HW: Black Sword sucks! (sort of)

[M Holmes]

John Majka writes:

> At 12:40 AM 6/11/97 +0100, you wrote:
> >>Sorry, but am I the only person that happens to sort-of dislike Needle
> >>Gun?
> >
> >I thought it sucked on the Black Sword album - hey, *everything* sucked on
> the Black Sword album -
>
> I think you're onto something here.  In retrospect, I think I can conclude
> that Chronicle of the Black Sword is the worst ever HW album, featuring the
> worst-ever HW song ("Song of the Swords").  Had they gone totally nuts in
> 1985?  They genuinely thought they were a metal band!  Look at the band
> photo even!  Good God!  One would think they were BOC or something (ha ha,
> insult only half-intended)!  Thank goodness they dropped the heavy metal
> idiocy (not to mention Danny Thompson, the worst-ever drummer) and got back
> on course!

I thought Hawkwind went steadily downhill from 1983 onwards. WE had
Brock fighting with Turner onstage at Stonehenge about what song to play
next. After that we had a couple of years of Turner doing his rock
circus act, which only worked about half the time and the other half
simply ruined the gigs. Then they kicked Turner out and had a pretty
awful period playing at being a heavy metal band with the Live
Chronicles album being a bright spot on a pretty bleak horizon. 1986 and
'87 featured the worst Hawkwind gigs I've ever seen and the spew of Acid
Daze, British Tribal Music, Anthology etcetera records being put out
under their name brought me to give up Kollecting. I honestly thought
they'd had it. Then there was a glimmer of the old style in 1989 and
with Wishart in the band they came crashing back on track. I was a
little worried by the tendency to fairly dull ambient tracks and I'm
glad to hear they're back to being a rock band. Hopefully they'll get
the synths fixed though in case they're tempted back towards HM.

> John Majka

FoFP