Hawkwind: Kids To Space (You Can't Hear them Cry?)

[Jill Strobridge]

Came home from work the other day and found a small card had fluttered 
through my letterbox - the nice postman saying he had a package too large 
for the letterbox - so a long journey down to the postal depot and a long 
wait in the queue on a Saturday morning later I became the proud possessor 
of an extremely large Kids To Space book which turns out to be an eclectic 
collection of children's questions all of which have been given 
comprehensive and sometimes very detailed answers by people who have 
obviously been involved with the subject for so long they can make complex 
things sound very simple.   The questions are ordered into topic groups, 
which must have been a nightmare job for someone, and arranged into three 
parts: Planning, Visiting and Living, and Exploring in Space covering every 
possible angle including health, rockets, alcohol and tobacco, and 
sanitation.   There's a section at the beginning listing questions that 
might encourage you to look at the answers and there's even an index at the 
back but in honesty it's much more entertaining to browse and find things 
like "How much does it cost to get water into space?"   The answer is 
apparently $20,000 per 1.05 quarts.    Admittedly not every answer is that 
informative and unfortunately each sub-section starts with a dreadfully 
childish primary school narrative that even as a kid I think I would have 
found irritating.   However were I still at school and been forced to write 
an essay on space travel this would be a really useful reference book!



Apart from that.  My real education was gained trying to listen to the 
music!  The CD-Rom disc didn't work in the antiquated CD player so I stuck 
it into the computer.   Sadly the combined noise of CD driver and fans 
overpowered my tiny speakers rendering the music virtually inaudible but it 
sounded nicely ambient so I decided to try an alternative method.   Laptop 
wasn't any better so - next plan - try and link the laptop into my 
sound-system speakers.   This is ambitious for me since I hate anything that 
involves plugging things into other things - there's far too much that can 
go wrong in a nasty black-smoke-singed-burning kind of way that things 
involving electricity have a tendency to do but I found a wire with a plug 
at both ends that I was sure I'd used before and it worked last time (I 
think).  I plug it in, turn the volume up slightly to hear....the ominous 
deep rumble that tells you a speaker is about to blow apart at any second. 
Unplug everything fast and dive back into box - find another wire.   This 
has two plugs at one end and one at the other. Maybe?  Plug it in - and 
watch as the laptop screen fades and everything stops working - oh oops - 
have I killed it?   Apparently not.   The battery ran out!   Find a socket 
to plug in the laptop and then have a coffee.  I need it.  Reload CD - turn 
up volume carefully and, yes, we have music!



It's nicely ambient, mostly instrumental, very spacey, well constructed and 
entirely appropriate.   The listing at the end says there are five sections 
from: The Secret Knowledge of Water, Uncle Sam's on Mars, What's That Noise, 
Mars The Journey and Out Here We Are.   The whole set lasts just over 18 
mins and is played three times to accompany all the children's drawings. 
In fact it's the kind of Hawkwind instrumental compilation that some of us 
have already dreamed of putting together and makes for very pleasant 
listening.  Completely different from the current live Hawkwind sound it 
moves from light electronica with long echoing guitar notes into the languid 
guitar and fast bass section of Uncle Sam followed by some more gentle 
electronics interspersed with a touch of the industrial that sounds exactly 
like a sleeping space station ought to sound like. Heavy bass electronics 
give rocket sounds and astronaut transmissions make up the Mars Journey 
track which blends into Out Here We Are with its drifting saxophone element.



A delightful, if somewhat unusual, introduction to Hawkwind and I'd like to 
think that loads of people are going to hear it - however given that it took 
me the best part of an hour to get everything set up I'm not sure how many 
people will make the effort just to listen to a CD-Rom unless they have a 
better sound system on their computer than I have (very possible!).  Perhaps 
some of these tracks will re-appear in other formats - I certainly hope so.



jill




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Jill Strobridge <jill.strobridge at blueyonder.co.uk>
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