[Norton AntiSpam] Hawkwind: Kids To Space (You Can't Hear them Cry?)

[Mike Montfort]

Great review Jill.  And great story.  I'll have to look out for this 
somehow in the States.

Mike

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Jill Strobridge wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>
> ==============================================
> Jill Strobridge <jill.strobridge at blueyonder.co.uk>
> ==============================================
>
>


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