NIK: HW: Burg Herzberg etc.

[Drill]

Reading that made my day, no joke!
! Always envious of the shows and outdoor festivals in Europe for
various reasons, generally it's the (apparent) lack of activity
wherever I am and lack of any money do do anything anyway. Glad it's a
headache no matter what though. Well yeah, no, not exactly, Or
something like that.

N.Turner's accompaniemente was right on over in the town of Jamaica
Plain, Massachusetts on top of it being the unearthly surprise of a
tuesday night in september.  That "Celebration of Hawkwind's music as
you say hit a note, I mean that's all you'd need to sell me a ticket.
Owing to past experience I'm going to be the last person to fool
myself he's gettting his money's exchange in some valuable excitation
of his brain's musical cortex if he's definitely NOT. That's why I
don't give a flying f*ck that motorhead is coming to my town again as
they are inevitably touring again after the inevitable last album I
again failed to purchase or listen to. Lucky to have sneaked into a
well-gaurded building the last time, some day it will again be worth
$30 as it supposedly was the first 4 times.

On 7/20/05, Keith Henderson <khenders64 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hey Folks...
>
> How was the Dour Festival in Belgium?  (Not sure about that name...do they not know what dour actually means in English?  BTW, what does it mean in French?)
>
> Of course, it was the same weekend as Burg Herzberg, so there was no way I was going to be there.  BH'05 was excellent!  Many more people came this year than either of the last two years, and in fact there was talk amongst the promoters that they wouldn't continue because of how much money they lost last year.  I guess there's now just so many festivals around Europe, that many of them are finding it hard to keep up attendence with so much competition.  (Finkenbach, Guru Guru's festival, were in the same situation, but also have decided to continue...maybe I'll get down there for it, but perhaps not...I might go to Prague instead.)  Well, luckily, Herzberg turned out great this year, and that means good things for next year.
>
> I won't say much about all the bands that played, 'cause I hope to have a chance to write a full comprehensive review, but here's a few main points.
>
> ColourHaze, a great stonerish band from Munich, got things off to a very good start on Thursday evening, and I was surprised (never having showed up early enough for Thursday bands) at how many people were there (didn't realize at the time how crowded it would get on Sat.).
>
> Friday's lineup included Anekdoten, Mostly Autumn, Love (without Arthur Lee, who apparently went AWOL just before the gig), Big Brother & the Holding Co. (also without Janis Joplin, who is also AWOL), the Ozrics, and Nik's Space Ritual.
>
> The Ozrics are still very good, though it seems as though Eddie is just keeping the band going 'cause he doesn't have anything else to do, and only John is left from the original unit.
>
> Anekdoten were very good, and luckily they didn't get rained out like last year, just before Hawkwind.
>
> Space Ritual I think are really terrible, sorry to say.  I hadn't really thought about it much beforehand, but it just makes absolutely no damn sense whatsoever to have assembled this crazy band.  Yeah, OK, it has five people who were (nearly) original members of the band, but then why is the band called Space Ritual, and why do they play Space Ritual-era songs (almost exclusively) when none (apart from Nik himself) were ever actually *in* the band in 1972-73?  Unlike before, when Nik occasionally threw together a bunch of guys to play behind him without much rehearsal (if any), such that it was kind of a mess (but at least it was some kind of 'celebration' of Hawkwind music...that is to say, as classic Space Rock), this band actually could play reasonably well, with only an occasional clusterf*ck.  So the problem wasn't the *ability* of the band members to play, just that none of them (save perhaps Terry Ollis) know a damn thing about how to 'blanga.'  The style of the musi!
>  c was ALL
>  WRONG.  I couldn't even recognize half the songs until Nik started singing.  I thought D-Rider was Golden Void (it was actually pretty good, 'cause Golden Void is my favorite HW song), and Brainstorm sounded oddly like Damnation Alley.  And Mick Slattery was playing some f*cking kind of slide guitar solo in the middle of it...he doesn't apparently realize that HW strayed away from blues music very soon after he left.  I swear, the band sounds much closer to Status Quo (or what I think Status Quo sounds like, given that they are almost completely unknown in the states), ie. some kind of silly party boogie-blues-like rubbish.  It was very surreal to hear Hawkwind songs played in this style, and frankly rather disturbing and almost painful.  OK, I admit that I thought Nik and Trev's (silly?) punk versions of Brainstorm and MotU were enjoyable, so I'm not entirely against reinterpretation of old HW classics, but these versions were truly offensive I must say.
>
> Actually, Sonic Attack (no horrible bouncey blues rhythm) they did really well, oddly enough...and MotU as a finale wasn't too awful, but then Anderson (I never really liked him in AD2 either) and Ollis at least played on the studio version.  Other than that, they did no tracks that any of the members featured on.  Not even Hurry on Sundown amazingly enough.
>
> Anyway, sorry, but I can't give thumbs up to this band.  Nik has just gone off the tracks with this one...I would like to see what sort of excuse he might have for why anyone should care that he has a band with five 1969-1971 members, when the one thing they absolutely can NOT do is sound anything remotely like Space Rock.  At all.  And who the hell even knows/remembers that Tom Crimble and Mick were ever in the band?  What the hell is the point of all this?!  And why wasn't it obvious to me that the whole thing was silly before I even went to see them?  :)  (Well, I woulda gone to Herzberg no matter what, so...)
>
> But anyway...Saturday was yet better.  Started out with some old krautrock, like Jane and Epitaph (a real blues rock band), then later there was Ten Years After (also missing a certain A. Lee, so hardly legit IMHO), and then Manfred Mann (he's amazingly popular in Germany still...they had a big crowd at the Loreley thing as well), and then iQ (I like them quite a lot), and finally Korai Öröm, who were outstanding again.  Sunday was sort of world music day, as always, with reggae and Brazilian and Cuban stuff, but then the headliner was Tito and Tarantula, which was more like AC/DC, even though Tito is obviously hispanic and sang some songs in Spanish.  They were quite good actually.
>
> Anyway, a nice weekend, with good weather and lots and lots of people this time.  The camping area, which was quite barren in areas last year, was full this time and even lapped over in the next field adjacent.
>
> So now I'm not sure about this "off the tracks" festival in Donnington.  I don't recognize any of the other bands playing except for HW.  Can anybody identify any of these names, or otherwise give any hints about whether it might be worth coming to more than HW's day?  I think one can buy day tickets, but if I'm coming to the UK early for the HW show, then I might as well spend the whole wkd there, if anything else is remotely interesting.  I'm going to Sonic Rock the following weekend, so I'll be coming to the UK for sure, but I have to decide when to book a flight.
>
> Who else is going to Sonic Rock?  Anybody from near the midlands (if I'm at Donnington that is), or else from near Stansted airport?
>
> Ciao...Grakkl (FAA) in Gemünden am Main, wherever that is
>
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