NIK: Re: Real Festival Music - gig - Nik Turner's Space Unit

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, trev wrote:

> NIK TURNER'S SPACE UNIT
>
> Will be performing at the Underworld
> http://www.theunderworldcamden.co.uk , Camden Town, London on Thursday
> the11th of March 1994, on stage at 10.30 approx, open til late.
>
> The participants in this "Spacerock Supergroup Frenzy" will include
> The Mighty Thunder Rider himself, Judge Trev, Commander Jim Hawkman,
> David Anderson, The Fabulous Angie, Jackie Windmill, Myreg, Ola, and
> introducing Gordy Everitt - new bass boy, and other "special guests"
> to be announced.
>
> The musicians will be careful to ensure that there are absolutely no
> rehearsals prior to the gig in order to recreate the original "vibe"
> of the great days of Acid Rock in old Camden Town - the heart of Inner
> City Unit's stomping ground.

        I didn't see anyone else I knew at this gig, which I only went to
on the fly, so I thought some kind of review of what the Other Half are up
to might be interesting while I'm unable to get to any of the current HW
gigs...

        I was teaching that evening, so I missed all but one number by the
support, Landmarq, and I didn't quite know what to make of them from
that; I didn't like it exactly, but more, I didn't even know what they
were. Some kind of twin-lead-vocals prog with one female singer was all I
really got out of it. They reminded me vaguely of a Cambridge band called
Skelliga who are also trying to be many things and on a good day get away
with it. Landmarq might get away with it more often, but really, I didn't
see enough to tell.

        It took me some while, even once our own Judge Trev had taken the
stage with a towel around his head shouting "death to the
infidel!" several times (that might even be as punk as you can currently
be I guess), to be sure what was going on with Nik's lot as
well. As we started, the line-up was, left to right:

Gordy Everitt (second bass, young bloke, possibly from the All Stars?)
Dave Anderson (still with head attached, and playing bass)
Milo Griffiths (the All Stars drummer, playing drums here too)
The Mighty Thunder Rider, Nicholas Turner Esq. (sax, flute, vocals, weird
        percussive things on a string)
Judge Trev (extremely loud guitar for the discerning)
Commander Jim Hawkman (synth, extra howling)
Jacqui Windmill (umimportant djembe, off-tone screeching)

        And mention must as ever be made of the fabulous Angie, who really
can dance, and who unfortunately had to deal with some idiot trying to paw
her for altogether too much of the set.

        The setlist was, as far as I knew it all:

Watching the Grass Grow

         I scribbled some notes down but I can't read half of them; there
was a lot of Trev all over it, but it wasn't quite together, either the
bassists' fault or someone else's I wasn't sure, but it was a little
uncertain, until they all got to break when it just turned into an extreme
freakout and damned pleased I was to see it; If that was the shape of the
evening, I decided, that would do me fine;

Solitary Astrid

        Good version, good enough, anyway, but took the wind out of the
band's sails rather I thought;

Space Invaders

        Ragged, but still a lot of fun; and the freakout break was
everything you could have demanded (expect perhaps coherent);

The Bones of Elvis

        Points for Trev here also, who a few seconds after the drum part
had started began shouting "NO, no no stop! It doesn't start like THAT! It
starts like THIS" and then stepped up to the microphone and gave us a
verse of his best Elvis impression before letting the band carry on. Nik
forgot some of the words (hey, it was going to happen at some point),
mostly the long list of ethnonyms at the end, but it was still good. It
always is, let's face it;

?

        All Stars number, and therefore interesting to see; everyone
played their bits, it was a jazz number and pleasant enough, good to see
Nik playing in time as if it was natural to him, but I was still waiting
to see what happened next rather;

World of LSD

        I have to say, this one was a bit all over the place. I mean, I
suspect I'll never like a version of this I see live as much I like the LP
version because of the huge drums that has, but this was one where people
not knowing the song (especially either of the bass players) did tell.

Skinheads in Leningrad

        I have now seen this live four times and this was the second best
version. Hurrah! Oddly, the best and worst versions I've seen have both
been ICU, same line-up even. But I do love the song.

Remember (Margate Beach)

        I'm stupidly vulnerable to this song, but the backing vocals
weren't quite good enough to get the full Phil Spector tear-jerk effect. I
think everyone was having too good a time to make it as faux-tragic as it
could be. I still enjoyed it though.

Little Black Egg

        Including Nik jangling a big string of various buits of clangy
metal looped round his neck, decidedly odd, even more so than usual in
fact, especially as Jim didn't seem to do much of the usual tweeting and
instead went for weirder noises. Not as far-out as the studio version yet
but still a good shot.

?

        Another All Stars number, and I found this one much more
convincing, it had a definite Latin swing to it which made the album title
seem slightly more relevant. Points to Trev for playing as if he knew the
song backwards after a few bars working it out.

Gas Money

        I may be wrong about where this was in the set-list; my notes were
scribbled in the dark and I think I couldn't see this when I wrote the
next one down, but anyway. I do remember Angie saying during the spoken
exchange at the beginning (which was fluffed by Nik) how they really did
need the gas money, it was no joke. It was a good version, but not
surprisingly so, and I did think they could have made it more together on
such a basic song, but though the bass was uncertain the rest was OK.

