Hawkwind, Motorhead, GNU, Kate a witch?, Inner City Unit, etc.

[Doug Alan <nessus>]

I'm forwarding some messages from Andy Cobley, because he seems to be
having some difficulty getting through to Love-Hounds (though I cannot
fathom why....)  And as long as I'm forwarding this stuff, I might as
well comment....

> From: COBLEY A (on DUNDEE DEC-10) <A.Cobley%dundee.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa>
> Date:        Wednesday,  2-Oct-85 12:39:32-BST

> 	  Hello to all love hounds,this is my first message to the
>	  net so I'd just like to say hello.  The reason I joined
>	  this net was so that I could have a opertunity to discuss
>	  HAWKWIND which as far as I'm concerned are the best band in
>	  the universe (appologies to all the kate bush fans but I
>	  think I was put off by the wuthering heights single though
>	  I do think 'Running up that hill' is very good.)

I've never ever met anyone who likes Hawkwind and doesn't like KB's
album "The Dreaming".  Have you heard this album?  It's about as similar
to "Wuthering Heights" as Nina Hagen is to Joni Mitchel....

>	  Specifically I would like to know what people think about
>	  HAWKWIND in the states, over here in Britain they are one
>	  of three things ;-
>				1:ignored,
>				2:dispised
>				3:loved

Here, no one has ever heard of them, so they are either ignored or
loved.  People who would despise them have never heard of them.  This is
much the same as for Kate Bush in most of the U.S., except that Kate
Bush is probably 100 times more well-known.

>	  in that order.  The music press really hate them (perhaps
>	  because they can not control the band or the fans by what
>	  they write ) and we very rarley see them on tv ( with only
>	  four channels what do you expect ?).

Better than here!  We don't see them at all.

>	  So a sort of underground has grown up with the main way of
>	  finding information is by word of mouth or mailing lists.
>	  Anyway would people care to have a discussion of HAWKWIND,
>	  their music, image, etc.

Sure.

> From: COBLEY A (on DUNDEE DEC-10) <A.Cobley%dundee.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa>
> Date:        Monday,  7-Oct-85 15:24:07-BST

>	lets errmmm
>	lets do a short and heavy, a taste here, aum
>	just to get us right up and go out the door with

>	AAAAAAUUUUMMMM...

> Anybody who reconises that will know it comes from the hawkwind log
> that was given away free with the X IN SEARCH OF SPACE album,

Hey!  My "In Search of Space" album didn't come with nuthin!  Lousy
no-good American reprints!

> you will also know of the text that follows it, a short story about
> god (I think) before creation working out how He's going to make it
> all work.  The story is'nt credited to any one but I'm sure I've seen
> it somewhere before , anybody know where ???

> Also i'm trying to find out where the term HEAVY METAL came from, I
> believe it was first coined but buroughs (sp?) (either edger rice or
> william) but I'm not sure. IDEAS???

Yeah, this was all discussed in net.music a while back.  William
Burroughs coined the term in one of his books, and then Stephenwolf read
the book and used the word in "Born To Be Wild".

> On a more serious note anybody heard of the operating system GNU and
> know where I can get a copy?

Yeah, the project is being done by someone who hangs around MIT, Richard
M. Stallman.  He is also the inventer of EMACS.  I don't think GNU is
finished yet, but a public domain EMACS for Unix has been finished.
You can probably contact him at RMS@MIT-MC.ARPA.

> MOTORHEAD. anyone heard of them ?

I'm sure!  Motorhead is fairly well known in the U.S.  They even get
played on MTV.  They even get some good press now and then, sometimes
being seen as one of the originators of hardcore thrash music.  Are they
unknown in England or something?

> anyone like them ?

Not me.

> In my opinion they are on of the best live bands around, too loud for
> most people, but what the heck? do you want to live for ever.

Sorry if I don't enjoy permanent hearing damage!  A few too many Motorhead
concerts and soon Motorhead is the only music you'll be able to hear!

On the other hand, Nik Turner's group, Inner City Unit, is wonderful --
very deserving of being a friend and relation of Hawkwind.  I just got a
tape copy of "Punkadelic" from someone who picked up the album in
Switzerland.  It's great.  I've never seen an Inner City Unit album in a
record store, though.  Has any one else ever heard them?  Does anyone
know where one can find their albums?

Nil Turner also has an album called "Sphinx" which features the Steve
Hilliage band.  It's *great* pseudo-Egyptian space music.  I only have a
tape, though.  I sure wish I could find the album!

On Hawkwind's album "Friends and Relations Volume 3", there is an
excellent song "Vampire" by a group called "Stravinsky's Hoe".  Does
anyone know anything more about this group?

> On a more gental note ever heard of TIM BLAKE, he played with the
> hawks for a short time in the late seventies, but has a couple of
> albums of his own out ( CRYSTAL MACHINE , NEW JERUSELEM).  There great
> for a quite night in when your in THAT state of mind, they just sort
> of drive your mind along at a nice slow pace, floating free anarchy.

> Its taken a week and a half to work out RUTH stood for running up that
> hill , could we have a glossery?.  Over here in england we haven't seen
> much of the video probably due to the lack of music on tv over the
> summer (the tv companies think 'ROCK' music comes out in the winter
> (creatures of the night? we are perhaps)).I dont think ruth is at all
> like a disco track, its far to fast

Ah, but the twelve inch single version has a slower beat, doesn't it?
I'll have to go home and time it....

> with no silly hook line (ie "stay on the scene, like a sex machine")
> and I do think that the synth line running through it really does make
> the song ( It counter points the fast drum sounds)..As for evil, PHAA,
> VENOM or BLACK WIDOW now their evil, KB doesn't have a hint of
> demonics about her, apart from the ocasional half strangled waill.

Well, Kate certainly does have lots of music that is supposed to be eerie
or scarry or unnerving -- she uses backwards vocals and tortured screams
and haunting music, etc., but if this makes KB a witch, then Alfred
Hitchcock must be the devil himself.

>			love and peace
>			andy

Ditto.

-Doug

P.S. ("Are you a good witch or a bad witch?")  If someone thinks that KB
is a witch, you can tell them that Doug has read hundreds of articles on
and interviews with KB and can *guarantee* that she is as nice and
wonderful a person as is humanly possible.  In fact, she's *too* nice!
Sometimes you just really want her to say "Fuck off shit head!", but she
never does.... she's always the definition of kind and considerate.

This is a quote from an article in the NME in '83 that typifies
what I feel from her interviews and what I have seen
people write about her personality:

	[From my interview with her] I've got only one clear impression
	of Kate Bush's personality: she's sweet.  She wouldn't stomp a
	spider if was three inches wide and crawling through her hair;
	she wouldn't shout at anyone no matter how obnoxious they were
	being.  I got the feeling that all the energy other 25 year olds
	might expend on being sassy, sexy and a minor hell-raiser in
	order to impress their personality on the world, for her is
	contained and released in her work.

And I'm not saying any of this just because she's one of my idols.  For
example, Roger Waters, who's another one of my idols, is a totally crazy
bastard.  But somewhere in there (you can tell from his very moving and
powerful lyrics), his heart is in the right place.