Hawkwind The Friday Rock Show Sessions - Live at Reading '86 Review by Gary Hill
I’d have to say that for my money this is one of the best Hawkwind live albums. The performances are strong, the recording quality quite good and the choice of music is top notch. Sure, this does all lean towards the hard rocking side, but that makes it a lot of fun.
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Track by Track Review
Magnu / Angels Of Death Keyboards bring this in with style. They power it up from there into a smoking hot live performance of "Magnu." I love the instrumental section on this thing It has some exceptionally cool jamming. Around the four minute mark it shifts into a driving rendition of "Angels of Death." Again there is a powerhouse instrumental segment built into this movement of the piece. What a great way to start this show in style.
Pulsing Cavern Here we have a tasty instrumental that serves as a nice bridge between these cuts.
Assault And Battery Keyboards lead us off here in fine fashion and the band work their way out from there into one of my all time favorites from their repertoire.
Needle Gun Here’s another hard rocking number and it’s another Hawkwind classic. I think this might be the best version of it I’ve ever heard.
Master Of The Universe How can you argue with “Master of the Universe”? The answer is, you can’t. This is a scorching hot rendition – although it does get a little noisy at times.
Utopia Another hard rocker, this one is more spacey than some of the other stuff. It’s another strong cut and this is a potent live performance.
Dream Worker This is listed as “Dream Worker”, but actually they lead off here into a fiery performance of “Brainstorm”. Then it works into some other old school Hawkwind. Around the five minute mark (this is over twelve minutes in length) they take it into space. There is a check list from “Ejection” but we don’t launch into that. Instead, this is where they make the transition to the space motifs that start off “Dream Worker.” I’ve always been a huge fan of Choose Your Masques, the album that spawned this track. When the bass comes in to kick it off, that’s a magical moment here. They bring it in with a harder rocking edge. This is close to heavy metal in its delivery here.
Assassins Of Allah (Hassan I Sahba) Another scorching performance of a Hawkwind classic, this is great. Since there’s talk at the start about getting the lasers working right and such, I’d love to see some video of this. The performance moves into more modern Hawkwind modes in terms of the delivery at times, but overall this is still a trademark and delivered with style.
Silver Machine Here we get a rough and tumble rendition of “Silver Machine” that features Lemmy guesting to provide the vocals. They turn this into a heck of an extended jam and take it into some older Hawkwind material – going all the way back to the first album.
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