HW: Space Daze book

HERBERT119 at DELPHI.COM HERBERT119 at DELPHI.COM
Tue Oct 31 02:58:27 EST 1995


     I picked up this little book today called Space Daze by
Dave Thompson. Subtitled: the History & Mystery of Electronic
Ambient Space Rock. Anyone else have it? Anyone know anything
about the author? There's no "About the author..." intro, but I
think he may be connected w/Cleopatra Records; the copyright is
Cleo, and at the end there's an ad for a compilation CD put out
by Cleo, a "companion" to the book, which features many of the
artists in the book (HW included). And I guess the publisher is
Cleo, since that's the only address given that I've seen yet.
     The bands featured in the book are: Pink Floyd, Hawkwind,
Can, Tangerine Dream, The Orb, Ozric Tentatcles, Syd Barrett,
Gong, Pink Faries, Chrome, Klaus Schulze, Faust, Amon Duul (and
II) and the Legendary Pink Dots. Flipping through, I see that
HW is all over the place. The first chapter (which is all I've
read up to now) is primarily HW, who are touted by this writer
as basically being the founders of Space Rock. Though, one
member of Pink Faries interviewed said that the Faries were.
This chapter describes HW's growth up to and including Space
Ritual. The writing is decent, though there are a few screw-ups
(such as Simon King beingh reffered to as Simon HOUSE), and
there are plenty of omissions (but you can't fit everything in
one 16-page chapter...the book is 150 pages in all). And of
course, I'm saying this as a member of BOC-L, where one never
stops hearing new HW bits. There are some very interesting
stories, though, here's a sample; Andy Dunkly:
     "We got to the gig, everything's set up, the light show's
set up, the band's soundchecking on stage, and lo and behold,
here comes the East Anglia drug squad. At the time, everybody
used to stash their drugs in their equipment, and here comes
the sniffer dogs, up onto the stage, towards the gear. Suddenly
everyone left the stage apart from Dikmik and Del, who were
still noddling away at their synthesizers. The dogs came on
stage - and both Dikmik and Del got into subsonics.
     "The dogs freaked. Totally. They didn't have a fucking
clue what was happening. After it was all over, there was Dame
Stacia calming the dogs down, the handlers not knowing what was
happening, and the dogs unable to find a thing, even if they
wanted to.
     "And that was the first gig of the Space Ritual tour!"

Chuck



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