review by daniel

Live material is rarely better than studio material. With most live albums you are happy if there are enough new twists and turns in the arrangements to at least motivate the existence of it as a complement to the studio albums. On rare occasions, however, the live material actually improves on the studio material. In most cases the reason for this is that the studio versions lacked intensity, roughness or even simplicity. The problem with Hawkwind and live albums are that they already went for maximum roughness on their studio albums. Add the live roughness and sound quality and you end up with a murky mess that has lost its edge.

Think of your local brute in his prime: It is Tuesday afternoon and he is semi-drunk, loud, scary and fascinating and witty in some primitive way, at least in his young apprentices’ eyes. Then it is Friday night and the brute does what most people vainly do; he tries to boost his confidence and character with a couple of drinks too much. Soon the brute is just a pathetic and way too loud drunk that no one bears to listen to (a state that inevitably will be permanented when he turns 30). He has lost his edge.

I guess that analogy didn’t help, but my point is that most of the songs on this album are brutes turned to drunks. Some of the interludes in the form of short, spoken “poems” with space-themes (what else?) are rather cool but the bottom line is that I prefer the studio versions of all of the songs on the album.