Friday 17 December 2010

Hawkwind in Oxford

A bitterly cold night as we made our way to Cowley for the Hawkwind show. We had hoped to have something to eat in the burger place where we sat next to Calexico a couple of years ago. However that seems to have disappeared and we settle for something else.

We arrive at the venue in time for the last three songs by support band, The Jokers - two own compositions and a cover of The Beatles' Helter Skelter. Not impressed at all - and the guitarist is particularly ridiculous.

The first sign of Hawkwind is the appearance os a huge fat guy who I thought I recognised as the bassist - identifiable as not being a roadie by his jaunty US army helmet with attached video cameras. Then there is a strange moment as 6 relatively old blokes wander on stage who turn out to be the band. Dave Brock is now nearly 70 years old (but actually looked quite well, though he did have a couple of breaks during the show - perhaps for a lie down?)

The music is a sequence of longish jams with a surprisingly modern 90s / 00s trance feel. I recognise three or four tracks - for instance, Angels of Death and Spirit of the Age. Some moments were certainly extremely good, but the overall sound reminded me of Ozric Tentacles - no bad thing of course

But the highlight of the show for me were the two dancing girls. Initially appearing dressed in Metropolis-style robot outfits with elaborate headresses, they appeared a further half dozen or so times. Three times this involved them on stilts. In each case, the outfits were really good. I especially liked the green bikinis and headresses that they wore for an indian inspired dance, and the white masks and white robes they wore another time. Overall this was really excellent I thought.

Overall, a pretty good night out - our first for a while

Dancers of stilts

The very erotic white masks



One of the current publicity photos - the girls in their green bikinis and headresses. Their Kali-style Indian dance was perhaps the single highlight of the evening

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