HW: Re: set list?

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009, Steve Bishop wrote:

> I think this was last night from memory !
>
> Lighthouse
> Fahrenheit 451
> Sentinel
> Space is Deep lyrics (read by Dave)
> Angels of Death
> Silver Machine
> Wraith
> Persephone (I think !)
> Magnu
> Tide of the Century
> You'd Better Believe It
> Levitation
>
> Encore
>
> Masters of the Universe
> Hashan I Sahba
>
> Band were excellent, there was an additional member playing violin (very well
> too) called Paul ?, band seemed happy, Better Believe It was best in my view,
> sound mix a bit dodgy too start and Niall is always too quiet in the mix IMHO
> ......... he played lots of bass, prob nearer 50/50 vs lead guitar....

 	Nick Lee told me that the violinist was Jon Sevink from the 
Levellers, and had joined the tour only that gig--it certainly didn't 
show! I mean, I hold a firm view that apart from Simon House every other 
electric violinist is just playing a fiddle through an amp, but he was a 
very good substitute. I was way over left and couldn't hear enough of 
Dave, but he took some lead which was a joy to behold. Niall, I usually 
couldn't hear so I'd have to agree with you about the mix. I think he took 
second bass on `Angels of Death', `Wraith', `Magnu' and `Levitation', but 
there may have been more. I thought `Levitation' was best myself but it 
was really good to hear the opening wavers of `You'd Better Believe It', 
especially given that it was the violin leading it and he'd probably only 
met the song a few days before...

 	Other comments: I love the way that Dibs and Dave were sharing 
vocals on most songs. Dave sings his own peculiar variant on the tunes, 
Dibs sings what's on the records, and together they sound like deliberate 
harmonisation; it makes the songs seem more complex than perhaps they 
really are. Dibs's new songs are certainly good enough to record, and I 
hope they get onto that in the New Year. Tim's keytar is still really 
silly but that and the theremin added a lot. Also, Richard got to sing 
`Silver Machine', and did remarkably well.

> But a brilliant night, good crowd and I certainly enjoyed it. Wish stage was
> bigger to allow dancers and Tim Blake more freedom tho ! And wish they'd done
> Paradox .........

 	The dancers were a bit constrained, but they were (a) beautiful 
and (b) fabulous. High-speed costume changes galore and they really added 
to the visual impact, especially in those costumes that involved stilts. 
The whole visual set-up was brilliantly done, for once visuals that tied 
up with the contents of the songs and which had clearly often been 
designed specially rather than solely ripped out of old films and 
documentaries. Lots of engineering software visible in the skeletal frames 
of ships and so on but it was all well-used. My companion thought that it 
was a bit predictable having lots of pictures of huge spaceships but, 
well, it's been a while since they did hasn't it? There was a scheme 
involving a funerary longship passing through a dimensional portal or 
something that I was sorry Carl couldn't see :-) So I really appreciated 
how much effort had gone into the design of the show, into the flow of the 
setlist and the joining of visuals and music; sometimes they've not 
bothered with that effort and I really missed it. No such reservations 
this time; musically I've probably seen better Hawkwind gigs but as an 
enveloping audio-visual experience it delivered well over and above all 
but the very best. I went home and fought with myself over which of about 
five different Hawkwind albums I wanted to hear now, which to me is a good 
measure of a good gig. Very pleased to be back in the spaceship, yours,

Jon


-- 
       Jonathan Jarrett, Cambridge    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
    =======================================================================
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