Hawkwind - Love in Space (2003) Re-up

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Hawkwind - Love in Space (2003) Re-up

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Just re-released in October 2003, for the first time on DVD, comes this capture of a live performance on the 1995 'Alien 4' tour. It was really the last time (as in most recent) that Hawkwind mounted one of their nationwide-tours-with-a-big-stage-show. Will we see its' like again?

Tracklist: Abducted, Death Trap, Wastelands, Are You Losing Your Mind, Photo Encounter, Blue Skin, Sputnik , Robot, Alien I Am, Xenomorph, Vega, Love In Space, Kapal, Elfin, Silver Machine, Welcome To The Future and (groan) Assassins of Allah. In fact, it's the exact same recording as on the Love In Space live double album. And one nice thing about this that there's more lead guitar than usual from Dave - Sputnik and Love In Space showing this off in particular.

The show starts with two Alien-masked dancers as Ron Tree

intones the spoken-word track Abducted. The wife, hearing this, groaned at the naffness of it, not knowing this particular number. I said to her "you'd really groan if you could see the screen." Ron appeared wearing on his head a contraption resembling a cross between a fishbowl and an anglepoise lamp, which he discards as the band move swiftly into Death Trap. What Ron lacks in energy (he's practically immobile) he makes up in oddity, being painted up like a latter-day Baron Samedi wearing what looks like a rubber scrum cap and swimming goggles. Later on he comes out wearing what looks like cheap antlers made out of tinsel. He does make a great wasted punk Elvis on Robot, though.

The sound quality is excellent and there are some video production values here, too: each track is heralded by on-screen subtitles (which I don't like very much) and distance stage shots of the band are interspersed with freeze-frames of dancers and elements of the lightshow. Best of all, though, are the close-ups on stage, which are angled in such a way as to show what the stage is like as a working environment - rather than the more usual face-on footage of individual band members.

The track Photo Encounter features a very good dance routine which skillfully represents astronauts adjusting the controls of their spacecraft in a weightless environment. The two dancers (one male and one female) stay on stage for Blue Skin and are joined by fire eaters (Kris of course, plus Wango Riley) - and the shortcoings of this exercise are starting to become apparent. Unlike a lot of Hawkwind albums, Alien4 has a reasonably strong concept and story line to it. But the stage show, which could have tied it all together so well, instead consists of a number of disparate elements - all Hawkwind trademarks to be sure (costumed dancers, fire eaters, amazing cosmic lightshow) but the concept gets lost. And this DVD generally spends far too much time lingering on the dancers - good though they are, they're meant to be incidental colour.

Going back to Ron, he cuts a fairly sorry dash in Alien I Am by coming out on stage dressed as the Alien in question. The trouble is, he has to manoeuvre the microphone under his rubber mask in order to be able to sing. And this makes the mask buckle now and then - the effect is more Woolworths than Wolf 457. This is a classic case of the ambitions for the show outstripping the budget, an all too common occurence with some of these elaborate efforts by Hawkwind. And given the general cheesiness of it all, we are in some ways back in Chronicle Of The Black Sword territory. Ron does not help matters by throwing some coquettish attitudes when the lyrics are going "I…have no emotion". This is not the time to start doing impressions of Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited.

The pace picks up at the end, starting with Silver Machine. This seems to be the only part of the DVD where footage from more than one gig is mixed in - Ron appears first as a Smack Bono, secondly as a pudgier, camouflage-clad Richard Beckinsale gone to seed. The main set ends with Welcome To The Future, and then (what else?) Assassins Of Allah is trotted out for the encore. However it's not the blanga version but is actually Space Is Their Palestine, which I like even less than A of A, although it is rescued by the "It Is Written…" section of the original version of Hassan-i-Sahba (this number has too many titles as well as too many appearances at live gigs!). The dancers are prominent once more (after the closing credits have rolled by), Kris and Wango are out there eating fire, the light show has all the stops pulled out, and - it works better like this. Take the Alien 4 theme away and the incoherence of these elements ceases to matter, it's just a great Hawkwind live experience - a real multimedia happening. You don't know what to look at next.

Overall then, a mixed result. This is probably the most professionally produced Hawkwind DVD yet, but it misses the spot in terms of video editing - I would have liked to see more Hawkwind and less dancing. Most of what there is of Hawkwind focuses on Ron, never my favourite member of the band, and there is something about his performance here which manages to combine lethargy with desperation. But the boy can sing! Musically, it stands up alongside the Classic Rock DVD (it's less patchy than that one) and the Chronicle Of The Black Sword DVD (which has better material) - it's only the visuals which I felt were slightly disappointing. But as the soundtrack has been made available previously as the Love In Space album, this DVD maybe would not be considered an essential purchase for those who own that. However, as the original artwork to the album is said to be lost, it may not be reissued anytime soon - and so, if you *don't* already have that album, this DVD *is* an essential purchase. For me this DVD doesn't have the charm of Chronicle Of The Black Sword but neither does it plumb the occasional depths of the Classic Rock or Night Of The Hawks efforts, either. So we'd better make this one a 7 out of 10, I think.

~ starfarer

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Hawkwind - Love in Space (2003) Re-up

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Hawkwind - Love in Space (2003) Re-up

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Hawkwind - Love in Space (2003) Re-up

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Hawkwind - Love in Space (2003) Re-up

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Hawkwind - Love in Space (2003) Re-up

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Hawkwind - Love in Space (2003) Re-up

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