Burg Herzberg 2004

Burg Herzberg 2004

Many, many thanks to Alfred Koessl, Bernhard Pospiech and Pierre of Dutchwind for this page. The first review is by Bernhard, and all the photos, except where noted, are from Alfred. Pierre wrote the 2nd review

Left: "Gimme yer wallet or else." Fortunately, Alan's bodyguard (above left) had other ideas, hence the broad smile on Alan's face!

I managed to get to the 1st Hawkwind gig in Germany for 8 years. And it was a great one!! I met lot of folks from the lists: Mike Holmes, Keith Henderson, Nick Lee, Alfred Koessl, Rainer Wangler, Andreas Stuewe, Dietrich Pless, Christos. Had a great time…

I had the chance to chat with The Captain for about 20 minutes and of course Richard, Alan and Keith Barton were not far away. No new t-shirt, poster or CD. Just the familiar stuff.

Hawkwind hit the stage at 23:59h (after all hell was let loose with massive black clouds and heavy lightning, and it pissed down for about 30 minutes) and they played a blinding 90-minute set.

Here is the track listing:

Thanks to Bernhard for this photo

Intro; Assault & Battery; Golden Void; Where Are They Now; Out Here We Are; Sword Of The East; Right Stuff; Paranoia; Angels Of Death; Brainstorm; Psychedelic Warlords; Wings; Watcher; Spirit Of The Age; Hassan-i-Sahba; Space Is Their; Hassan-i-Sahba; Brainbox Pollution

It was pissing down for the most part, but no-one cared. The band had fun. And we had fun as well !! Only Dave, Alan and Richard were on stage but we all had the feeling that there were more. It was one of the heaviest sets Hawkwind have ever played. I don’t know what happened to Dave but I have NEVER heard him play so many (and excellent) guitar solos !!!!!

Shots of the band playing. Dave, left, is once again on the Les Paul after having used the Westone at Ruisrock a week earlier. Above, Dave is on the right of the shot, silhouetted

The highlights were without doubts: ‘The Watcher’ (Dave played a guitar solo throughout the song); ‘Brainstorm’ (again, lots of guitar here); and ‘Spirit of the Age’. ‘Space Is Their (Palestine)’ was very interesting, too. There were lots of stereo effect during the songs. The 2 songs I could live without were ‘Wings’ and ‘Out Here We Are’.

Cheers,

Bernhard

Two more live photos, courtesy of Alfred. Dave and Richard silhouetted, above, and a "motion shot" on the right, proving that the lightshow did consist of more than a white light!

It must have been one of those days for the band to get hassled. Eventually Dave gives in and mimes the keyboard parts to Time We Left, as requested...

Above: (L-R) Alfred, Rainer & Harald

Dutchwind goes to Germany

After Hawkfest 2002 we were so thrilled we decided that we would do the Hawkfest every year! So it was a major disappointment when we noticed in Spring 2004 that there was no Hawkfest planned for this summer. Instead of driving to England we decided that we would go to the Burg Herzberg Festival in Germany this summer. For us (Frank, Frank, Pierre and Anne) it took us a 6 hour drive from Holland and we arrived at the festival on Friday at 9 PM. Jasper and Laura had already arrived (on Thursday) and we met them at the campsite. We were lucky to find enough space for all of us just inside the gate of the festival site! We could hear Birth Control playing but we had to set up our trailer tent first…

We are also into Krautrock, so this would also be a nice opportunity to see (and hear of course!) the legendary Guru Guru. I have some of their albums including ‘Der Electroluch’ and ‘Hinten’. I thought they played ‘Der LSD-March’, but most songs I didn’t recognize. They weren’t as freaky as I thought they would be, but it was quite a good gig. A David Gilmour 1987 look-a-like was playing flute and guitars… By the way, Mr Quimby's Beard was excellent! They played a lot of new songs and the new drummer played very, very tight. No lead guitar player any more, but this new line-up is much more compact, and I think it is an improvement.

Maybe we will write a longer review of Guru Guru and Mr Quimby’s Beard another time, but first of all: the energy left from this weekend we will spend for writing about the Hawkwind gig, the main reason Dutchwind went to Germany (besides the excellent German Beer of course, haha!)

Saturday started out being sunny. Later in the afternoon we met and spoke with Mr. Dibs and Keef at the campsite. They also were enjoying the festival but right then they were in a hurry because another rain shower was coming. Dibs, (DJ Satan) and Keef: we hope to see you later this year at the ‘Space is the Place Festival’ in Holland! During the Caravan set we met Andreas, Peter and his son, and a lot of their friends from Germany. The Dutchwind meeting point worked: we thought we were smart having a party tent set up at the festival site, but because we had forgotten the roof sail it would not help that much later the evening. But anyway, it is always super to meet Andreas and Peter and have a nice chat with them. Wir haben viele Spass gemacht! The beer-drinking tempo went faster and faster and several joints were smoked: the spirit was super! It went even more super but fuzzier by the time Peter brought in a bottle of Ballantine’s Whiskey! (So it would appear - Ed.)

The crowd. Shame the setlist didn't include 'Heads'

The festival setting. A whole lotta Marlboro being smoked (or food being cooked, I suppose)

Above: We are looking in on you now...but (left) only until the zoom stopped working...bugger it!!!

