From head to heart
Hawkwind's In The Hall Of The Mountain Grill

Following our retroscope series of latter years, here we go again! Here's Speakers' corner's cousin; From head to heart. Luna Kafé's focused eye on great events, fantastic happenings, absolute milestones, or other curious incidents from the historic shelves'n'vaults of pop'n'rock. Blowing our ears and our head, punching our chest and shaking our heart. Making us go sentimental, but not slaphappy. This moonth the Lunar shuttle takes us deep into space. Space rock, that is. Year 1974. And, the shuttle is steered by the psychedelic space-war-lords themselves. I found this curious live report somehwere on a web site:
"In 1974, at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, CA, USA, Hawkwind appeared at a benefit for Dr. Timothy Leary, who was languishing within the walls of a penal facility at that time. Playing a concert on behalf of Dr. Leary, was quite appropriate for the members of Hawkwind, whose mind-altering music, combined with their informal lifestyle, strongly reflected their wholehearted devotion to the psychedelic mindset. For a few hours that evening, it was as if the 1960s had never ended. [...]"
"At Zellerbach Hall, Hawkwind included Dave Brock on guitar and vocals, Nik Turner (wearing a strange outfit that made him look as if he had just arrived from another planet) on saxophone and flute, Del Dettmar on keyboards, Simon House on keyboards and violin, Lemmy on bass and vocals, and Simon King on drums. Appearing with Hawkwind was Stacia, a young woman of impressive proportions who danced wildly across the stage while Hawkwind played. In those days, a performance by Hawkwind was a truly awesome experience: extremely loud, extremely intense, and extremely forceful, conveying a dizzy feeling of hallucinogenic communion. Hawkwind's music was dense and relentless, with a heavy approach that hammered the helpless audience into a state of happy confusion. The overall effect, enhanced by the unusual lighting and the free-form motions of Stacia, was thoroughly overwhelming. They would set up a hypnotic pattern, with two or three chords which had interesting added tones like ninth or thirteenth chords, and everyone would push the music along in a spacey manner. The spaceship took off...[...]"
"They had a dry ice machine. Strobe lights activated and Stacia would dance across the stage in a mysterious way, with eyes painted like a black mask. It was very entertaining. Nik Turner wore a lizard head. They were out of their minds... or, should I say, out of this world...[...] After Hawkwind had been playing for fifteen or twenty minutes, the force of their music caused me to lose my connection with the framework of time. It seemed that Hawkwind had been performing for hours and hours and hours...". (britrockbythebay.blogspot.no/)

Hawkwind
In The Hall Of The Mountain Grill
United Artists Records

'We're sick of politicians' harassment and laws
All we do is get screwed up by other people's flaws
World turned upside down now there's nothing else to do
But live in concrete jungles that just block up the view

And that ain't no joke, you can disappear in smoke
And that ain't no joke, you can disappear in smoke
And I'm telling you, that it ain't no lie'

In The Hall Of The Mountain Grill was the fourth studio album by the long-haired lads from Ladbroke Grove, west London. The album title, apart from its inspiration from Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt and Edvard Grieg's famous musical interpretation, was taken from a café in Portobello Road, close to Ladbroke Grove, called The Mountain Grill that the band used to visit in the early days.

Although the masters of the universe on their quest into deeper space with Lemmy on board disappeared in smoke, they returned later, they're still around, played in Oslo only a couple of days ago, still led by guitarist and vocalist Dave Brock, the only surviving member from the early classic line-ups.

Copyright © 2014 JP