what is your top 5

[Nick Medford]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 14:58:34 -0500, Doug Pearson <jasret at MINDSPRING.COM>
wrote:

>On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 12:02:25 GMT, M Holmes <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK> wrote:
>>pauleatonjones writes:
>>
>>>      As a few people have included their five least favourite albums I
>>> thought I might as well post mine.
>>>   Business Trip Live ( ditto )
>>
>>I just don't get this. I reckon it's Space Ritual quality in terms of a
>>live album.

I don't think it's anywhere near that good, but I do like it quite a bit,
mainly because it contains a fair amount of interesting music that simply
isn't available elsewhere, and the "Berlin" section is one of HW's best
stabs at techno-ish electronica - something they're not generally very good
at, IMHO, despite numerous attempts.

(The best bit of techno I've heard from HW was in the mid-section of Hassan
I Sabbah at the Brighton gig in late 2002, and I do hope they played it the
same way at Walthamstow the next night, so that it will be on the new CD).

>
>I thought more highly of it when it first came out, but I think it suffers
>from having the 3-person lineup.  There's just too much "pre-programmed"
>material on it.  Much of it has the feel of the band playing along with
>canned backing tracks

Agreed- but it may sound more like that than would have been the case at
the actual gig(s)- it's definitely had some tweaking: check out that canned
cheering which crops up for no apparent reason at various points in the
middle of songs!

<snip>

>I think Hawkwind is MUCH better off with *real* synth (Kniveton) and/or
>keyboard (House/Blake) players

Amen, though I'm not such a fan of Tim's playing.

>,as with recent lineups (the Canterbury
>live album is fantastic, and I can't wait to hear the new Spaced-Out
>one!).  Although I think that the band has also gotten much better at
>integrating "backing-tracked" material with "completely-real" material
>into their live set since the Business Trip tour.

This was a slight problem at the recent Xmas party show though, fine gig
though it was. I definitely remember thinking during "Space is their
Palestine", hang on, they're just playing the record over the PA!

Anyway, my top 5 FWIW (not sure if this has changed since last time we did
this, but anyway):

Space Ritual
Quark
Hall of the Mountain Grill
Doremi
PXR5

as for the "least 5" debate... I exclude Yuri from this as it seems to me
that only official releases should really be considered. I can only really
come up with a "least 4":

Family Tree
Space Bandits
Alien 4
Xenon Codex

... but I do feel that just about all the studio albums from Xenon Codex
onwards (with the exception of the excellent Electric Tepee) are relatively
weak, though they all have the odd strong track too. I know lots of you
really rate Alien 4, but there we are- yet again this debate has shown the
diversity of tastes among HW fans. And Doremi being described as "boring"
is possibly the most extraordinary thing I've ever read on this list!

Nick