OFF: Help Wanted

[HawkFan]

Well you got two votes from me :-)

Given that I've done my bit can I now do my critic impression, something for
which I'm ideally suited as I've never composed a note :-)

Your pieces are pleasant, but that's all. They don't seem to have anything
to say so there's nothing to grab your attention.

The great thing about pre 1980 Hawkwind is that it really grabs you. There's
always a message to the song (even if it's just that composing whilst
smoking recreational drugs isn't a great idea :-). OK your pieces are
instrumental and it's a lot harder to have a message without lyrics, but
even the Hawkwind instrumentals still have a definite progression to them.
They go somewhere, they don't just start, run on for a bit then end.

Part of this is that Hawkwind, like countless bands before and after, use
the good old sonata form:

1. statement: state your themes
2. development: develop the themes and mix them up a bit
3. recapitulation: restate the original themes

OK it's cliched, Beethoven did it, but it gives a track structure and this
makes the track a lot better to listen to. Great composers bend the rules
with the sonata form, Beethoven did, and while Hawkwind aren't that great
they bend the rules too and mostly make their tracks even better as a
result.

While I'm on a rant, I think the reason Hawkwind aren't quite the band they
were (is it too contentious to say that) is that Dave Brock got into
dance/trance, which doesn't really have a structure, and no-one else took up
the torch. Church of Hawkwind is OK, actually I quite like it as background
music, but nothing in it grabs you like Doremi Fasiol Latido or In Search of
Space, or indeed Quark or PXR5.

No-one wants the band to just carry on doing the same thing forever, and
indeed a good example of a change was when they switched to Charisma and
Calvert became a dominant force. They certainly changed since, but they
don't seem to have the sme focus that they used to.

JR

-----Original Message-----
From: BOC/Hawkwind Discussion List
[mailto:BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET]On Behalf Of Tom Byrne
Sent: 23 February 2004 17:46
To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET
Subject: OFF: Help Wanted


Hi all

Apologies if you've seen this plea on the Yahoo newsgroup.

I'm #4 (out of 620) in the Soundclick "Instrumental Chart" with
"Byrneblanga" and #8 (out of 270) in the "New Age" chart with "Knowing
Another World". If you would be kind enough to go to:

http://www.soundclick.com/pro/default.cfm?BandID=121360&content=music

And select hi fi, lo fi or mp3 on these two tracks you may put me up to #1
and make an old spaceprogceltrocker very happy.

Regards

Tom

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