Hawkwind and Arthur Brown Newcastle Academy Dec 19th
Will and I went to see this great double bill at the Academy last Saturday. Hawkwind are celebrating 40 years on the road, and Arthur Brown has been treading the boards for more than that.
We knew the gig was set to start early (the ticket said 6.30 start) so we left in plenty of time to make sure (we thought) that we were there to catch Arthur. We arrived at around 7pm and Athur was already on stage. He’s still a great showman with some mad dancing all over the stage, and great costumes including a sunflower. He did a wonderful version of Fire, backed by a guitarist and keyboard player.
A short break and Hawkwind took to the stage at around 8pm. They have obviously put a lot into this stage show. The lighting is super-psychedlic and the two girl dancers had endless costume changes, starting off as robotic androids, becoming grim reapers for Angels of Death, and transforming into sea creatures in another song. There were many more costumes changes, so many that I can’t remember them all! Hawkwind are playing better than ever these days, with Dave Brock and the band really seeming to enjoy themselves. The set was a mixture of old and new, including old favourite Silver Machine. A few more old favourites would have been welcome (I wanted Master of the Universe and Will wanted the full version of Space is Deep), but hey you can’t complain; its great that the band are still gigging and playing as great as this.
set list: (something like; may not be exactly right) : Lighthouse; Fahrenheit 451; Sentinel; Space is Deep (spoken); Angels of Death; Silver Machine; Green Machine; Wraith; Prometheus; Warriors; Magnu; Tide of the Century; You’d Better Believe It; Levitation; Right to Decide; Spirit of the Age; Encore: Hassan-i-Sahba
website Hawkwind: http://www.hawkwind.com/
website Arthur Brown http://www.arthurbrownmusic.com/
I hate print-out tickets
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