HW: Liverpool last night

[Mark Von Bargen]

A few personal thoughts to add to Nick's review.

Overall, a good show but not up there in the excellent category.
Positives:
Huw's playing was much sharper than previous nights.
The combination was a very heavy sound.
The emphasis was very much on songs with very little synth noodling during
the set.
Arthur Brown was excellent. The best singer that I have ever heard with
Hawkwind.
Dave concentrating on some very heavy riffing guitar work for most of the
night.

Not So Positives:
The stage was too small. In particular it seemed to restrict any real
theatrics from Arthur.
The way that Huw was shuffling around the stage reminded me a lot of Ozzy on
The Osbournes. He doesn't look very well - Huw that is.
The set was shorter than I expected - maybe that was because the synth bits
were restricted.
Apart from Arthur's songs being included there was no new stuff.

In summary, the positives still exceed the others by a fair distance. Wonder
what went wrong at Northampton?

Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Lee" <nick.lee2 at VIRGIN.NET>
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 5:37 PM
Subject: HW: Liverpool last night


Managed to get over to the Liverpool show last night.
Didn't have much time to look for other list members as we arrived rather
late, catching only the end of Tim's set.  Managed to say hi to Rich
(Warren), helping out on t-shirts & Keef on lights.
Managed to get spot pretty near the front in time for HW, it was pretty
packed (& fairly small) hall so there wasn't much space to move.
After an 'Earth Calling' intro (voiced by Richard) the band hammered into a
fine version of Aerospaceage Inferno, with Arthur doing a fine job on
vocals, followed by Angels of Death (not my favourite song, maybe, but
played damn well), Out The Shadows (great to hear this again after all these
years, look forward to hearing Simon play this one again), then Time
Captains from Arthur, nver heard this before but it seemd to fit nicely into
the HW set, Master Of The Universe flowing into Song Of The Gremlin was next
with Arthur back on vocals (he got the lyrics to Master almost right!),
Hurry On Sundown was next followed by Lighthouse, which Tim started solo but
was backed by a full band by the end, Alan teased the audience a bit with
the bass intro to the Watcher before launcing into powerful version of this
song, Dave playing some excellent guitar and Huw only joining in towards the
end, Assassin was next with a reworked middle similar to Palestine (though
luckily no Eleanor Rigby as reported other nights), a cracking You Shouldn't
Do That/Seeing It As You Really Are (with Earth Calling lyrics) ended the
amin set.  The band returned for a powerful Sonic Attack from Arthur which
flowed into a slightly muddled sounding Space Brock.  The evening was
rounded of with a cracking version of Silver Machine, with Arthur dinging
quite a lot of the right words.
All in all a cracking, powerful gig.  The band were on great from, the sound
was pretty damn good (except that I couldn't always hear Tim), Huw was on
much better form than the summer, though not at his best (Dave said he'd got
a cold) and seemed a little lost occasionally  (he didn't seem to know what
to play in Assassins of all things!).  Could've been a little longer at only
just 90 mins though.
Looking forward to Northampton tomorrow, then Brighton & Walthamstow.
See you there!

Nick