OFF: Re: Sympathy For The Devil (Motorhead new album taster)

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Thu, 3 Sep 2015, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
> Admittedly, when I listen to _Bad Magic_, I *do* think “Yeah, this {very 
> bad word} rocks!” And it does. I don’t know that it will stick with me, 
> but for a 69-year-old escapee from the speed ward and his (quite small) 
> band of Merry Men, that’s pretty good going, I reckon.

 	I tell you one thing that I've noticed, which is that there's been 
a lot more advertising going into plugging _Bad Magic_ than I'm used to 
for a Motörhead release. I'm not used to finding out that Lemmy's got a 
new album out because there's posters for it up beside the road into town!

> With Hawkwind … sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn’t so much; 
> it’s more stylistic. I’ll confess that I haven’t been too thrilled since 
> Alan Davey last peeled off. I mean, all the guys are great guys; I dig 
> that Tim Blake is back in there, and I dig his solo stuff … I’m just not 
> feeling the blanga vibe in current HW, which I freely confess is what I 
> like best in the band’s history.

 	Dibs and Niall seem to be interested in putting it back but both 
have leanings towards theatricality and musica;ity that maybe vie too much 
with the essence of the blanga :-) Mind you, I'd say that the new 
Krankschaft album shows that you can have both, and a bit less 
schizophrenically than the current Hawkwind build pattern (songs by Dibs 
and Niall and Richard, songs by Dave that could equally be on his solo 
albums, a song by Tim, some sci-fi sytnth linkage). I actually quite like 
all of this severally, I'd just like there to be more behind the albums to 
make them units than 'this is the set of songs we jointly and severally 
came up with this year'. Of course, that's only because there are high 
bars to cross in terms of relative coherence of sound, at least, in the 
Hawkwind canon, and most other bands would struggle to do something 
sounding as professional and crafted as _Onward_. But that doesn't mean 
that it sounds like a single band who did it...

 	I would also, of course, like them to stop re-recording old songs 
for albums. Keep those for B-sides and bonus tracks, I say, let the new 
Hawkwind sing out instead on the main platter.

 	But _Blood of the Earth_ and _Onward_ are both good albums, by my 
lights, and probably better than anything studio-recorded since the 1980s 
except _Electric Tepee_, which overall probably has more flab but is a 
more consistent-sounding piece of work. _Alien4_'s another contendor 
but there's stuff on there I actually don't like as well as the stuff 
that makes it great, so for my mileage I think that assessment is 
probably honest. Those two albums both have some quality 'proper 
Hawkwind', some interesting and even some beautiful 'other' tracks and 
the design is great. I'm not sure there are even typos any more!

 	The live albums, of course, score on a different sheet...

> But that’s OK. I’m sure other people really dig it. Maybe the gigs are 
> great; I’m too far away for that anyway. And there’s plenty of great 
> stuff going on.

 	I have to say, I've not seen them much in the last few years, but 
when I have I've had new people in tow each time and they've all come away 
saying "right, now I see what you're on about". I'd go so far as to say 
that the gigs are dependably great these days, and you will know well that 
this was not always the case... Yours,
 					Jon

-- 
   Jonathan Jarrett       "There is scarce any tradition or popular error
Medievalist historian    but stands also delivered by some good author."
      Birmingham         (Sir Thomas Browne, "Pseudodoxia Epidemica", 1646)