HW: Cambridge Corn Exchange, Friday 17th

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 19-Dec-2004 21:39, Jon Jarrett wrote:
> Dave appeared
> to have no sytnths or keyboards at all! This turned out not to be the
> case, he was getting his favourite `laser attack' noise out of a box in a
> stack which I suppose must have been a sampler often enough, but still,
> nowhere to hide.

Which is good, but I spotted his various boxes sitting back on the side
of the drum kit and thought it was still more synth gear than a
guitarist should be allowed.

> Also playing through a Pod, both guitars (he started
> with a wood-finish one

Gibsonish, if not actually a Gibson.  I've seen it before in pics and
probably on stage, but never close enough to get a good look at.

Re Jason the keys player:
> He was pretty good, never lost the pace,
> and provided live keyboards for most of the set, even over sampled stuff
> and wave sequences, which made it all sounds much more organic than I'd
> been expecting from the three-piece.

Should have ditched the samplers and wave station stuff for _all_ live
synths!  It was bizarre to see this Jason dude moving his hands around
when he was quite frequently drowned out by synths and samples that he
was clearly not playing.

> ?Intro poem [Mike H. reckoned this was Calvert but I hope not as though I
>         didn't know it I thought it was pretty childish]
> Spirit of the Age
> Sword of the East

Have to admit I paid little mind to the intro poem (it was an intro,
after all), but the two actual songs were a strong opener.  Good stuff.
 Dave was audible :)

> Greenback Massacre
> Psychedelic Warlords

These were, from where I was standing, a bit weak (which is a shame,
since I know PsyWar at least shouldn't be).  The first was a bit
monotone and, alas, the second as well.  I could only hear this sort of
vast synth wash, which kind of sucked the energy out of the vocals.
It's possible there were some mixing problem, since I could hear
everything except the bass and guitar most of the time, unless the
synths dropped out.  But Keith assured me this was really rocking over
on Dave's side of the stage (I was in front of Alan, and the bass rig is
usually a good thing to be in front of :) where Dave was really loud.
Not on the other side!  It was weak.  Oh well ....

> Digital Nation

I thought this was pretty much an all right song, though it would have
been rather better if the band had play their instruments on it!

> Assassins of Allah->Space is their Palestine->Assassins of Allah
> Technoland [poem read by Dave]

AoA>SITP>AoA was OK, though I was suffering from the +samples -Dave
situation.  Ended strong, though.  And I was amused by Technoland, since
quantity of sequencing in the set already let me know the machines had
taken over ;)

> Angels of Death

This was slow and weak when it started; more like Angels of Slack.  It
sorted itself out towards the end though.

> Ode to a Timeflower

For a technoish track, this sounded pretty cool, I thought.  Calvert was
utterly indistinguishable, though, so they could have easily had anyone
saying anything (live, even!) and it would have been equally cool.

> To Love a Machine

I kinda dug this.  It didn't do much but get loud, and then quiet, and
then loud again while repeating a lot -- but that's pretty solid HW
territory :)

> Ten Seconds of Forever

The sequenced backing tracks were completely wrong.  They sounded
vaguely perky and groovy, which didn't suit the vocal delivery
(classically omninous) at all.

> Angela Android

This was all right, though Richard clearly need to get out more ;)

> Brainstorm pt. 1
> Elfin
> Brainstorm pt. 2
> *
> Brainbox Pollution
> Master of the Universe
> Welcome to the Future

All this rocked totally (though the transition to Elfin in the middle of
Brainstorm didn't really work terribly well).  Still, a strong finish,
with much less sequencing and consequently the bass and guitar much more
audible (from where I was standing, anyway!) which is, clearly, to be
preferred.

>         Technical problems seemed to dog the set, unfortunately. Alan's
> bass seemed to be running through some effect in the PA that made it sound
> oddly like the production effect on _Yule Ritual_, which was fine until
> the noise he was getting out of towards the end of `Greenback Massacre'
> (which I think is still a long way from being his best, but
> anyway) apparently blew something somewhere and after a few seconds of
> unpleasant noises as if the jack was coming out (which it wasn't) the
> soundman hauled it right down in the mix and then Dave's guitar to follow
> it.

Yeah, that sounded like a blown PA speaker to me rather than anything
specifically coming from Alan's rig.  The result was as described,
though, with Alan and Dave completely overwhelmed (on that side) by the
synths/sequencers.

> And hearing `Welcome
> to the Future' again brought a big warm smile to my face and made me cheer
> a great deal, I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it.

Yes, that really made things end with a bang.  Very good.

>         My impression, though, overall (you can stop reading now if you
> like) was a real quality control problem. From the floor, to me, it seemed
> as if the band had no idea what was good and what wasn't in their
> set.

I pretty much agree with everything Jon says following his remarks
above, though I guess I liked "To Love a Machine Better" (but then I
wasn't paying much attention to the lyrics :)

> I said it was personal, and it is, of course, because what
> it's coming down to is: "if I were Hawkwind I wouldn't do it like that". I
> say this sort of thing about other bands around my girlfriend and she
> offers to buy me a guitar for next birthday to remind me gently that I
> actually can't do any of this stuff myself. And yeah, it's all very well
> acting the part of armchair creative director but Deb Frost would have
> torn me limb from limb for lack of valid experience if she were still
> reading, and she'd have been right. What it comes down to is, Hawkwind put
> on a show with lots of good stuff in which I myself thought was badly
> matched up and linked.

Well, though I won't claim to play as well as Dave or Alan (and I
certainly can't drum as well as Richard, who for all his electronic toys
seems quite a solid drummer), I have toddled out upon the boards with
guitar and bass occasionally, and I would agree that the "production"
side of things was definitely the weak link.  Things were not working
smoothly and the basic vibe was suffering from it (as well as more basic
sound reinforcement problems).  I have tremendous confidence that if one
forced Dave, Alan, Richard, and whatever keysman to get out there and
blast away at their instruments, that with a semi-decent mix (we're
talking about a basic 4-piece set-up here) and some thought about how to
go from one song to another, they could put on a blinding show.  Less
(in terms of complexity) would be more (in terms of rocking).

> But it can't just be that I was younger and more
> enthusiastic when I thought they were doing it right, can it? On the other
> hand, it doesn't really seem more likely that they could collectively lose
> it

Oh, I dunno ....  Collectively losing it is one of the things at which
Hawkwind have always excelled :)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/