Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Fake Hawkwind and Real Hawkwind

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:36:52 -0700

I've been on a low-grade Hawkwind binge since watching the Hawkwind - Do Not Panic BBC 4 documentary last week, and the binge has expanded to include not just Hawkwind and Hawkwind splinter groups, but bands influenced by Hawkwind as well. Which is how I came to be listening to Electronic Mind Project, the 2001 CD by Australian band Alpha Omega; it could almost be a lost Hawkwind album. If given a task to create a fake Hawkwind song, I don't think you could do any better than "Space Pilot"--

Electronic Mind Project - 10 - Space pilot

Alpha Omega

Ooh, as of right now the whole Hawkwind documentary is on YouTube in nine parts. Here's the first:

Hawkwind - Do Not Panic part 1

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Deep funk around the world, continued

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:44:04 -0700

I'll follow the Deep Funk thread from yesterday's entry in this game of musical association. Traveling down to the bottom of the globe, the Bamboos serve up deep funk in Australia from their home base in Melbourne. (Band website here, MySpace page here.) Their special ingredient is the flute playing of Bruce Sandell, pushed to the fore in "The Bamboos Theme" from Rawville:

01-the_bamboos-the_bamboos_theme

The Bamboos

Nice breaks in that track! And that is my kind of album cover; the design looks a bit like the first stained glass project my son and I completed, which looks something like this:

Stained Glass Design 1

Bamboos guitarist Lance Ferguson is also a member of the new funky trio Cookin' on 3 Burners, whose album Baked, Broiled, and Fried is out on the fabulous Freestyle Records label. Now I am left with a dilemma about where to go next: more deep funk around the world, another band with a self-titled theme song, or another song that sounds like this one. (Or is that a trilemma?) I will probably resolve it using the time-honored "whichever one I find first" method. Not that it matters, 'cause it's all good.

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Lost 80s: The Truth

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:24:28 -0700

I watched the classic 1987 sci-fi thriller The Hidden with the kids yesterday. Kyle MacLachlan stars as an FBI agent who enlists ace cop Michael Nouri's help in tracking down a sluglike alien who takes over human bodies and makes them steal fast cars and listen to loud music. There's a lot of not-quite-mainstream new wave rock on the soundtrack that manages to capture some of the musical excitement of that era. The song playing during a scene in a record store , "Weapons of Love," sounded so familiar, but I couldn't quite place it; the closest I could guess was INXS, but the voice is wrong. It is actually by a different Australian band, The Truth, from their 1986 album of the same name:

The Truth - Weapons of Love

The Truth

I've called this a "Lost 80s" track, but it's not so lost that it didn't appear on a Lost Hits of the 80's CD from EMI Special Products. It's also a guilty pleasure for me: I know it's vapid and formulaic (and cribs some lyrics from "Gimme Shelter"), but they sure do nail the formula! And I still think it sounds like an INXS outtake, or even a... what's the opposite of outtake? Intake? Input? Final inclusion?

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