Hawkwind 2008 December UK tour

The lights go down, and synth warbles and twitters start… some guitar sounds join in…and then the distinctive opening chords of Master of the Universe… yep, Hawkwind are in town again!

A December Hawkwind UK tour has become something of a tradition, as we've had one for the last five years now.

For me, Exeter 2008 was the best gig since the 1981 tour. Yes, the best for 17 years! Heavier in sound, almost thrashy at times, thanks partly to the addition of ex-Tribe of Cro guitarist Niall Hone… however, he was quite low in the mix, and didn't over-dominate the set, unlike Huw Lloyd-Langdon in 1981.

The overall pace and arrangement of individual numbers was as per the the last few years. As on the 2007 tour, Master of the Universe loses the second vocal portion and segues into Time we Left - and Orgone, with Only Dreaming as a centre-section, was done in the same jaunty fashion as on the 2006 Space Melt and the 2007 Knights of Space DVDs. The moment I heard the start of Orgone, I though: yep, pee-break!

Many Hawkwind fans don't like the "pick 'n' mix" approach of bolting one track onto another and truncating both in the process; and having two examples of this in the first 20 minutes made me feel very dubious about the whole thing.

However, Who's Gonna Win the War and Angels of Death swiftly attoned for the Orgone travesty. They both kicked, in the old-style meaty menacing rock that Hawkwind used to do so effortlessly.

Personnel

Lightshows are an integral part of the Hawkwind experience, and although they don't use strobes as much as they used to, there are still lots of photons being thrown around. The stage was brightly lit this year, and Dave Brock wasn't lurking behind a big bank of keyboards, so we could see more of what was going on. The stage positions (as viewed by the audience, left to right) were:

Tim Blake (keyboards), Mr Dibs (bass), Richard Chadwick (drums), Dave Brock, and then Niall Hone (guitars, keys). This was in a 1-4 formation (to put it in football terms) and Dave's keyboard rig was back-to-back with his stage neighbour, Niall.

The sound was pretty crap at the Exeter show, I thought. Too quiet by half unless very close to the speakers – in which case I found it muddy.

Mid-set newbies

Mid-set is psychologically a good time to introduce new numbers: by now, the band have hopefully shown that there's life in the old buggers yet, and it's time to be a bit more curve ball.

There were two new numbers: Wraith is a lively rocker, but without any memorable hook or riff. Sentinel  is slow and reflective, an almost Floydian number with great Brock guitar.  And Arrival in Utopia and Hassan I Sahba bridged the gap between the two. Just in case the shock of hearing new stuff was too much?

Right to Decide followed. "You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't go forward and you can't go back…"  - Yeah, that hasn't been in their set for over 15 years, I think.

Dibs on bass has fully shown that there's life after Alan Davey's departure, and he enjoys doing narratives too. At this point, he did a dalek-style narrative (based on Fahrenheit 451, I'm told) before the band launch into a long and meaty Damnation Alley. This was the set-closer on most of the gigs. The dancers brandished geiger counters at the audience and the lights pulsed and heads bobbed up and down…

Encore

Starfarer's archive site reports wide variety here, across the tour.  Most shows had Flying Doctor and Silver Machine. Exeter, Frome and London Astoria only had the latter. Manchester additionally had Magnu, whereas Falmouth only had Magnu. The two Welsh shows got Brainstorm. And Newcastle got a bonus track: the Assault / Void / Where Are They Now segue.

In Exeter, I watched Silver Machine with polite interest, wandered around to see how it sounded from the other side (no difference), and took a few photos, but its style hasn't changed much since 1979 and I'm rather tired of it, to be honest. The lightshow went into overdrive, as one would expect,  and then the band trooped offstage. Would they come back? Aaaaaaggh, the house lights have come up!  Onoz! Yep, that's it for another year. What, only a four-minute encore? Sod this, let's go outside and have a cigarette.

Conclusions

OK… so, the first third of the show I was a bit dubious about. The central part and through to the end of the main set was terrific, really building up and kicking ass. However, the encore was pants, a bit of a let-down. Shame, really.

By the way, it looks like there's a 2009 tour shaping up, to celebrate Hawkwind's 40th anniversary. Look out for shows in April and May: Liverpool, Edinburgh, York and Holmfirth appear to have been booked, although there's no mention of this on hawkwind.com yet.


Edited by sonic_assassin - December 18 2008 at 20:40

I saw them in Frome a few weeks back.

Excellent performance.  I'm not that familiar with them though, so most of their tracks were unfamiliar to me.

Frome's venue wasn't that small, I was surprised.  It was in an old Grain warehouse and could hold quite a few thousand people.

I took some photos as well but mine came out not so well... the screen kind of just came out dark.

And did you say Dave had a keyboard setup?  I didn't notice one at Frome.  All their was was Tim and Niall's keyboards.

My photos are quite dark and not that exciting: