Hawkwind vs Pink Floyd

Hawkwind hands down no contest. Discuss. Freakiest band ever.

nah but hawkwing are    good post but 2 totally different bands   seen both live and the feeling is so different  Floyd is almost reverentail and churchlike to me ( love em by the way)  While Hawkwind just overwhelm you with sound and pulse   well in the old days anyway    good post tho

Floyd are the better band in terms of musicanship and consistency, but the Hawks output is more varied (although some is dreadful) and they are more 'fun'

progkidjoel wrote: Does it seem like we're having loads of "Pink Floyd VS [other prog band]" polls lately? Anywho, Floyd. I like their music more than that of Hawkwind, and historically, they're much more important and influential than Hawkwind.

Floyd, are more influential in prog, certainly, but the Hawks influence croses many genres, from punk to Indie to dance music. Hawkwind are something of a musical anomoly. They are desparatly unfashionable. They are very old, but they still have a certain credibility among the younger generation, certainly in the UK. According to Dave Brock the audiences are younger now, than they were in the 80's. Hawkwind benefitted a great deal from the rave culture, and the re-emergence of psychadelic drugs at the time.

I think they are seen as a genuinely rebellious band, who ignored all musical convention, and generally hated the music business.

Edited by Blacksword - October 08 2009 at 04:50

I like Pink Floyd too but right now I probably prefer the Hawks. They've got more of an "outsider art" ethos which you see in their music being much more informal and I also think this is one reason their discography is much more varied.

Is this a serious question? Pink Floyd, no doubt.

Pink Floyd, but it doesn't mean Hawkwind isn't a great band.

Hawkwind for me. one of my favorite bands. they were more influenced by early Kraut than by Pink Floyd, by the way, and Amon Düül 2 bass player Dave Anderson (on their first two albums) played with Hawkwind too for some time ("In Search of  Space" has Anderson on bass)

Vibrationbaby wrote: Blacksword wrote: Floyd are the better band in terms of musicanship and consistency, but the Hawks output is more varied (although some is dreadful) and they are more 'fun' Agree that the Hawks are more fun. The thing about Floyd that irks me is that so many people think that it is so way cool to be into them. To high on the over familiarity scale wnen there are so many others such as Hawkwind And Hawkwind has always managed to regroup and do something vastly different. When Lemmy got sacked that`t when all the different lineups and srylistic changes began although there had been a few prior to that. There`s not much in Hawkwind`s canon that I won`t listen to whereas the early Floyd psyc material strikes me as plain silly. Never could understand what was so special about Syd Barret. He freaked out on LSD and lost his mind be cause of another condition he had that didn`t agree with the LSD. He played on one album and he becomes what Floyd is all about.

Barrets Floyd dont do too much for me either, but I am a big fan of what they went on to produce. All things weighed up I would say that I'm a bigger Floyd fan, but the Hawks have a special place in my heart. Some great musicians passed through their ranks over the years, but Hawkwind was never really about musicianship imo, it was about the spirit of the band, and each album was an indicator of both the mental and creative state they were in at the time. Thats not say that musically they didn't pull some remarkable tricks out of the bag at times. I think what puts people off Hawkwind is the inconsistency of their playing and production. It's one thing, and a good thing, not knowing what a band is going to do next, but when there's a 50% chance it's going to be painful to the ears, I think that drives many prog fans away.

Also, some people knock the Calvert albums, but I think they are amoung their best. The transition from 'Warrior on the edge of Time' and 'Astounding sounds' is, well...astounding. It is a completely different band, playing a different style of music. True progression you could say. Crimson were similar in this respect.

Hey! I've just been on Amazon and found that PXR5, Chronicle of the BlackSword, and Quark... are now available on CD!!!!

I'd given up on getting these albums on CD. This is quite a big event for me! I should probably get out more..

Credit card at the ready!