HW: Hawkestra footage / 70s memories

[Richard Graham]

>From: Roger Elmer <roger at RELMER.FREESERVE.CO.UK>
>Reply-To: BOC/Hawkwind Discussion List <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
>To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU
>Subject: HW: Hawkestra footage / 70s memories
>Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 20:00:56 -0000
>

>
>Also - I'd like to see some posting of early 70s HW gig reviews / ramblings
>etc ........there must be some of you
>on the list!  Give us all the details!
>
>R

Well you asked for it here's a reveiw fom International Times (IT)155 dated
may/june 73 for Space Ritual by Chris Rowley



SPACE OUT

Hawkwind ‘Space Ritual’
(double album recorded live at Liverpool Stadium and Brixton Sundown – UA)
This is the definitive Hawkwind LP and very definitely their best. Being
live it has all the right qualities to bring back memories of twitching in
the front row to the master beat of the crew, orgone powered and all, as
they drive briskly along the space lanes. In fact this album gives ya nearly
88 minutes of hi-powered, interstellar stuff, and by Klonos’ silver
whiskers, that should be enough for any young mortal. With a retail price of
only £3.10 it appears that they’ve set it up carefully taking into account
the youth - fullness of many of the Hawk people and the limited scope of
their budgets.
I can visualise many interesting scenes in homes all over the land as
mothers and fathers clutch each other in fear and anguish while somewhere in
the house Junior and Sis are getting off on another 90 minute self drive
star trek throughout the lesser Magellanic cloud. ‘..and here folks we have
Doradus Su, largest known star, burning brighter and hotter than anything
else known to man across the starry firmament like a million, million suns!
See just put your hand out that porthole and feel the hard gamma as it rips
through your tissues. With a brilliance a million times greater than that of
Sol, it’s colour an indescribable blue white, ultra violet, Doradus Su burns
ever more furiously, consuming during it’s incredibly brief and violent
stellar life as much material as an entire stellar cluster. Could this be a
super nova in the making’.
The album sleeve, like everything else about this package, has all the
extras of a well dressed burger, unfolding side by side into this vast
panoramic B. Bubbles spectacular that will turn your bedroom into mission
control module 21m with just 4 thumbtacks and some pressure. Then you can
roll on the floor in Mandrax lust and groove happily while Brock, Dikmik,
Del, Simon, Nik and the very strange Bob Calvert (Musicnauts it says on the
cover) turn the screw and push your buttons.
The material here is all played with the characteristic fervour of a good
live Hawkwind set and it has items from their past, including ‘Lord of
Light’, ‘Down Through the Night’ and ‘Brainstorm’ as standouts from their
last album ‘DoReMiFaSoLiDo’. Michael Moorcock that weird offspring of Lord
Arioch of Chaos and Miss Jerimima Cornelius, has penned a couple of heavies
for the album: ‘Sonic Attack’, which is exactly that, and ‘The Black
Corridor’, but personally I find ‘Orgone Accumulator’ as good as anything
else. It’s only with Hawkwind that you get the feeling that as the
electronics cut in, the ship is going Free and then while the Inertia Less
Free Field is generating the guitar begins to rev and the power builds,
squaring on cubes into the mathematical interstices of infinity and then
with a sudden rush of sax and drums and synthesizer amid the snarl of a
thousand, driving propulsor units you boost out of the System at three and a
half times the speed of light and with the temperature rising. Life on Mars
will never be so exciting and space and time are so absolute, so immense, so
uuhh… far out, that one needs something pretty strong to get it off your
mind. My only problem with a double Hawkwind album is that after about 60
minutes or so the Master of the Universe looks like Mr. O’Brien and his
massive digits keep turning that knob Up UP and you begin to wish that he
had at least six fingers so that you would at least have a variety of things
to say to him.
I note that they’ve dedicated this album to John the Bog and a better
dedication I couldn’t think of, long may his shades glow.

The same issue ran stories about the drug squad raiding Lord Lampton's house
and the staff of Shelter going on strike against'The dictotorial polices of
their new director. Also an advertisment to see The Edgar Broughton Band at
the Rainbow tickets £1, 75p, 50p anyone attend?



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