NIK: Space Ritual @ The 100 Club, London, 22nd April 2005

[Jon Jarrett]

        Dear All,
                  I went to a show and wrote one of me reviews,
like. Forgive the explanations for non-fans :-)

        "It'd been a while since I'd caught up with ex-Hawkwind
saxophonist Nik Turner's attempt to keep the old hippy fires burning,
partly because they tend to stay well west of London and partly because
they've never been more than a fun amateur retread act in my experience,
all right but never earth-shattering. You go with low expectations, you
come home happy, on a good night they might have had time to rehearse
beforehand, that sort of thing. Continual promises of an imminent new
album and a setlist consisting mainly of songs that were new before I was
born rather fail to shake the impression that at best this is a Hawkwind
tribute band, however many original members they may have.

        "Let me say to start off, they seem to be suddenly, after years of
playing this part, out to change something of it. But it took me a while to
adjust. Having been bombarded with a slowly-increasing number of promised
original members which finally reached seven (the first Hawkwind was a
six-piece) but which included their later Canadian synth player who these days
plays a strung wood-axe through a VCS3 synthi, and a two-and-a-half hour
show, I was expecting something unusual, but the kit on the stage did not
include Del's axe and VCS3, and while it did include two drum kits, one was
very cut-down and there were some DJ decks in front of it, and an electric
organ next to it. I was suspicious. Especially when, at nine-thirty, the
two-and-a-half hour show hadn't yet started, and no-one I'd expected to come
and see it had done so (one had, but I hadn't found her yet). The house DJ was
playing a variety of old blues and rock and roll, but not with any apparent
attempt to make it coherent or attention-grabbing, and I was feeling restive.

        "At about that point, however, young Sam Ollis, son of the
original Hawkwind drummer, made an appearance on stage, behind the decks,
and it became clear after a few minutes that the `show' was going to
include a set from him. He began with various bits of B-movie sample over
the last track of the house DJ's, and then expanded into old dub and after
a little while in that theme finally let a few beats into things. I've not
seen this being done up close before, so I couldn't really tell you how
good he was at it, but he was managing to build up some excitement and
adding more and more space noise into it from somewhere, quite possibly
the records as at least one of them was later exposed by Space Ritual's
dancer to be a samples compilation. Well, whatever, sounded good to
me. And after he'd been going about a quarter of an hour, a saxophonist we
all knew took position on stage beside him followed by the rest of the
band and began to make noises around him. And thus I could discover that
tonight's line-up was, left to right, Thomas Crimble (Hawkwind 1971) on organ,
vocals and guitar, also with beard suitable for playing Father Chistmas
in, Sam Ollis, decks and minimalist drums, Dave Anderson (Hawkwind
1971-1972) on bass and vocals, Nik Turner Esq (Hawkwind 1970-1976,
1982-1985, 1997-1998, now legally forbidden to use the name) on vocals,
sax, flute, and cowbell, Terry Ollis (Hawkwind 1970-1972) on drums, Mick
Slattery (Hawkwind 1970) on lead guitar and "John the Ghost" on synth. So
there you go.

        "Now, young Master Ollis did not leave the decks. Instead he used
them as a source of extra weird noise and scratching and as Nik intoned
`Welcome to the Future' (which Hawkwind always used to do at the *end* of
their sets) and Crimble sat down at the organ what emerged was a dub
version of `Ghost Dance'. By the look of the live album they were selling
I should call this `Cosmic Chant' and since all that was really retained
was the chanted vocals, which originally came off an Inner City Unit song
anyway, maybe that's fair enough. But it was actually quite good, which is
more than one could ever say for `Ghost Dance'. I was already settling
into this. Lots of red and yellow lights, Space Ritual's usual and
excellent dancer, fairly gentle dub and scratching, was, as this faded
gently out, the equally dub version of Robert Calvert's `The Right Stuff'
from _Captain Lockheed_. I'm not sure that really got over the intense
lyrics about a high-speed fighter pilot, but it was still quite
pleasant, and I've seen an *awful* lot of versions of this since Monster
Magnet added it to their set not so long ago, and I was very glad of any
that didn't just bore me by now and this didn't. So far so good.

        "I should say that for this one Sam Ollis had left the decks and
gone back to his kit, but he played it standing up, one foot on kick-drum
pedal and the rest done by lightly-held sticks. I remember the first time
I saw the father-and-son drum partnership and they were rock-solid but
very very difficult to stop or move. Someone seems to have thought about
how to change that, and now young Master Ollis is leaving the heavy rhythm
to his dad, who is good at it, not quite as good as he was in 1971 in the
patch when the drugs were working and before he was fired for falling off
his stool stoned too much during gigs but hey, is Clapton any good
now? No, so. Sam was instead dancing new patterns round his dad's rhythm,
adding a distinctly drum'n'bass kind of accent to the percussion which
again, went down pretty well as far as I was concerned. All through the
gig, while the stringsmen might have been a bit plodding and basic,
especially Mr Crimble who just isn't continuous enough to be playing
space-rock dammit, the Ollis pair made sure that for those with ears to
hear, there was something interesting going on with the rhythms and several
different things at once to dance too.

