HW: Cambridge Corn Exchange, Friday 17th

[Jon Jarrett]

        Well, we didn't manage to get all the known BOC-Lers in the same
place but something of a gathering of the clans took place in The Eagle
beforehand where Keith H. may have been forced to reconsider his alleged
love for British Pale Ale, and Andy Gilham showed up to be sociable but
couldn't be persuaded to come to the gig despite the combined entreaties
of myself and Mike H. (not often he abandons an argument as hopeless, but
this one was clearly a loser). So those mentioned plus Kirsten and
Carl Anderson hurried Mike through his second pint and got into the venue
in perfect time to miss the support band. So if anyone was hoping for a
review of The Vs, can't help you there sorry.

        It wasn't long before the band took the stage, and an unexpected
configuration it was too for though Alan had his Wavestation as well as
the Rick, and Richard had his drum computer behind the kit, Dave appeared
to have no sytnths or keyboards at all! This turned out not to be the
case, he was getting his favourite `laser attack' noise out of a box in a
stack which I suppose must have been a sampler often enough, but still,
nowhere to hide. Also playing through a Pod, both guitars (he started
with a wood-finish one before changing to the decorated black one he
usually uses) and sampler, but as there was definitely a real amp or two
behind the thing it was still OK (don't like Pods for performance
usually). Perhaps someone else can tell me who the fourth member was, a
big bald bloke with a boxer's nose playing keyboard and synth, one with
each hand for most of the set. He was pretty good, never lost the pace,
and provided live keyboards for most of the set, even over sampled stuff
and wave sequences, which made it all sounds much more organic than I'd
been expecting from the three-piece. We also had Dibs as occasional
poetry-reader and Keef Barton was about, though not playing. Stage costume
was labcoats and clipboards, Dibs especially being very officious about
ticking things off on his while reading lyrics, and Dave resorting to his
but rarely. Alan didn't have one but was playing with a computer as part
of his set-up, which was new to me; I couldn't quite tell what role it had
in the noises he was setting up.

        My reactions are as ever pretty personalised so best I give you
the set-list and then my comments, and you can decide when to stop
reading... Set-list was:

?Intro poem [Mike H. reckoned this was Calvert but I hope not as though I
        didn't know it I thought it was pretty childish]
Spirit of the Age
Sword of the East
Greenback Massacre
Psychedelic Warlords
Uncle Sam's on Mars -> Iron Dream
Out Here We Are [I think]
Digital Nation
Assassins of Allah->Space is their Palestine->Assassins of Allah
Technoland [poem read by Dave]
Angels of Death
Ode to a Timeflower
To Love a Machine
Ten Seconds of Forever
Angela Android
Brainstorm pt. 1
Elfin
Brainstorm pt. 2
*
Brainbox Pollution
Master of the Universe
Welcome to the Future

        Technical problems seemed to dog the set, unfortunately. Alan's
bass seemed to be running through some effect in the PA that made it sound
oddly like the production effect on _Yule Ritual_, which was fine until
the noise he was getting out of towards the end of `Greenback Massacre'
(which I think is still a long way from being his best, but
anyway) apparently blew something somewhere and after a few seconds of
unpleasant noises as if the jack was coming out (which it wasn't) the
soundman hauled it right down in the mix and then Dave's guitar to follow
it. The sound was thus just about balanced, but this meant that
`Psychedelic Warlords'was *awash* with keyboards and not enough rhythm to
give it any force. Alan's bass was audible again by the second chorus
and the guitar slowly came back up with it, but whatever had gone wrong
never seemed to be entirely right after that, as there was fiddling with
the bass rig throughout the evening and the initial sound (which was
*glorious*) was never recovered. It was perfectly all right by, say,
`Angels of Death' but it was never as good as it had been to start
with. Nonetheless, a lot of good songs here, `Digital Nation' came over
quite weakly but `Out Here We Are' was grand (though opinion seems to be
divided as to whether the slow bit or the fast bit is the worthwhile
one...) and the encore stuff all right on the mark. And hearing `Welcome
to the Future' again brought a big warm smile to my face and made me cheer
a great deal, I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it. Of the new stuff
`To Love a Machine' came over well but "to love a machine is not
commonplace" is *not* a line strong enough to bear repetition and I did
slightly despair when I saw Dave throw his clipboard away halfway through
the song because that meant that repetition of that line was all that
remained... `Angela Android'had a lot of punch but did perhaps go on for a
little too long, it's rhythmically fairly basic and it's not really blanga
where that repetition adds to the build, it's the same all the way
through.