Below & right: more views of the festival setting. And a Coffee Shop, eh?!

Right: snap-happy Harald
Below: Nick Lee and his mate Ian.

During the Anekdoten set the sky became dark. Not only because night had fallen, there were a lot of dark clouds above the festival site and the stage. The wind started to blow, it wasn’t a hawkwind any more but a real HAWKWIND! Within a few minutes it was thundering and raining like hell! After our party tent was blown away I ran to the camping site to rescue our trailer tent and my girlfriend who was sleeping in it. Fortunately she was OK and nothing was really damaged. It was raining and blowing so hard, I thought Hawkwind wouldn’t set up their gear at all… But when we came back to the festival site I saw Mr. Dibs, Keef Barton, Richard Chadwick and Alan Davey setting up the equipment. That was a relief! We had lost Andreas and Peter during the storm, but we hadn’t lost the bottle of whiskey! The party went on…

We went forward to the stage and enjoyed the sound-check by the guys. I always love this moment. Especially at both Hawkfests, it was great and it seemed to me that it took several hours… I guess one hour after scheduled, the Captain himself went on the stage to fine-tune the settings of his equipment. Special work, only for the Captain! Alan came on, searching for the right patches on his workstation and computer. He was playing a Korg 01RW workstation, probably Brock’s old one. Alan hadn’t brought his Wavestation EX with him. All the equipment was linked into a computer, probably a Mac. It was for us the first time to see him playing with a computer. Fantastic, it still looks like rock‘n’roll, even with that flat monitor on stage! Another new thing for us was seeing Brock playing the Gibson Les Paul. I also noticed that Brock was using a new guitar effect: the red Line 6 POD - it was situated above his gear. I’ve been wanting to buy this effect myself for a long time, now I definitely will: what a great sound! Combined with the Les Paul it was a hard, warm and full guitar sound the captain presented us! Brock had brought with him fewer electronic devices than he used to. He only used one or two modules and I guess an Alesis MMT8 sequencer. He also used a Pioneer CD mixer - this last one he used for sure for the Brainstorm-intro. When we saw this setup we thought this would be a more rocky evening instead of a spacey one. But that was completely wrong! During the concert, I wasn’t sober at all anymore, but the music spaced me out completely. The bass sound was also hard, maybe it was too distorted. But for me it was not irritating, I love Alan’s bass playing and his bass sound.

Slowly Hawkwind took over the wind and as if the gods were playing with it, the rain stopped. Only a few drops were teasing us during the concert. The intro started and the opening song of the set was Assault and Battery followed by the Golden Void and Where Are They Now. Then a new song was played, Out Here We Are, we presume. After this one I went to the bar as fast as I could to buy some fresh beer for everybody. I couldn’t taste the whiskey any more… I could hear very clearly the opening of Sword of the East, and I noticed that the Captain was playing short solos in between the chords. When I came back to the front of the stage with the beers we had to drink fast because it was time to jump about: the Right Stuff. The Paranoia theme and Angels of Death followed. Afterwards the ‘The Captain Speaks’ intro from Mission Control started for the Brainstorm intro, without the speech of the Captain himself. I think it came from the CD mixer. Followed of course by a storming version of Brainstorm with some new arrangements in the middle part. Psychedelic Warlords, always stunning! Next song was for me one of the highlights of the concert: Wings. Normally a slower, relaxing song, but this time it worked very well! Followed by another highlight: the Watcher… Spirit of the Age sounded somewhat different to me, but as usual a singalong. I knew the end of the concert was drawing close when they started to play Hassan-i-Sahba, as it is always played at the end of the set. Space is their Palestine was in between.

When they finished the regular set the crowd were screaming for more. They had to come back, and yes they did! Brainbox Pollution was the encore. Then they left for good. Despite all the screaming and yelling… Mr. Dibs packed the equipment away for Alan Davey and Keef was handling the stuff for the Captain. Richard had to do all the packing for the drums by himself. We went to a bar to discuss the concert. We all were very excited and we were more talking and screaming to each other more than we were listening to each other! Too much smoking, too many drinks, but never too much Hawkwind… The next day we had to drive back to Holland. During that drive, we were very tired, so all the more reason to finally listen to each other. We came the the conclusion that the set list was as follows:

intro / assault and battery / golden void / where are they now / out here we are / sword of the east /
right stuff / paranoia / angels of death / intro to brainstorm / brainstorm / psychedelic warlords / wings /
the watcher / spirit of the age / Hassan-i-Sahba / space is their / Hassan-i-Sahba / brainbox pollution

We’re waiting for the next album, Take Me To Your Leader…

Greetings From Dutchwind:

Franky ‘Fast Forward Into The Future’
Frank ‘The Sea Captain’
Jasper and Laura
Pierre and Annemarie

Are you sure you're feeling OK?

Alfred with Andi (above) & Harald (left).

Right: (L-R) Alfred, Rainer, Andi

Below: the 4 following pictures were taken by Ian Brazewell (aka Nick Lee's mate Ian, see mugshot above) and appear here by his kind permission

Left: Nick, having one of those 'cool' moments
Above & Below: same bloke with Dave & Kris

Left: (L-R) Lucy, Mike, Nick and someone wearing a baseball cap backwards, as is the way of these modern day kids. In my day we wore our clothes the right way round, but you can't tell these teenagers anything. Bring back National Service!