[boc-l] HW: Hawkwind, and others, at A New Day Festival

[Jonathan Jarrett]

 	Dear all,
 		  I have been meaning to post about this since I got back 
from the festival, which seemed a lot like the old Canterbury Sound 
Festival that gave us the 2001 live album (which I am in fact listening to 
right now, which is why I remembered I wanted to post about it). The 
venue, rough time of the year and about half the acts were the same. I 
don't know if the old one went bankrupt or something, and no-one wants to 
admit a link, but it seemed pretty obvious to me. Anyway...

 	There were lots of interesting bands on the line-up: details can 
be seen here:
https://www.anewdayfestival.com/
but once you poked at the programme a bit it turned out many of them were 
one-original-member-and-entire-new-band formations. Thus were the 
Ken Pustelnik's Groundhogs, Jethro Tull's Martin Barre, Atomic Rooster, 
and I suppose Son of Man sort of count, though all of these were 
excellent; Atomic Rooster had Pete French on vocals, who was dreadful when 
I saw him with Leafhound back in, er, 2004 maybe, and now sounded like he 
did in his Cactus days again somehow, and their organist both sounded and, 
more surprisingly, looked like Vincent Crane. There was also Hugh Cornwell 
not being the Stranglers, Ruts DC actually doing a pretty good job of 
being The Ruts, John Coghlan leading a band probably more able than Status 
Quo ever were, John Otway doing an unusually low-energy job of being 
himself actually, and Carl Palmer's ELP Legacy being, well, Carl Palmer 
really but he is still amazing despite being I don't know how old. Bernie 
Tormé, just to break with the trend, did not pretend to be or play 
anything by any of the bands he'd been in as far as I could tell, and he 
was very good but probably not one of nature's frontmen, even now.

 	The most unexpectedly good band, for me, were Tygers of Pan Tang, 
who were also down to one real member but you wouldn't have known except 
that he was older than the rest. My partner and I had seen Iron Maiden two 
weeks before (my first time!) and I said to her, Maiden wouldn't have let 
this lot support--just that little bit too close to the throne...

 	Most predictably excellent was Arthur Brown, whose current band 
is one of his more fun and able and who somehow still sounds the way he 
did fifteen years ago when I first saw him, though he is now, if it 
possible, thinner. Still fully voiced though!

 	Gong, who are effectively touring the post-Daevid album _Rejoice! 
I'm Dead!_, I was expecting to be a wrench but they were actually not as 
deeply affecting as I'd feared--or hoped. They will be, I think, this is 
definitely a Gong band, but the second guitarist (Kavus Torabi, 
ex-Cardiacs, presumably unemployed while Tim Smith continues to fight for 
survival...) and now somewhat unwilling frontman needs to accept that he 
is part of the act and not the ringmaster. He spent a lot of time saying 
how incredible it was to be doing this, etc., which just detracted from 
any impression that he had really expected it to work... How can I put 
this? Have you ever seen Gong do the Temple suite and felt like maybe 
there was actually a building rising around you? Or 'Aum Riff' and you got 
to a state where no-one was actually playing the riff but you could almost 
*see* it anyway, so insistent was it? (That had last happened to me in 
this exact place, eighteen years before, which may be one reason why I 
found this wanting.) If you have, though, you will remember, every member 
of that band head down piling coal into the metaphysical boilers like it 
was all meant to be this way at this moment and they'd known the plan 
beforehand. But Kavus would be down in the front row pointing at it to 
make sure everyone had seen it. I get that stepping into Daevid's shoes is 
difficult, but if he's going to, he has to actually be the sorceror, not 
the apprentice. I hope to see them again and I hope he's beginning to 
understand how Daevid managed to make being really silly a solemn act when 
I do...

 	And... breathe. But the reason I post is of course Hawkwind, who 
were headlining the Saturday. It wasn't the magic occasion that the 2001 
performance was, but that was quite possibly the best Hawkwind gig I ever 
saw so it wasn't ever going to be that. Line-up was Dave, obviously, 
Richard also obviously, Niall on bass and synth, Dibs on vocals and 
MacBook, and someone whom Wikipedia tells me is Magnus Martin on 
keyboards, violin and second guitar. (What happened to Haz?) I didn't take 
a set-list but my impression was that apart from one track off _Into the 
Woods_, there was nothing from outside the 70s. They certainly opened with 
`Assault & Battery/Golden Void', followed it with `Shot Down in the 
Night', and the set also included `Damnation Alley', `The Watcher' and 
`Down Through the Night' (which I've never heard live before). No 
`Brainstorm', no `Masters of the Universe' and no `Assassins of Allah', 
and not really any problem with that. The band was very good together, 
there was what seemed to be genuine jamming in the breaks, and though I 
found Dave's guitar a little raw on the ears and there were times when I 
thought maybe one fewer member of the band needed a synthesizer, it was 
all a good performance, especially considering they had basically no scope 
for visuals. So that was good, but one little moment niggled, and it's 
what I actually wanted to tell you all about...

 	When they'd finished `The Watcher' and were setting up for the 
_Into the Woods_ number, which Richard was to sing, Dave told the audience 
as is his wont that `The Watcher' was an old Lemmy number, and Richard 
suddenly sparked up with words more or less like, "I've always wondered, 
Dave, why didn't Lemmy write more songs when he was in Hawkwind?" At this, 
as you might imagine, Dave went sulky and if he said `I don't know', only 
Richard heard it, though he then repeated it in schoolroom-sarky fashion, 
"Oh you DON'T KNOW, eh, really..." And Niall had to step in and cheerily 
remind Richard he was up next and this was his big moment and so on. It 
all seemed to pass off quickly enough but it was a brief moment of 
ugliness, and it made me wonder what was going on. I know that many a band 
member, and Richard among them, has had trouble getting their songs onto 
Hawkwind records while they were in the band, and that's effectively why 
we have Alan Davey's _Captured Rotation_ and the one-and-a-half Star 
Nation albums, and therefore by extension everything Bedouin ever did and 
the Earthlab album, and I would not wish to be without the first or last 
of those, so maybe it's OK. But I'd have said Richard had had a fair few 
songs on the last few albums, and has sung at least two on each, so I 
didn't quite understand where this was coming from or why he'd do it in 
such a fashion. I hope all is well on the bridge of the good ship 
Hawkwind. Or, I suppose, if not, I hope what it means is another Star 
Nation album rather than anything more serious... Anyway, that's quite 
enough from me. Hope everyone's well out there and can survive this 
2005-style Jarrett post, yours all,
 				    Jon

ObCD: Hawkwind - _Canterbury Fayre 2001_
-- 
"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since
  it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has
               a mind to do." (Benjamin Franklin)
   Jonathan Jarrett, Leeds, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk