Blasphemy: which Nik?

[Jon Jarrett]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Stephan Forstner wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:46:03 +0100, M Holmes <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK> wrote:
> >Can someone in the know please tell us which of the recordings involving
> >Nik and the sundry ex-members of Hawkwind are good ones involving a
> >reasonable smattering of Hawkwind tracks?
> >
> >It might also be useful to list which ones to absolutely avoid.
>
> I'm not in the know, but I've got a handful of these - I assume you mean
> just the recent post-2000 stuff, which has been primarily Hawkwind tracks.
> I think that to date there have only been 2 official releases, both on
> Ozit, the first being the '2001 A Space Odyssey Live' double silver-CD
> release, and the second being the 'Live at Glastonbury and Guildford 2002'
> CD-R. Space Odyssey was (rightly) raked over the coals for its sub-bootleg
> quality sound so its probably not a good choice. I thought G&G was flawed
> but worthy, so I lean toward a yes on that one, I liked it quite a bit at
> the time. Apparently there is a 3rd release coming soon, another live disc
> called Live at the Cygnian Electric Ballroom on Venus or something like
> that which supposedly features the usual tracks but promises to be better
> quality than either of the 2 preceding releases, AndyG might have more info
> as I got the news via one of his mailings. Note also that Nik supports
> trading and there have been several shows distributed on NeoQuark with
> sound quality much better than Space Odyssey and almost as good or as good
> as G&G.

        I have to admit I didn't think very much of the
Glastonbury/Guildford one. Apart from the *lousy* editing, dropping you in
and out of the middle of jams (in one case you get the `Thunder Rider Rap'
which Nik usually precedes `Silver Machine' with, then what is plainly the
break and outtro from that track, but the actual track is left out, I
guess because it would have had to bear Brock's credit on it, and no
attempt other than a two-second gap is made to cover the transition. The
sound is rough live/good bootleg but no better. A couple of the tracks
(the version of John Coltrane's `Blue Train' for instance) are interesting
but mainly what you get is fairly monotonous blanga, and a couple of what
look like new tracks are in fact just names for jams coming out of other
well-known tracks. The credits are wrong too (there's more than one
vocalist but no other than Nik is mentioned) but we kind of expect
this. It gves an idea of why the band might be fun to see if you didn't
have your expectations up, which I never do when I go and see Nik and I
usually have a good time. But quality live album it isn't.

        I'm interested to know what the new live one will be like though,
but mainly I'd like them to get their studio album out too, ideally the
same day as Hawkwind's... 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)