and here we have bob calvert live from his front room as the sun comes up. bob doesn't like reggae or funk (he is a prisoner of his cultural assumptions). this is after his 1981-2 theatre space gigs (horsemouth and his friend adrian simon went to one of them). he's trying to move it in the direction of poetry and books (but evil rock still pays the bills).
for him hawkwind is over. it ends with hawklords.
he works with the same musicians over and over because these are the people he knows, whose phone numbers he has, later he will do a lot of things with electronics.
horsemouth has scan read the first pages of several chris marker primers - his pre-62 films (the ones he effectively repudiated) and (in more frenchness) he watched la traque (kind of the french equivalent of straw dogs) with mimsy farmer.
on collaboration
horsemouth has (in his time) worked with two bassists called andy. both added to, and immeasurably improved, tunes horsemouth had come up with. in fact just about everything they ever played on got suddenly better.
horsemouth would like to believe that everybody he has ever worked with or for as a guitarist has experienced the same feeling. but he doubts this is true. once in a while horsemouth has produced the genius cat from out of the bag, on other occasions it came out after a little coaxing, on others horsemouth's parts ended up in the dustbin of history.
he has rocked the spot / he has failed auditions. (horsemouth's lack of formal musical training has held him back there is no doubt).
as a song-writer things have gone similarly. sometimes he has managed to pull fully formed songs out of his forehead (the devil song, the lyrics to gentleman john) in little more time than it takes to sing the song, in others the song just has not come.
and he has collaborated. he generally likes this. someone else provides the material and horsemouth gets a reasonably free hand to embellish it. (conversely he has also stood and played and done what he was asked to do (well mostly) for instance in the snatch foster band with nick).
the work with howard has been consistently the best horsemouth has done - there are not just the improvisations (snake(S), on the banks of the susquehanna, humming, malkin tower) that have come together well, there are also the songs they were involved in writing together (new years day, sorrows of tomorrow, noah)
then there were the songs where horsemouth got to add a killer guitar part (noah, amarach) or the songs where horsemouth helped shepherd the song to a good conclusion (turn your heater on, broadbury down, blindspot). and then there were the songs that were horsemouth's that howard helped him get out there (most of volume three for example).
but there have also been times when the spirit would not descend or where howard had a more personal vision of the track and there was nothing that horsemouth could do that was going to pass muster. at these times he would just leave howard to get on with it. some of these he really likes - wonky for example.
horsemouth has had his 'the joys of working with technology' years (when it appeared as if compromises with other musicians did not have to be made) but in this he was revealed to be sadly mistaken.
horsemouth has generally learnt to relax and let people get on with following their dreams. if they like what horsemouth adds - good, if they don't - no problem. his nose is seldom out of joint these days (but it can still happen). he generally thinks it is more important to get the music out there (either to play the gig or to get it recorded and released) than to get exactly what you first wanted.
yesterday a morning walk (but not an afternoon one).
No comments:
Post a Comment