HW: London review

[bart]

Well, most the other boc-l folk who were there have basically said it all, but
anyway -

No, to be honest, no. Maybe for a variety of reasons (like not being a huge
fan of the era some of the songs came from) but Hawkwind just didn't cut it
for me. I didn't mind Ron Tree, especially on Assassins  of Allah and a couple
of others, but he needed to have worked harder to fill up all the _space_ on
stage. And half a Hoover on your head does not a robot make. The fire-eaters
were ok, but get shot of the dancers. Way too much of the gig was 'watch
amateur performance art to the whoosy background sound' which isn't what
Hawkwind is about imho. At least the dancer on the Business Trip tour hurled
herself about a bit! Also the last tour seemed to have much more of a vibe to
it, with whoosy ambient bits linking definite songs together rather than some
ongoing swathe of rather nondescript music with recognisible parts every so
often. And to cap it all, the mix seemed very muddy to me.

Porcupine Tree were pretty good in a kind of wannabe Pink Floyd way (and
that's not a complaint). RDF & B2TP were just people on stage and background
noise. Thats maybe a bit harsh, I liked the reggae stuff initially, but like
Andy said, it got to be a case of enuff's enuff.

Utah, U-U-U-Utah Saints :) were pretty cool

I was half expecting to see a review from a listmember who stayed for the
duration saying that salt tank/optic eye were brilliant and/or Hawkwind played
a second set of storming classics, all missed because we went in search of a
curry and couldn't get back in. As for the pizza, "this is what you want, this
is what you get" :-(  It was all a bit hazy after that (must have been the
aspirin)

But thanks due to Andy G for use of his floor to crash on. And it was good to
meet so many of the UK boc-l people.

Tim

Ingatestone Station, on a sunday morning, is idyllic, as y'all can imagine ;-)