.  Mostly
sci-fi movie stuff.  Well, I guess that's not surprising.  BTW, despite
Gruyeres being 'fully' inside the French part of CH, all Giger's writing was
in German FWIW.

I was going to say a bit about the Burg Herzberg fest too, but now I see
that Mike H. has advanced that thread some more, so I'll end this diatribe
now, and respond to that over there at some point when I get around to it.

Grakkl (FAA)

P.S.  Note to those on Yahoo list that may not know already...in Europe,
there is available a ltd. edition version of Monolithic Baby with a video
version (no region encoding, but it is PAL video) of "The Right Stuff" that
is about two minutes longer than the album version...so it has extra
'jamming' towards the end, for those that like such things.  Plus, it has a
'explicit' video for "Unbroken" (for those that like such things!), a
12-minute interview with (mainly) Dave, and also two live tracks (both from
this album, obviously before it was released) from a concert at
London-Astoria.  In total, about 35 minutes of stuff.

P.P.S.  The 25...Tab album from early MM days is definitely space-rock
derived in character.  Doug P. I think is the MM historian of note, so best
ask him about the early daze.  Wasn't there other cassette/vinyl or even
pre-MM stuff done back then?

ObCD: Anekdoten - Gravity (tomorrow night live in Basel)