HW: Cambridge 25/10/2006 review

[Jonathan Jarrett]

	Dear All,
		  I enjoyed this one a lot so I felt I should do a 
proper review.

	I was trying to fit too much in this evening, so missed the 
support act, having legged it back up from a seminar in London. I should 
really have chanced staying another half hour because the Hawks were a 
while setting up and I thought of a brilliant contribution to the 
seminar about ten minutes up the road, but, hey.

	ANYWAY. I was still getting beer as Lastwind finished, and heard 
not much beyond what sounded like a reasonably fun bit of riffing and 
cheesy keyboardness. Cambridge Junction went in for an alleged revamp 
shortly after the Hawk's last gig there, which at least in sonic terms, 
sucked quite hugely, so I had been disappointed earlier in the month to 
find that apparently it had emerged completely unchanged. Nonetheless, 
no sound problems tonight, and the Hawks very much on form.

	Setlist was:

Right Stuff
Psychedelic Warlords
(unknown intro)->Orgone Accumulator
Paradox
Robot
Out Here We Are
Greenback Massacre
Excerpt from Midsummer Night's Dream
Lord of Light
Images
Infinity
Assassins of Allah->Space is Their Palestine->Assassins of Allah
*
Spirit of the Age
Motorhead

	`Right Stuff' has been completely reworked since I last saw it; 
it was one of several tunes where the break and return have been so 
completely changed that I assumed the song had segued into another 
unfinished. This startled me, but it has to be a good sign; nothing they 
did last night, except the sadly-predictable `Assassins', was like I've 
seen it done before, and even `Assassins' benefitted from Jason 
adlibbing live keyboard. `Robot' has had its emphasis entirely shifted 
to the `three laws' bit at the end, now in the middle and given a new 
apocalyptic ending by Richard; the result probably still needs some 
development but certainly altered the nature of the song.

	Quantities of stuff were on disc; I never quite worked out how 
much. `Out Here We Are' seemed to all be on disc until the break, when 
Dave and Alan stood to again and Richard put real drums over it, and 
yet I still wasn't sure that part of the noise wasn't still coming off 
Alan's computer. Dave's contributions particularly seemed cosmetic. I 
suppose, in the end, it's no worse and probably better than the mid-
nineties sets where everything was a MIDI trigger for a synth routine or 
whatever. On the other hand, there was one point in an outtro at which 
*all* sound stopped momentarily and that seemed to be down to Alan's 
computer hanging briefly. Not sure what to make of that.

	Dave is travelling very light. POD rather than amp, which seemed 
to me to cost him a bit of grunt to the guitar sound but I couldn't 
argue with its tone and edge, it did *sound* like he was playing through 
a Marshall, just that something in the body of the sound was gone. Quite 
what the rest of his kit was I couldn't tell, it was very small, but he 
seemed to have all his usual synth noises packed into it. He spent part 
of several songs lounging on an office chair and the rest up and 
playing. He didn't really get going until `Paradox' but after that most 
songs got blistering guitar breaks, and I have to say, it was really 
nice to see him still doing it. Lemmy interviewed a while after the 
Hawkestra and said how Dave had used to be able to play lead but it 
seemed to have all gone now; he should have seen this gig...

	Note the lack of segues. By and large they stepped up and did 
each song individually. The result was kind of Hawkwind plays Hawkwind 
rather than Hawkwind takes you on a trip through the Universe, all a bit 
`here's a song we know', `here's another' rather than a live experience, 
as it were. But that just made one take each song on its merits, and 
given that some of them were really really excellent (especially `Lord 
of Light', which I thought was every bit the equal of the _Space Ritual_ 
version except sadly half the length), that was no bad thing all told. 
Especially glad to see `Images', because it is better than you remember 
(and because Alan worked the bassline from `Paranoia Pt 1' into its 
mid-section), and of course `Motorhead' (though that at least should 
have been faster).

	Everyone played really well. Dave emphasised Jason's playing by 
claiming that he'd been voted 12th-best jazz pianist in some poll or 
other, "So you see, we *can* play `music'", then, looking at Alan, 
"Well, some of us can!" But Alan was indeed very good; I concur with 
Carl that he should have been clearer in the mix but there were bass 
figures in there which he had *actually made up*, as well as a good few 
of the usual ones from _Space Ritual_ :-) Richard's bass drum also lost 
in mud a bit, but he started fairly thunderous on the rest of the kit 
and was being thoroughly monsterish by the end. Dave I've already 
mentioned but again, he was ace. All the same the gig never quite 
escaped a rather laidback vibe, no matter how much energy was poured 
into `Greenback', `Lord of Light' and `Assassins'. I didn't think I 
minded, in the end, but it did feel rather more like an old-timers' tour 
than it could have done as a result. Perhaps I've been watching too 
much punk lately.

	Nonetheless: best I've seen them do in years, many songs I've 
never heard live or expected to, excellent playing on all parts, fresh 
interpretations of all the old standards; none of `Brainstorm', MotU or 
`Silver Machine' and nobody cared. I'll be back for more :-) Yours,
								    Jon

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk