Astoria report

[M Holmes]

Travelling worked fine for once and I got to the Earl's Court Record
Fair by midday to find Dave, Alan and Arthur doing signings. I chatted
to Kris and Rich Warren for a while and had a hunt around the fair.
Managed to pick up the German "Back on the Streets" single with the
slightly different pic sleeve from the UK one. Also got some cheap
Tangerine Dream CD's and the Motorhead 25th anniversary CD. Chatted to
one dealer when he mentioned "some mad fan in Edinburgh who'd produced
a complete list of every Hawkwind track and albums". "That'd be me" I
said. It turned out to be John deLaney who I'd done a lot of trading
with way back when. Chatting to another dealer he pointed me at a Psi
Power British promo single which he says has a shorter edit of the song.
I'd never heard of it and it'd somehow escaped the marauding fans before
me (well, Rich anyway) and I grabbed it. I haven't had time to compare
versions but I suspect it'll be the same as on the US mono/stereo US
promo 7".

I headed into town with a still-smitten-but-now-discovering-why-people-elope
Rich to find the Angel pub. After a lot more pub confusion and much
running about looking for the Angel, we'd collected Jill and Narendra, a
guy I shared a flat with 25 years ago. We ended up in the Moon Under
Water with Nick Lee and then trooped out to join the queue.

There we found a few other folks to chat to, and selling CD's to the
queue was a guy from The Invisible Band. 22 years ago the same band had
camped almost next to us at Stonehenge and apparently working in shifts
had gigged for the whole final weekend there. Invisible or not, I
distinctly recall hearing them play non-stop. Anyway, I bought a CD
mainly because Andy G has in the past insisted that they're very good.

Into the gig and met up with Dave Hall, Chris W, Merrick and Julie and
numerous others. Didn't catch Adrian Parr there and it seems the Germans
all stayed home too.

Doctor and the Medics put in a loud and spirited performance with Born
To Be Wild and The Time Warp going down pretty well. Alan came on with
them to cover "Motorhead" very excellently.

Hawkwind opened with Time Captives and that's now a very polished
rendition with Arthur's vocals really standing out.  Time followed and
didn't seem to me to have the same impact and then off into Master of
the Universe.  Arthur Brown could clearly carry this very well and the
playing was very tight with the crowd really responding.  However either
deliberately or otherwise, Arthur keeps flipping pairs of lines around.
Call me an old traditionalist but I'm used to the flow of the song and
to me this really really jars and iterrupts that flow.  The Gremlin
followed with Arthur definitely showing form on the sung part of the
track.  After this we got, and I can't swear to the order, Prelude (if
that was the 3rd Arthur Brown track?), The Watcher, Out of the Shadows,
Chronoglide Skyway and Hassan/ Space is Their Palestine.  The other AB
track didn't do much for me.  Alan was excellent as always on The
Watcher with the track seeming to gain in menace with every new tour.
Out of the Shadows really rocked and got the crowd going.  Chronoglide
Skyway didn't seem to work at all.  With electronic drums and the lack
of a strong line from either violin and guitar, this sadly came across
as a rather dull ambient track and the audience reacted by chatting
amongst themselves or heading for a drink.  Hassan and Space is tHeir
Palestine got the tempo back up and Kris put in an awesome performance
with dance, flame eating and those flame sticks (what are they called?).
There followed (maybe?) a new ambient track. I thought it suffered the
same problem as Chronoglide Skyway. The audience didn't seem in the mood
for slower tracks and it lacked a strong line to catch our attention.
Often things change from the first outing of new tracks though so I
remain optimistic. Sun Ra went down well and I'm looking forward to that
on the new album hopefully. Mark Wright came on to do the vocals for
Spirit of the Age and did extremely well, it being pretty clear from
close up that this was something of a fan fantasy being fulfilled. Thje
audience happily came out with the chorus and in fact down the front,
pretty much everybody was singing along to everything for the last half
og the gig. The atmosphere was great. Assault and Battery/Golden Void
were excellent and segued into Where Are They Now? which I've waited to
hear live for a quarter century. Needless to say, I was delighted when,
despite flu, Dave took the lyrics for this one. That ended the set. The
encore ws Paranoia Part 2 which works well and a new track which was
presumably either Take Me To Your Leader or Angela's Android. From what
I could hear of the lyrics I suspect the latter. The start of the track
seemed to echo a 1950's rhyth with the later section reminiscent of Psi
Power. It's another promising new track anyhow. F

Finally they finished with a rousing version of Silver Machine. Arthur
swapped a couple of lines in this song too but it doesn't seem nearly
such a problem to me as in MotU.

Overall I'd say they weren't quite on the form they reached at Brighton
and Walthamstow but a good gig and a great atmosphere and a fine time
seems to be had by all.

There's always a little strangeness at these things.  This time I ended
up next to a guy with a drawing book and what seemed to be crayons.  he
was slashing away at the paper during the gig in various colours and
then flipping the pad at the end of each song.  Expecting this to be
just some stoned idiosyncrasy, I chatted to him.  I still can't decide
if it was a windup but he claimed that he draws impressions of songs on
his pad and then sells the results to Americans and sometimes earns
triple figures (in Dollars I guess) for the results.  He was clear that
it didn't even really much matter which band and cheerfully concurred im
my assessment that this would be money for old rope. He seemed more or
less sober and I know that the art world will do shit like pay a fortune
for a pile of bricks or an unmade bed, so who knows, maybe he was for
real. If anyone knows of this guy, I hae to admit I'm now curious about
it all.

Anyway, that's it until next time...

FoFP