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Old 01-19-2013, 07:16 AM   #48 (permalink)
Big Ears
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Location: Hampshire, England
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Hawkwind - Hall of the Mountain Grill (UA 1974)

Wind of Change







Hall of the Mountain Grill Tracklist
(All songs written by Dave Brock, except where noted)

Vinyl Side One
1. The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke) 6:50
2. Wind of Change 5:08
3. D-Rider (Nik Turner) 6:14
4. Web Weaver 3:15

Vinyl Side Two
5. You'd Better Believe It 7:13
6. Hall of the Mountain Grill (Simon House) 2:24
7. Lost Johnny (Ian Kilmister/Mick Farren) 3:30
8. Goat Willow (Del Dettmar) 1:37
9. Paradox 5:35

Bonus Tracks on the 1996 Remaster
10. You'd Better Believe It (Single Version Edit) 3:22
11. The Psychedelic Warlords (Single Version) 3:57
12. Paradox (Remix Single Edit) 4:04
13. It's So Easy 5:20

Hall of the Mountain Grill Lineup
Dave Brock: Lead guitar, 12-string guitar, synthesizer, organ, harmonica, vocals
Simon House: Synthesizer, mellotron, violin
Nik Turner: Saxophone, oboe, flute, vocals
Del Dettmar: Keyboards, synthesizer, kalimba
Lemmy Kilmister: Bass, vocals, guitars
Simon King: Drums, percussion


Hall of the Mountain Grill is Hawkwind's fifth album (including the live Space Ritual), recorded and released in 1974. It is to the band's credit that they made their best album following the departure of two key musicians, lyricist/vocalist Bob Calvert and electronics player, Michael 'Dik Mik' Davies. However, classically-trained Simon House, from Third Ear Band, joined on synthesizer, mellotron and electric violin, adding a new lush symphonic dimension to Hawkwind. The album's title is a conflation of The Mountain Grill, a cafe in Portobello Road, and Edvard Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'. A strange paradox is formed by the group's comic album title and Barney Bubbles' atmospheric painting of a derelict spaceship in the mists of an alien lagoon.

The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke) is one of Hawkwind's best tracks, to rank alongside Silver Machine and Orgone Accumulator, and it has all of their trademark elements: a heavy rock riff, space-y electronic effects, multi-tracked vocals, Nik Turner's sax playing, distorted voices, sweeping mellotron, wah-wah guitar, instrumental passages and driving percussion. The lyrics are firmly anti-establishment with, 'We're sick of politicians harassment and laws/ All we do is get screwed up by other people's flaws/ World turned upside down now there's nothing else to do/ But live in concrete jungles that just block up the view/ And that ain't no joke, you can disappear in smoke'. Most important of all it has Lemmy on driving bass, providing the backbone to the band on his penultimate album with them. Wind of Change is an atmospheric instrumental, featuring Simon House on violin, guaranteed to make you sit up and listen.

Most of the vocals on the album are by Dave Brock, but Nik Turner handles the duties on D-Rider, on which he uses a pronounced English accent. It provides a touch of psychedelia with phasing, swirling voices and reeds. Brock's chunky chords continue throughout, with Lemmy providing intricate bass lines. Web Weaver is a short song which continues the psychedelic feel, with space-y guitar on top of acoustic guitar and piano, but at around the two minute mark, the band cut loose on a jaunty instrumental passage that takes us to the fade. You'd Better Believe It is probably my least favourite track on the album, with its shuffling drums, chugging bass, persistent violin and chanted vocals. Nevertheless, it was an enormous influence on the so-called new-wave bands, which came in its wake, like Magazine and New Order.

Hall of the Mountain Grill is another impressionistic instrumental with piano, mellotron and violin. It is reminiscent of King Crimson, although Hawkwind are always unique, and Eddie Jobson must have been aware of this track before UK's first album. Lemmy finally takes lead vocals on Lost Johnny, a song he later developed with Motorhead. It certainly sounds like prototype Motorhead with Lemmy singing about a street kid, Dave Brock's soloing fuzz guitar and the short inconsequential nature of the piece. Lost Johnny promises more than it delivers, as if the band could have taken the song further, but Lemmy decided to stop after the guitar solo. Goat Willow is the third and final short instrumental, a gentle piece featuring Nik Turner's flute.

Recorded three years before Animals, the guitar on Paradox now sounds like a template for Dave Gilmour's work on Pink Floyd's tenth album. The 'down, down' lyrics also pre-dates Nektar's Recycled album by two years. Paradox is no Lost Johnny and Hawkwind close the album on a fully developed 'high'. Simon House and Del Dettmar's keyboards are majestic and Lemmy's bass is dynamic. Nothing more than Paradox emphasies Dave Brock's determination to maintain his English accent and folk music style of delivery.

My version of Mountain Grill is the 1996 remaster, which has four bonus tracks; none are essential, but collectively they serve as a useful overture to the album. The first of these is a single edit of You'd Better Believe It, which, at half its full length, sounds even more like the coming 'new-wave'. It could be my imagination, but the single edits of Psychedelic Warlords and Paradox sound snappier than the originals and, in any case, I never tire of hearing these songs. It's So Easy is a live-in-the-studio recording from Edmonton Sundown, dominated by Brock's voice and appropriately Lemmy's ever-reliable bass.

A writer once described Lemmy's sacking as a case of Hawkwind cutting off their nose to spite their face. If Hawkwind are the first and best space-rock band, then Hall of the Mountain Grill is the greatest space-rock album ever recorded. Indeed, the classic-era Hawkwind is an outstanding progressive rock band of the seventies, holding their own among contemporaries like King Crimson and Pink Floyd. It is therefore an irony that, during work on Hawkwind's next and last great album, Warrior On the Edge of Time, one of their best musicians fell out of favour and went on to greater solo success with (IMHO) an inferior band, but, thoughts of what could have been aside, Hall of the Mountain Grill stands as a monument to the band at their creative peak.

Last edited by Big Ears; 01-20-2013 at 11:33 AM. Reason: 'new lush' not 'lush new'
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