Hawkwind 40 Porchester Hall

[Alan Taylor]

Hey Steve, thanks for saying so, it was really good talking to you.  The 
day was great, and met so many old and new friends, though it went by in 
a bit of a blur.

I took a few photos, not a huge amount and not many that were any 
good.   I think it was the light levels - the light show wasn't as 
bright/good as normal (although it did have its moments) and I didn't 
get a decent spot to take the pics from.  Maybe the Guinness was taking 
its toll too! I spoke to Neil and Marie of Chaos Illuminations, they 
said they couldn't do the lightshow as parking impossible and it didn't 
stack up on this occasion.  Which was nice for them as they got to watch 
the gig as from the crowd, a bit of a novelty I'd think.

Anyway, I was a bit p'd off at not getting many decent pics so I decided 
to take some OK video clips with far from decent sound.  These may 
appear on a video sharing site near you sometime soon...though I do hate 
it when folk put just snippets of songs on,which is what I'll be doing, 
sorry!  And with that, my memory card was full up.

A thoroughly good day, highlights for me were the Mirror of Illusion and 
the whole of the HW set,with all the blanga.  And question time where 
they said there would be a 2010 Hawkfest. Yay.

I need to crank up the 'beast' (my old PC) to get the photos onto 
tangledwoof.com, so maybe sometime in the next week.

Onwards

Alan


Steve Swann wrote:
> Oh and it was also great meeting Alan of Tangledwoof, who I expected
> to be a guy with a full professional photographer's rig!  Alan, I'm
> still flatly amazed that you get the kind of shots you do with that
> consumer grade camera - Tangled Woof captures the look and feel of a
> Hawkwind concert better than any site I know (it's where I point
> people to when ask me "so what's supposed to be so special about this
> light show I keep hearing about?").  I'm looking forward to seeing
> what you got this time...  :)
>
> Steve
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 1:01 AM, Steve Swann<swann1066 at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Well, hell.  I've been trying to do a writeup of the Porchester shows
>> now for a couple of days, and there's just too much to cover.  So let
>> me start with the important thing, by thanking some people.
>>
>> Mike Holmes and Jill Strobridge - I spent so much time with the two of
>> you that you were practically my hosts for the event.  After chatting
>> online for almost 20 years (!!) it was great to finally meet both of
>> you.  I had a great time, thanks much for the hospitality.
>> Arin & Rich - it was great to meet you, thanks especially for
>> introducing me to so many people that I otherwise wouldn't have met.
>> We hadn't talked all that much online previously, I see now that was a
>> mistake.
>> Steve PXR5 - Is that your real last name?  :)  Glad to meet you and
>> thanks for the good company.
>> Bernhard, Christos and Rainer - Glad to make the acquaintance of the
>> Kollektor Kings :)  I had a great time talking with you guys.
>> Maxine & ??? - It was really fun hanging out with you (and damn I'm
>> embarrassed at forgetting your friend's name)!  Although some day I
>> want a coherent explanation of how we ended up in an Austrian bar at
>> 2am with guys in lederhosen singing Ein Prosit.  It must have been the
>> fault of those Dutch guys!
>> The Hawkwalk Gang - most especially Jimski for his work in writing up
>> and leading the tour.  Steve Youles, Steve Bishop, Andreas, Mick, Jon
>> and the 20 or so other Hawkfans that I met on the walk... somewhere
>> there are a lot of pictures of this group, I hope someone puts them up
>> and captions them with people's names for those like me who wouldn't
>> remember their head if it wasn't screwed on.
>>
>> So, the shows.  There's been a lot of talk about the quality of the
>> pre-show material.  Hawkwind doing its Elves of Silly Berry excuse me
>> Silbury act, the various other bands and performers, the Q&A sessions,
>> Huw, Tarantism, Bob Kerr, et al.  I look at it this way.  I had
>> expected most of the day to be a kind of laid back party with the band
>> going on at the end of the day.  Instead Hawkwind, various members of
>> Hawkwind, and other musical guests were up on stage most of the bloody
>> day, giving us a show to watch if we felt like watching it.
>>
>> I went back and forth between hanging out with the numerous and
>> wonderful Hawkfans who I'd never had a chance to meet before and
>> watching the various shows on stage.  On Friday I watched pretty much
>> everything, except for a brief interlude for food (I had ordered from
>> the food service, but when I realized that it was going to take 40
>> minutes, Jill and I went out instead).  On Saturday I spent more time
>> mingling, which had the detrimental effect of causing me to miss the
>> Elves' performance of The Only Ones (which they hadn't done on
>> Friday).  Grrrrrr!  But bottom line I thought the performances were a
>> great thing.  I mean, counting the Elves, I basically got to see
>> Hawkwind play 4 times this weekend, what's not to like about that?
>>
>> I liked TOSH a lot - in effect, TOSH went a fair way towards
>> satisfying my craving for Space Ritual era heavy acid rock Hawkwind.
>> I agree with the people who said the drum sound was too aggressive,
>> that could be just an over-amplification issue.  I also had a chat
>> afterward with TOSH's guitar player (Dave's guitar tech) who's an
>> incredibly nice guy.
>>
>> I ran in Dibs in the hall at one point and told him he's my hero - the
>> fan who becomes a member of the band, which is the best story in the
>> world!  Later when a handful of us were having a beer with Niall in
>> the Porchester, I found out that he's got a very similar story.  No
>> wonder the band is looking like such a happy bunch these days.  ;-)
>>
>> As for the "main event", both nights were storming gigs.  The band was
>> spot on, and they blew the roof off the place.  Hell, if I never saw a
>> better gig than that, I'd still count myself a lucky man, because I
>> saw it *twice*.  ;-)
>>
>> Hawkwind... FORTY FUCKING YEARS and still rocking like seven kinds of thunder!
>>
>> Last of all, I have to thank Dave Brock, who has never met me, but who
>> has shaped most of my adult life with his music.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>     
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