we sing for the future/ space ritual (marxist-leninist)

horsemouth's friend sean has been in touch;

 "While I realize horsemouth is quite capable of coming up with tunes to cover without any help from me - and probably wouldn't be interested in my suggestions anyway - I'm still going to go out on a limb, and point him toward Cornelius Cardew's (much derided) late period. A version of Fight the Cuts would be very timely.....the music is of course terrible, but horsemouth is probably one of the few musos able to find the poetry in lyrics like - "The monopoly capitalist lackey government/ Lets finance have its way/ To increase their rate of profit/ To make the workers pay/ Fight the cuts/ That's part and parcel/ Of our class strategy/ Of proletarian revolution..." (Brilliant, eh?)

We Sing for the Future is probably the best of his singsong-round-the-old-joanna-like-common-people works, with what must surely be the most mind-boggling lyric ever (tempting to think it must be an exercise in avant-garde surrealist absurdism or something.....but no, he really meant it man). Its interesting to speculate on how Cardew's stuff would have turned out if, when looking for improvisors to work with in London earlier, he'd found the nascent Hawkwind Zoo instead of AMM. Which is not completely implausible - the comparison here would be with fluxus composer Takahisa Kosugi being part of post-68 hairies the Taj Mahal Travellers, who overlanded around Europe and Asia in an old truck playing free festivals, full moon parties and... err..... art galleries (btw, their mates the Rallizes could certainly have taught Robert Calvert a thing or two - their rhythm section famously hijacked a plane to North Korea)

 We might assume that if Cardew worked with the likes of Dave Brock and Lemmy his views on "proletarian culture" might have become somewhat different, but who knows...it could, of course, have gone the other way - Hawkwind's history of splits and exclusions suggests they might have made really good Maoists....

I for one would love to hear Space Ritual (Marxist-Leninist)
  "In case of imperialist attack on your district, follow these rules..." 
 "Cadres of spaceship hawkwind, your helmsman is dead....."

 I could probably keep doing that for a while. Which means - lucky for you - its time to stop (You wouldn't think I actually have things to do, would you.....)
 ----------------------

 horsemouth's response was;

  cornelius cardew in notting hill

 While we can imagine 'variation on 'el pueblo unido jamaserra vencido'' to the tune of 'shouldn't do that'(and it's breaking into a chant of 'there's only one lie and there's only one truth') and lemmy, dikmik, del dettmar, dave brock, nik turner, stacia and simon king participating in 'the great learning', the problem with cornelius cardew, ex-pupil of stockhausen, joining hawkwind zoo in 1969 is that he would ruin their essential innocence, as michael moorcock pointed out they were barbarians, they'd never heard of stockhausen.

'I wish I'd had one of these when I was with stockhausen' remarks cornelius as he views the prototype vcs3 synthesizer, 'who?' say dikmik, and ex-busker dave brock, 'ah-ha' says dave anderson (later to play in amon duul and so already ahead of the game), 'ah-ha. stockhausen eh?' say the ex-bbc synthesizer boffins gone renegade.

there's also cardew's repudiation of stockhausen's mystical kernel to be overcome and his excessive faith in the power of 'pure sound' - would cardew have managed to turn it on its head and stand it on its feet in the sonic warfare of hawkwind? how would he have been welcomed by the prime source of hawkwind's mystical gibberish, nik turner? would they have bonded over turner's improv skronk or split over it. would he have worked with robert calvert or michael moorcock (as the nearest things hawkwind had to an intellectuals) or driven them out.

 practically (but also symbolically) would cardew have commuted from leytonstone, or moved to notting hill? --------------------------

 sean replied;

 "Would Cardew have commuted from Leytonstone...?

 For all the talk about the 70s scene around the grove, a lot of those cats actually lived in east London (yes!). Most of the Deviants/Pinks, for example, lived in a notorious den of iniquity near Whitechapel . Which, as it happens, was where Farren and co got raided by the special branch looking for the angry brigade (before they used up all their magick powers) and Boss Hogg got nicked because he had a badge with a picture of mao on it (allegedly, a lot of resinous substances and chemicals were also found but the cops ignored them because they all hated "those slags" from the drug squad) Hmmm...its a bit embarrassing I know all that stuff. I really have to stop doing this now.....

 Well....ok, the point about Cardew ruining the...er, innocence of Hawkwind Zoo is a good one. Will have to give it a bit of thought, but for the moment two counter points spring to mind:

 1.They could have collaborated, and yet not shared very much.....recently watched Joy Division doc, in which Hook says he had no idea what Curtis was singing about til he started doing JD stuff live a couple of years back and had to read the lyrics. There are plenty of examples of this kind of thing among musicians...apparently, some don't communicate with each other well! (Who knew?) The AMM split in the late 00s might be a case in point - Rowe was booted out for Maoism. Surely this was nothing new, his maoism stretching back to at least Cardew's involvement, yet the others failed to notice for thirty years or so..... Calvert was clearly influenced by Burroughs and Gysin (Born to go, Orgone Accumulator) - and Moorcock definitely was (although you can't really tell from his Hawkstuff!) and yet its hard to picture, say, Lemmy reading Nova Express. Same could go for Stockhausen (especially as Cardew had broken him) 

2."Wish I'd had one of those when I was with Stockhausen" remarks Cornelius..... "Who?" says Dikmik, but completely ignores the reply as he's in a world of his own after being continuously awake for the previous ten days, and is blitzed on mandrax