This Hawkwind 12" is really an homage to themselves and an ode to their relationship with the Stonehenge Free Festival; a festival that was certainly at its biggest when this was released in 1984.It was essentially the last of the Stonehenge June festivals as the following year ended in what has now become infamous history.
The title track is joyful, celebratory; even Lemmy lends voice to the football-chant-style chorus.
Brock does his typical piston-like lower arm oriented riff while Huw Lloyd-Langton's floaty lead guitar notes dance gracefully over the top.
'Green Finned Demon' is a strange beast.
Penned by Brock and Bob Calvert, it's a kind of 50's B movie, of the monster variety, in sound.
You'll get what I mean when you hear it.
'Dream Dancers' reveals Dr. Technical's love of electonica and avant-garde experimentation; segueing nicely into Huw Lloyd-Langton's 'Dragons & Fables', sounding very much like a typical Lloyd-Langton Band number rather than a full blown Hawkwind take.
So a bit of a mini-Ummagumma really; the big joint effort juxtaposed with some individual pieces.
As a whole it makes for a good listen.
It was a good period for Hawkwind. The Mother Ship had returned to a positive course; and I believe inspired many a band from around this period to journey off on their own voyages of cosmic exploration.
Hawkwind - Night of the Hawks (1984)
Night of the Hawks
Green Finned Demon
Dream Dancers
Dragons & Fables
This e.p. was dedicated to Barney Bubbles, leaving Planet Earth in 1983.
Excellent vinyl rip @320kbs
Nocturnal raptors here
8 comments:
I like this song, especially Huw Lloyd-Langton's guitar. The drumming, though, is basic and plodding and really drags the song down. With a better drummer and more sparkling production this could even have charted! Good to hear it again though, and the other songs - thanks also for the BIG cover scan!
Never really a band known for their drummers; even Ginger Baker kind of went unnoticed.
According to Lemmy's well funny 'White Line Fever' the real reason he left Hawkwind was down to the drummers...
Shanti, roy
They did have some good drummers though - Terry Ollis suited the early and Space Ritual stuff well (in fact those drum rolls he used to do are part of their signature sound); Simon King was good after this and I think Richard Chadwick, the current drummer, is also pretty good. I thought Baker wasn't heavy enough for the type of music they were playing at the time - this was after Live 79 when they'd got heavier again after the Calvert years - but his style does suit the Levitation album which is probably the sleekest, most sophisticated thing they did. On Night Of The Hawks it might as well have been a drum machine...
It was the King/Powell period ('Astounding Sounds') that Lemmy was really commenting on...
I agree, Ollis was intrinsic to Hawkwind's early sound; and King brought a hell of a lot to 'The Mountain King' album (fucksake; a right couple of anoraks, what!).
The trouble is the real history and critique of Hawkwind has never been achieved; it's been tried several times; but they're no where...
I haven't heard any of the latest Hawkwind material. I'm local to Nik Turner, so see a fair bit of him and what he's up to... he's got a few stories to tell... whether he'd ever be allowed to tell them, well...
roy
I heard that Ginger Baker actually wanted to draft in his old sparring partner Jach Bruce to create some sort of Cream/Hawkwind supergroup,thankfully Dave Brock shot this idea down in flames.Then again who knows what the possibilities could have been, easy laters
Gawd. Does anyone else remember Stacia? She was a large part (in every sense) of the attraction of the 'Wind, back in the day. What happened to her?
If Nik wrote a history of Hawkwind, it would be totally different to Dave Brock's...!
No doubt ending up in court...
Lol, roy
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