Hawkwind

Hawkwind were never a band that the BBC were comfortable with but they made some remarkable live recordings for ‘Auntie Beeb’ over the years and this 3CD set contains some excellent materials.

CD1 is from the Friday Rock Show, this recorded live at Reading Festival in 1986 where Hawkwind were headlining the Friday. The lineup of Dave Brock, Harvey Bainbridge, Huw Lloyd-Langton, Alan Davey & Danny Thompson Jr make a mighty noise and the tracks are pretty representative of the band at that time. A stunning version of ‘Assault and Battery’, a very well received ‘Master Of The Universe’, ‘Assassins Of Allah’ has all the power and repetitive riffery you would expect but is missing Bob Calvert’s vocals and they close the set with a brilliant ‘Silver Machine’ with Lemmy & Dumpy Dunnell guesting.

CD2 was recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in 1988 and, as you might expect, has a much better sound quality than the Reading set. The lineup is the same as on CD1. They had just released ‘The Xenon Codex’ but only ‘The War I Survived’, ‘Mutation Zone’ and ‘Wastelands Of Sleep’ from that album are featured. The whole set has a strong performance, Hawkwind feeling very comfortable at ‘Hammy Odeon’ with top notch versions of ‘Heads’ and ‘Brainstorm’. The only weak number, for me, is ‘Sonic Attack’ which had become a joke number by this time.

CD3 covers two Radio shows, 10 years apart. The first few tracks are from 1985 with the same lineup as on CD1 & CD2 with the latter few from 1995 with a lineup of Dave Brock, Ron Tree, Alan Davey & Richard Chadwick. As you might expect, the sound is very different between the two shows but the underlying power of Hawkwind still shows through pretty well.

If you know Hawkwind, then you will know what to expect from this box. The recordings are very good and there are 16 previously unreleased tracks so plenty for completists.
If you are not an afficionado, there are other recordings that serve as a better place to start.