        "`Right Stuff' finished with a second break by Slattery absolutely
dripping with wah, anyway, and next came `Born To Go'. Crimble still at the
organ meant that this too emerged as a slight dub, which was a gimmick I was
maybe adjusting to by now but it was played up to quite well and again I saw no
reason to be disappointed. Ollis Jr returned to the decks for the tone
poem `Sonic Attack', and I have to say this was one of the better versions
I've seen, genuinely unsettling not least because of young Ollis's DJing
additions, and certainly the shortest version I've ever seen Nik do which
has to be good.

        "It took me a while to recognise what they played next, partly
because it's ridiculously obscure, coming off the bootleg out-takes album
from an Egyptian concept album Nik did in 1978 under the name Sphynx with
various people who would these days prefer to think they knew better than
that, and partly because they'd left out all the musical complexity and
just gone for a simple chord sequence as backing, but it was nonetheless
`Chronological Crime' or whatever its name really is, and I was so
delighted to see it done at all that I was almost ready to forgive their
complete ducking of the challenge of actually playing the thing. Almost.
Nik did get all the words right though, which is not easy to do. Ollis on
the kit for this one, needlessly as it just wasn't very exciting. He moved
back to the decks for an equally lacklustre version of `Orgone
accumulator', however, and it didn't make it any more exciting so perhaps
he was not the limiting factor. Restricted to cheesy blues by what was
becoming a monotonously fixed pace and the organ, I can't say this was my
favourite version even though I've only seen it done two or three times.
This will probably always come bottom of that pile.

        "Now however things took a turn for the better. Nik read a poem
I'd not heard before, the refrain being along the pattern if "all our
hearts are frozen now", the noun changing each verse, and that wasn't
actually bad, and they went from there into `D-Rider', which is always
slow and suits it and was as it usually is quite beautiful in a simple
heavy way. and Crimble finally picked up his guitar, which added to the
weight, while Sam Ollis went back to his drums, and so the flavour of the
act had now changed rather, a lumbering prog monster lurching forth from
the cheery dub ruins and this was the form they took for the rest of the
set.

        "Perhaps it was inevitable then that they now went into Nik's best
ever song, `Brainstorm'. It was still a little tame, but I can at least
say that I've now seen a version of `Brainstorm' with cowbell, because
that's what Nik was doing for those bits of it which he wasn't covering in
blarty saxophone or actually occasionally singing.

        "Following that came the group's actually-new number, `Sonic
Savages', which is simple as you'd expect but not bad, and during it Angie
the dancer, who having appeared in various costumes throughout (including
a French maid outfit I really couldn't see the relevance of) was now
attired as musketeer and dubbed Dave Anderson with her foil as she passed
along the stage, which amused me. By the time they wound that up and went
into a reasonable version of Calvert's `Ejection', she was a PVC-habited
nun blessing everyone and it actually had something to do with the whole
thing. She can actually dance which always helps. Not a great `Ejection',
and followed by a similarly not-excellent `Watching the Grass Grow', but
all was atoned for by a solid and brutal `Master of the Universe'. Mind
you I've never seen a bad version, I'm not sure if one's possible, but I
did enjoy this.

        "Last number was `Silver Machine', of course, preceded with Nik's
`Thunder Rider Rap' and accompanied with a silver-clad Angie (who had had two
other dancers passing through the crowd and getting people dancing with them
to add to the party mood, but they seemed to get tired of this after half an
hour and just wandered round looking stroppy instead), and that was, well, I've
heard better but hey. And after the band had cleared the stage Nik stayed on
and played `The Pink Panther Theme' on sax and then led the crowd in an
acapella version of `Bones of Elvis' so you'd have to say he was trying to give
us our money's worth.

        "All in all this band is limited. They're most limited of all by
Thomas Crimble's basic rhythm style which never allows them any real
ferocity or attack, though I get the sense also that Terry Ollis has a
favourite speed which it's very difficult to shake him out of. The pace
was always the same except during `D-Rider' when it slowed down. I think
they did attempt to speed `Watching the Grass Grow' up a bit but it didn't
really work. On the other hand, it's quite fun, and they (perhaps in fact
just Sam Ollis, but everyone has clearly decided to run with it) seem to
be trying to do something fairly major to reinvent the old material. There
is, in short, something going on here still, though sometimes it really
has to work to make its way out. Will it ever make it, I have to
wonder? But at least it wasn't what I'd been expecting."

        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)