HW: Glasgow 22nd April and Aberdeen 23rd April

[Jill Strobridge]

Can't believe it's only Saturday -  2 Hawkwind gigs and still a whole
weekend left to enjoy - this is the way to do it!

I shall gloss briefly over Glasgow and not linger too long there.  Not
the fault of the band who were playing well - I hasten to say - but the
venue turned out to be something markedly similar to one of the smaller
circles of purgatory - the one where everyone is crammed into a tiny
room the size of someone's back bedroom - there is a good band playing
good music you want to hear but it's so totally mashed by bad acoustics
you can't bear to listen to it - you know that Hawkwind are up there
somewhere but you can't see diddly squat through the mass of heaving
humanity between you and the stage and every time you try and ease into
a better position you get stepped on, squashed, poked, walked in front
of, behind of, jostled - and when you fall back to try and draw breath a
drunken Glasgow accent you can barely hear above the rest of the noise
starts telling you his life history and asking for yours.   There's only
a minimal light show because there's only a single 13amp plug available
and, worst, the black painted ceiling is so low that even I standing
upright could almost touch it.

That one.

The band were on good form though it can't have been easy but the slower
instrumental numbers produced chanting of "Hawkwind" rather than an
appreciative silence.

However - another night, another venue, and after the purgatory of
Glasgow, Aberdeen was paradise!    My hotel was rather old-fashioned,
very posh and surprisingly cheap, I found a fantastic place to eat and
then met up with Alan Taylor, Alan Lindsay, Andy Garibaldi and others.
The venue was lovely - a splendid high-ceilinged ex-cinema adorned with
plaster sculptures and painted walls with a tall stage, a small balcony
for the full light show and a non-reflective screen (so I was told by
Marie!) at the back so the colours showed in their full intensity
instead of being muted by white ultra-violet glow.  And Keith Barton was
there and Kris and they both came to say hi - which was really nice -
before disappearing back into the complexities of stage equipment
setting up (that sounded mightily complicated with all the sequencing
and other electronic stuff) and tour sorting out (and there's loads of
complicated organising involved there - such hard work is being done on
these tours!).

There was room to move around and, though Huw's solo set was a bit
sparsely attended, the crowd steadily built up until there was a solid
atmosphere and Hawkwind were - fantastic.  The set seemed to start a bit
lightweight - Angela Android is a strong, fast, vocal track but without
great depths of instrumentation underlying it and the drumming seemed
surprisingly loud and brash but after that the tracks just got stronger
and stronger.   "Quality" I heard someone say behind me when the band
paused for breath after Where Are They Now - "that's real quality".  And
it just got better.  The Chaos light show was in full flow - brilliantly
colourful abstract sequences (my favourite were the spiked circles with
a multicoloured spiral infilling) with some images - the fighter shots
in The Right Stuff were spectacular.  The band were playing really well
together - and the mixing was so good that I didn't, at all, feel that
another instrument was needed.   Between them they managed to create all
the layers and depth and quality of sound necessary.  They finished the
set with Assassins of Allah (rather than Ejection) which was an
excellent decision because everyone was still bouncing around and on a
high and then came back for a two-track encore starting with Brainbox
Pollution before sliding into Brainstorm.   Very satisfactory.

The only track I didn't quite come to terms with was the new
techno/industrial one "Trip?" probably because I couldn't make out the
words spoken by the ?vocoder? - I'm sure I remember Dave introducing it
as "Ode to a Timeflower" and indeed it could have been Calvert's poem
enunciated by computer (or, then again, I could just be imagining it -
it was that sort of an evening!).

And now I'm wondering about Wolverhampton.
jill
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Jill Strobridge <jill at theta-orionis.freeserve.co.uk>
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