        My impression, though, overall (you can stop reading now if you
like) was a real quality control problem. From the floor, to me, it seemed
as if the band had no idea what was good and what wasn't in their
set. `Sword of the East' was *fabulous*, heavy and driving with enough
keyboards to float on, and of course that was partly the mix which is why
they didn't manage to be so transcendent again, but on the other hand they
didn't help matters themselves. I don't think `Greenback Massacre' is much
of a song but it's almost the only old-fashioned rocker in the new
material so of course it's got to be played. And I wouldn't argue with any
of the setlist choices really, just how they were done. `Angels of Death'
came out of this bubbly synth set-up which was both the wrong key and the
wrong rhythm, it began horribly and uninterestingly slow with no pace at
all as a result. `Ode to a Timeflower' was just a techno backing which
made what was once an interesting poem impossible to hear. The apparently
techno-enthusiast part of the audience seemed to dig the beats but
there was no point in doing the two bits together, they contributed
nothing to each other and you couldn't hear either properly for the
other. It's not as if they bothered to program it so that it matched the
speed of the delivery...  Likewise, `Ten Seconds of Forever' is a poem
about the end of the world, or possibly about an aeroplane take-off as
Mike H. insisted, it doesn't want a warm comfy synth backing something
like `Kauai' which is what it got (though points to Dibs for a faithful
reading, his contributions were, you know, familiar, but well-done at all
points). What they thought they were doing with `Brainstorm' by stopping
it, actually stopping, pausing to get things set up for `Elfin' (different
pace and again different key unless I'm much mistaken) and then stopping
that clean as well and breaking back into the riff--I mean, why do they
think that's a good thing to do?

        After this long I'd expect them to have some idea of what material
works best in combination and how to move between things and sew them
together, if only because I've seen them *do* it, the Love in Space tour
was a fabulous example, I don't know if _Business Trip_ is a fair
reflection of the tour it records in this respect but again it's been put
together by someone who understands flow and transition, and it was the
same three people as I saw on stage on Friday night with no apparent sense
of this at all! I don't understand why we get this warmed-up incoherent
overall show. The performances, you know, they were all pretty good. The
new keyboardist is definitely into it and giving some useful energy,
Richard was in fine voice as well actually, Alan and Dave both playing at
full strength, Dibs helping a lot, but no sensitivity to their own
material, or so it seemed to me, so that it kept being set up from the
wrong key or pace or mood...

        I said it was personal, and it is, of course, because what
it's coming down to is: "if I were Hawkwind I wouldn't do it like that". I
say this sort of thing about other bands around my girlfriend and she
offers to buy me a guitar for next birthday to remind me gently that I
actually can't do any of this stuff myself. And yeah, it's all very well
acting the part of armchair creative director but Deb Frost would have
torn me limb from limb for lack of valid experience if she were still
reading, and she'd have been right. What it comes down to is, Hawkwind put
on a show with lots of good stuff in which I myself thought was badly
matched up and linked. But it can't just be that I was younger and more
enthusiastic when I thought they were doing it right, can it? On the other
hand, it doesn't really seem more likely that they could collectively lose
it, so I don't really know why I'm not happy with this Hawkwind in
performance. What I can explain I have, sort of thing. I hope the other
shows were better than this. Yours,
                                     Jon

ObMP3s: Quarkspace - _Drop_ (let it never be said I'm not prepared to give
stuff another try when kicked at offlist by offended musicians)
--
                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)