Hawkwind – Master Of The Universe (2001)

Stamford in Lincolnshire on a sunny Friday afternoon is a pleasant place. Plenty of unpretentious eateries, a decent and varied market, and a plethora of charity shops with CDs for sale cheap. Only the British Heart Foundation had a decent haul, with the next five for six quid, kicking off with this album.

I'm always going to pick up a cheap Hawkwind CD, even if, as I suspect it's a cash-in compilation of dubious provenance. Thus was this purchase, with many well known songs, writing credits given, but no information about the source.

On further research, it's as I feared. Cunningly entitled Master Of The Universe (singular) to confuse with the 1977 compilation (plural), it's a hotch-potch of live recordings, alternate versions and radio performances. Sounds ominous, but the quality is actually better than I had any right to expect.

The first five songs contain four excellent live performances from 1972 and 1982, Master Of The Universe, Angels Of Death, Earth Calling and Space Is Deep, all solid spacerock performances, with a decent studio version of Lemmy's Motorhead in the middle. There's Ghost Dance from 1982, an extended drum heavy chant, reminiscent of Suicide, before we return to 1972 with a live Born To Go.

1982's British Tribal Music is a pulsing, repetitive electronic beat, almost a bridge between Tangerine Dream and the dance music of the 1990s, recorded as Hawklords, and it's much more convincing that the other Hawklords' piece, Douglas In The Jungle, an overlong mess of nonsense.

Spirit Of The Age (live 1979) rambles on a bit, probably far more fun to be there and dancing than listening at home 47 years later, while Hash Cake '77 from that year is the kind of dreamy, floaty jam the name implies. But thereafter things take a dip - High Rise and Who's Gonna Win The War are a couple of plodders from the 70s, there's a Top Gear version of the band's debut (almost acoustic) single Hurry On Sundown, a live version of the average Quark Strangeness and Charm (the name is the best thing about it) and an awful rock'n'roll number from Dave Brock's proto-Hawkwind band, The Famous Cure before we get the hit single Silver Machine as they were doing it by 1982.

Given that it is such a ragbag of cobbled together bits in a seemingly random order, it's not as bad as you might expect, and well worth a quid of anyone's hard earned cash.

The compilation isn't on YouTube, so here's Hawkwind live in 2008

3* - some interesting stuff on this cheaply compiled album