HW:Top 10 space rock

[Jon Jarrett]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Sara Zaza wrote:

> hawkwind
> amon duul 2
> gong
> ash ra tempel
> popol vuh
> f/i
> tangerine dream (early stuff at least)
> pink floyd
> cluster
> can

        Lots of the responses to this have included Krautrock bands, which
is fine by me; Ash Ra Tempel and early TD are most definitely space, if
possibly not rock in the case of the latter, but the aim's the same,
isn't it, musical liftoff into the far spheres of the mind etc
etc. But: Pink Floyd? Love 'em though I do, which is to say, love
everything up to _The Wall_ and then wonder slightly about whether I was
ripped off for the rest, are they space-rock? Even in part? A few songs
off the first two albums maybe. Afetr that? No, I think you have to draw
the line between porgressive and space somewhere and Fliyd and King
Crimson fall on the prog side of it. To my mind anyway.

        This isn't to say that you couldn't perfectly describe space-rock
by playing `Interstellar Overdrive' at someone of course. It's one of
those `best songs that Hawkwind never recorded', although now they have
not that it's exactly easy to find. The other one is Sabbath's `Into the
Void' of course; isn't it just as quintessentially genre-setting as `Born
to Go'? I would love to hear Hawkwind cover that. But that I think is
probably right out, isn't it. The royalties would be a fair bit I
imagine... Yours,
                  Jon

--
              Spooky peanut terror bringing pain and death!
   ===================================================================
     Jon Jarrett (01223 514989)      jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk