Hawking Up The Past

(So. I just saw two adverts in a row which started with the word "So" and I was right in the middle of a tirade (one of the adverts featured Jamie Oliver) against this trend in starting sentences with unnecessary words when I had to stop dead - wasn't I guilty of this myself? Yes. I vowed to stop. Never again will I start a post with some word just there to ... to what exactly? Exactly. Unnecessary words.) I watched the Hawkwind documentary on Saturday night. Pretty good, cool sounds - been listening to Space Ritual all the rest of the weekend and it's brilliant - some interesting interviews - not really knowing anything about them beforehand, I got into them when a friend gave me an unwanted Best Of and I thought it had some good tracks on but wasn't too into it until I went back a few years later (earlier this year actually) and loved it and got another couple of albums, but I never really knew anything about the band itself, when I checked them on allmusic the vast array of albums, line-up changes, compilations made me dizzy, I had to look away, unable to cope - where to begin? So the documentary was a blessing, explaining the feuds (Lemmy being hit over the head by muggers and the rest of the band unable to find him just leaving him there and continuing on their way being my favourite story) and giving pointers to the "essential" albums.

One odd thing was the appearance of Sam Fox in some sort of reunion show that happened. After some (approximately 30 seconds) research i discovered this page which runs through the documentary and says of Sam Fox's appearance:

Sam Fox’s appearance seems to be an example of Dave’s possibly misguided view that collaborating with minor league “celebrities” will somehow further the cause. On the other hand, she sang on the “Gimme Shelter” single so is a bona fide Hawkwind vocalist.

I like this understated "possibly misguided".

This site also points out that it was also probably misguided for the main Hawkwind geezer not to appear in the documentary, something I thought, especially as he seemed to know that the others would be appearing and therefore his side of the story would be pretty much ignored.

One of the strangest things I got from the documentary was the way they casually mentioned how they had influenced Punk Rock. Now, this may or may not be true, like I say I'm not up on the history of Hawkwind so couldn't really comment, but my main query was with the way the notion of influence was used. It seemed as though the members of Hawkwind claimed influence on Punk Rock by a simple preceding it in time, the argument was something along the lines of, "We were around in the seventies, at the same time as the future punk rockers were growing up so they obviously knew our music therefore they must have been influenced by them."

This, in a way, is a genius way of thinking about influence. It ignores individuality and personal genius in culture - Malcolm Mclaren created punk rock, but he stole everything off the New York Dolls who were the true geniuses, yeah but what about ... arguments, instead looking culture as a part of the wider society: nothing is born solely from genius, everything must be created out of what has gone before. So that Punk Rock, as a reaction against Prog rock, can be said to be influenced (if only negatively) by it.

There are two things worth thinking about from this:

1) The relationship between Prog Rock and Punk Rock. This is nothing new, isn't Television's "Marquee Moon" pretty much a Prog album disguised as Punk Rock? It's one of those subjects that I often mean to write about but never get round to (like those hundreds of other things I mean to write). Not only Prog's influence on Punk but vice versa, for instance viewing Pink Floyd's albums through the prism of punk-rock one sees themes that were previously obscured (as far as I was concerned anyway, but that's for the piece I may get round to one day...), plus Pink Floyd's "Animals" while being an album I love demonstrates a simplistic politics to match anything by The Clash.


2) By placing the development of Punk Rock in this context we can see that it is not in itself radical. This is important because now isn't it prog rock which is actually the most radical? Here we should point out this idea is already present in 1978 with punk at its height - Rock in Opposition noting the money involved in Punk rock, its radicalness already defeated (bought). This from a pamphlet handed out at the first RIO concert:

National borders do not matter any more. The struggle is between classes & ideologies & not nations. Organised culture industries creating pap & jamming it down everybody; throats have a vested interest in stifling all opposition. Preventing groups from working has been effective - until we start to organise our own work- buying up musicians & then putting the screws on has been a good second line of defence... but when they refuse to be bought?

How will an industry which can CREATE nothing survive when it can't steal anything any more... or will they steal our brains altogether instead?

The Punk Rock template of short catchy songs was always a fertile ground for the money men, for commercial use (both as product and as advertising accoutrement). And isn't it perfect for our current climate of superficial cultural consumption, taking and leaving, nothing to be taken seriously, whereas Prog Rock, with a certain amount of seriousness, of the need for immersion into long tracks, into ideas, into whole albums of ideas, is nothing if not counter to the spirit of the age where irony and simplicity rule.

I was always into punk rock, too young at the time but my musical education revolved around listening to old punk rock records, I still love many of them. It wasn't till I heard The Mars Volta that I began to catch up on some Prog Rock, and that mainly because it can sound so fresh. The Mars Volta blew me away when I first heard them, I became so immersed in their first album, it didn't wash over me, i had to put the work in, and, in modern rock terms, this came as a refreshing change.