HW: Astoria Gig

[Ian Abrahams]

Can you believe this, in the 21st Century there are no scheduled trains from Cornwall on the last Sunday before Christmas? Makes you wonder why we ever got mixed up with the English in the first place. So, its a drive to Exeter and then train to London. 

Arrive at hotel about 2pm, to meet-up with Hawkwind-virgin Keith Topping (motto: "kill the hippies" or on good days "why did we fight the Punk wars again?") and settle down in the lounge in front of a very welcome log fire and await the arrival of Bernhard and Andreas, who we've sorted out accommodation for. The Germans duly arrive, and we make the Angel by about 5pm.

Great to see a lot of the list crowd, Alan Linsley, Alan Taylor, Mike Holmes, Jill Stobridge, David Law, Chris Purdon, Nick Lee et al - people who I didn't know this time last year and many of who are now great friends. Interesting chat with Mike about various of his Glastonbury and Stonehenge experiences. We all try to remember the name of the Tory MP who played in a Hawkwind tribute band, and nobody can come up with it - any takers here?

Grab some food in the Moon Under Water (serious lack of table space nearly prevents this) and then on to the gig.

Grab a quick chat with Colin then stand back to watch the support band. Hmmm, not quite my taste but o/k - sort of expect to see Huw do his acoustic numbers before the main act and start to wonder where he is.

Hawkwind set. The trio, plus Keith B and Lene Lovich. 

I still see this, no disrespect to Keith, as a trio gig. I know Colin explained what to listen out for, but I still struggled with my non-musician's ear to pick out what bits Keith was playing. Now, nothing wrong with a trio gig - by nature they are very tight and well defined musically and produced two of my favourite albums. But, sometimes I feel that they still need a Huw, or a Simon House or a Keith K to produce something a bit more random, a bit more unexpected. It can be a bit like a mis-produced Cadbury's Creme Egg - nice to look at, tasty on the outside, but with a bit of the fondant centre missing.

Still, a great show none-the-less - there's been some set-lists posted already, so I'll just pick-out the highlights as being the new material (roll-on the new record), Lene Lovich who looked and sounded pretty damn weird, Brainbox Pollution and the very cute dancers. Unreconstructed male, me.

Boy was Davey giving it some on the bass! But also a lot more keyboards than at Exeter a couple of months back, so not such a gritty, grungy sound. Alan playing synths for the first time since he came back (?), and Keith B as well, which gave a richer texture to the wall of sound - very much in favour of this.

Huw's bit came mid show and would have been better as an opener, I thought but: Marvellous to see Huw in such good form, played really well and looked so much better than the pictures from Hawkfest revealed - lots of nice comments going around the audience - I think everybody was relieved to see this. Nice to see Dave sat on stage listening to some of Huw's stuff - showed a bit of support, I thought. 

Amused to see Dave singing Spirit of the Age without having to play guitar as well - its the first time I've seen him just stand up and sing a song - and it showed, because he certainly didn't know what to do with his hands!

Downside, I thought the backdrop projections were spoilt from where I was standing by the fixed Astoria multi-coloured lighting that swamped out some of the images - a shame because what we did see looked really cool (a few clips of the Reefer Madness film in there?) and would have been really effective with the big screen to show them on.

Best bit? Blagging our way into the 12-Bar on Denmark Street after the show via Mike Holmes' "Let us in - we're the hardcore fans". Laugh - well, yes, I did!  Only bit afterwards of note was chatting to Martin Griffin at the party - quite a character!

Yep, Good One. For my particular Hawkwind taste, preferred Bristol early in the year with Simon and with Arthur Brown's theatrics, but this was a damn good expression of Hawkwind as well and made particularly exciting by the amount of new material going around.

Ian