Bucket Song

        I think I always expect too much of this; it was only all
right. *Very* quick to do though :-)

Fungus Among Us

        This was odd, as it's probably the closest to big band jazz in an
ICU setlist save only `In the Nood' (which was not played unless my notes
and memory have both erased it), but it didn't seem to go off very
comfortably. Nik seemed very uncertain of the words and I think it was
infectious. If it wasn't this number it was another, where Nik came in
about a bar early with the third verse and Trev and Dave Anderson just
looked at each other as if they'd been waiting for that to happen and
fairly seamlessly bent the song back round the vocals without losing their
grins in the process; that was the sort of thing that was making it all
work.

?

        I don't know if this was an All Stars number or not, but the band
was now joined by a tall slim Japanese girl bearing a treble saxophone,
and she was fabulous; not just in a jazz virtuosity kind of way, though
she could, and did quite literally, play with one arm behind her back, but
also in actually having something to say with her instrument, which was
the bit that made it clear how she and Nik had wound up playing together
as it was a surprisingly brash and atonal (controlledly so but all the
same) style for someone so apparently part of the `classy jazz' thing. I
suspect me listening to more Monk would explain this a bit. She was good,
anyway, and Nik wasn't bad, and I enjoyed this. Nik did give her full name
once, but I didn't catch it, and Nik referred to her thereafter, as does
Trev above, as Ola, so that's who she is from now on.

D-Rider

        The stage was already full, but Nik signed to Ola not to leave as
Mick Slattery came on to add more guitar (really hardly needed!), and this
`D-Rider' became something quite mellow as a result, four jazz players and
four punkspace-rockers trying to find something they could all do with a
prog number; the saxophones worked quite well. Ola stopped playing after a
while, which was a shame I thought. Good, all the same. And lastly:

Master of the Universe

        Everyone on stage, including the original bass part obviously, and
Trev's guitar perfect for it too, all the good points of the ICU and HW
first versions together, plus two saxophonists (Nik managed to badger Ola
into taking another solo between his two) and while the best version of
this I ever saw will probably always be the second Hawkestra one with
four bass players, whatever band Nik's doing it with always seem to
deliver the goods. Left the crowd very cheerful when it finally stopped I
think.

        So overall for a scrathc performance, it was very good. It
would be nice if some day a Nik gig *wasn't* a scratch performance
maybe, but I at least know what I'm expecting and am always pleasantly
surprised. Trev was anxious as ever to assure us that not only had the
band not rehearsed, but never actually played together before, and at one
point he felt it necessary to apologise to the Camden faithful for the
performance not being up to standard "because we've got some people from
Hawkwind along this evening, you see, letting the side down", but actually
it was surprisingly good. I guess I'm always surprised when a Nik gig
comes together, though they don't generally seem to collapse horribly, but
given the lack of rehearsal you know there will have been, and the rather
variable attitude of some of the participants, it always seems
intellectually much more likely that the whole thing will fall on its
face like the Inner City Pompadours one did.

        The reason this one didn't, and I was more surprised by this than
I should have been, was the ability of the musicians. Mr Everitt was a bit
uncertain, and Ms Windmill should just STOP--PLEASE--but the drummer was,
well, a jazz drummer, and well able to carry on with pretty much
everything solidly and interestingly even if it was new to him. Dave
Anderson always could play, but he was doing so well tonight, notes that
didn't have to be there but it was nice to hear stuck in anyway, and most
importantly he seemed to be having loads of fun even if he didn't know
very many of the parts well. If only we weren't all sworn to kill him. But
anyway. Jim Hawkman, I remember saying last time I saw him which was I
think the lamentable ICP gig suddenly seems to have come into his own as
synth player, and he stuck with that this night, lots of well-placed
swoosh, I'd never hope to do any better than that myself. Nik, even, can
actually play, though we do tend to forget this when he turns up for HW
and just makes farting noises to piss off Dave. Perhaps the people he was
playing with compelled him to wear a mental jazz hat and play as he
actually can rather than messing about.

        Star prize, right from the start, however, must go to Judge
Trev. I'm a sucker for his punk attack at the best of times, and one of
the things about the few ICU reunion gigs I saw were that there really
wasn't enough of it, the songs don't even have room, but here everything
was being done so loose that he and Nik both got breaks in most of the
songs and he played out like a trooper, made my ears very happy. Not just
the raucous punk end of things either, there were the All Stars numbers
in the setlist too, and Trev took about eight bars of each to get the
shape of each and then joined in as if he'd been playing electric trad
jazz all his life. Perhaps he has, but anyway, I was personally wowed not
just by his actual playing but the way he fell into every different style
they went through with no real bother and made his parts shine even though
he was just making them up. I should have had this much respect for him as
a player all along, perhaps, but I hadn't seen it before.

        Sherman and I keep passing Trev when I'm in Brighton; so far I've
not mustered the courage to speak up and do the gushing fan bit, but if,
Trev, you've noticed a six foot two woman with hair to halfway down her
back and/or a smaller ponytailed bloke in shirt and jeans looking at you
funny in Sainsbury's or wherever, I assure you it's fandom rather than
thinking you look strange or whatever. Well, in my case it is, in
Sherman's case it's that she's got her punk band covering `Skinheads in
Leningrad' and doesn't know whether you'd approve or not. But
anyway. Thanks for posting about that gig, I had a good time and I'd never
have known otherwise, yours,
                             Jon

--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)