DAYS OF THE UNDERGROUND - THE STUDIO AND LIVE RECORDINGS 1977-1979

Product Information

As if we don’t get enough Hawkwind in various forms from beneath the Cherry Red umbrella (including an upcoming new studio album at the end of April) here’s a collection that pushes the boat out. The period between 1977 and 1979 when Hawklords continued to fly the Hawkwind flag is safely gathered in with a set of live and studio material from the era. Steven Wilson’s been at it again, with new masters/remixes of Quark Strangeness & Charm, PXR5 plus the Hawklords’ 25 Years On, all of which get expanded into a swirl of surround sound in 5.1 on the Blurays. A DELUXE 10 DISC (8 CD / 2 BLU RAY) LIMITED EDITION BOXED SET FEATURING ALL OF THE RECORDINGS MADE AND RELEASED BY HAWKWIND AND HAWKLORDS BETWEEN 1977 AND 1979 FEATURING ROBERT CALVERT.

The art of a great biographer is getting to the crux of the subject, warts and all, and with the new interviews, contemporary cuttings and critical analysis, this is one of the best books I have read that goes to such depth around a band, and there’s plenty to get your teeth into for both fans and non-fans. Or to give it the full title, Days Of The Underground – The Studio & Live Recordings 1977-1979. Almost as huge as the 10 discs brimming with content! Warrior On The Edge Of Time’, again courtesy of my brother. Everything about it – from the fold-out sleeve to the driving, Mellotron-soaked music – seemed incredible, and different from those other bands.

Of course, you can’t discuss the band and the music without the characters that inhabited the band, and there’s plenty of quotes from contemporary interviews with Lemmy and Robert Calvert, both sadly no longer with us. With such huge personalities, the music that they made was big enough to include all of them. In fact, it’s hard to emphasise enough how much of an outsider band Hawkwind were, even in their heyday in the 1970s. Founded in Ladbroke Grove in the last gasp of the previous decade, they were routinely dismissed as hippy recidivists, a poor man’s Pink Floyd, riding on the rapidly disintegrating tailcoats of psychedelia and the counterculture. The pioneering free festival movement started in the UK in the 1970s. Hawkwind was an essential part of it. Would you like to discuss this unique movement? Nearly a decade after the release of the acclaimed surround mix of Warrior on the Edge of Time, a limited edition 8 CD / 2 Blu ray boxed set from Hawkwind that showcases the band's tenure with Charisma Records in the late 1970s is released in March 2023. On this deluxe box set titled “Days of the Underground: The Studio & Live Recordings 1977-1979” fans will find the music that breaks new ground, producing a series of classic albums that adapted to the changing musical times with invention and flair. Specifically, the boxed set features three albums: “Quark, Strangeness and Charm,” “Hawklords: 25 Years On,” and “P.X.R. 5” each with immersive 5.1 surround sound and Stereo remixes by Steven Wilson.

Since 1981, legendary Canterbury musicians Dave Stewart (Egg, Hatfield and the North, National Health) and Barbara Gaskin (Spirogyra) have built a reputation as one of the UK's most respected, intelligent and musically inventive Pop acts. The duo are now planning a summer concert featuring Beren Matthews on guitar. Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground: Radical Escapism in the Age Of Paranoia’ | Interview with Joe Banks ‘Days Of The Underground’ is a decade-long trip into the music of Hawkwind, exploring the ideas and concepts that fuelled the band during their classic 1970s period, and speaking to the crew that manned the ship.When Calvert was at his strongest he would channel his mania into the music, however as this book points out, it also came at a terrible cost to his mental health. An interview where Pamela Townley talks candidly about former husband Calvert’s mental health issues is both illuminating and moving. Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. On one level, of course, it’s easy to view the over-arching conceit as no more than risible narcissism. But Calvert, I think, was aware of that and embraced it, bringing to it a theatrical sensibility and a profound sense that the search for any meanings beyond your own self, your inner space, was always ridiculous. You never quite know where the irony ends and the seriousness begins. The idea itself has a kind of ‘pataphysical absurdism: under Calvert’s direction, Hawkwind took a pulp aesthetic and pursued it with such single-mindedness that it became imbued with real meaning. He brought the existentialism to what Banks calls the band’s “existential protest music”. They now aimed, Calvert said, to “hypnotise the audience into exploring their own space”. With that out of the way, let’s move on to what we have got here. As one would expect, the Steve Wilson remixes of Quark, Strangeness and Charm, 25 Years On and PXR 5 are excellent, clear, sharp and with great instrument separation, but all the while they manage to maintain some of the original recorded feel and atmosphere.

We also have a complete discography including where to find lost ‘70s recordings that were released post-1980, such as the Atomhenge/Esoteric reissues which tidied up the post-UA era for me, an era was subject to sub-par re-issues and incomplete compilations.This is a quite comprehensive set of this period in the band’s history, well presented with plenty to discover and enjoy. It also shows the band’s ability to successfully ride the rising punk wave and deliver a period covering what could be one of the highlights of their long career. This is a set that should attract the attention of fans, collectors and casual listeners alike.

Thank you for having me! It’s Psychedelic! Baby Magazine has done a fantastic job of speaking to so many of the “forgotten” heroes of the music underground. The classic story of having an older brother with a large record collection! I started off playing his Slade singles, and ambiently soaking up the music from his bedroom – Pink Floyd, Queen, Deep Purple, Judas Priest… “They were musically unique” Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. Disc Seven has a live recording from the Sonic Assassins at the Queensway Hall, Barnstable on 23 rd December 1977. This concert has been remixed from the original master tapes, and a fine job has been done, the sound quality is good and clearly shows a band that are together, tight and have not lost any of their Hawkwind impetus in their performance of classic Hawkwind songs.For a start, they were musically unique – there may have been parallels with some of the contemporary stuff coming out of Germany, but they were completely out on their own in Britain. But it wasn’t just that they sounded different – they acted differently as well, in the way that they were fiercely opposed to the “star trip” and how the traditional music business worked. They toured the country relentlessly and built up a genuine bond with their audience, inviting them to become part of a shared mythology. Just like the Beatles, they were a “revolution in the head” for many people, something which persists to this day.