Hawkwind will soon be enteringtheir 43^rd year of space trucking and it's customary for Hawkwind totake to the stage and produce some spacey effects. Tonight, Mr Dibs generatedeffects on his electric cello before narrating "The Awakening", theoldest track in the setlist. The band first did this Bob Calvert space poem in1971, I believe.  Dibsy has his critics,but I think he's a good space poetry narrator, even if his dress sense doesraise a few eyebrows, but more on that in a minute.

The distinctive strains of"You'd Better Believe it" then kicked in, and this is where Iswitched my pocket camera off and started bopping around by the right speakerstack.

My start-of-gig clip is onyoutube, if you want to see how a 2012 show kicks off. Sound quality is rough,but it captures the 'feel' of the event quite well, I'd say.

The Hawkwind squad

Over the years, Hawkwind's line-uphas seen more squad rotation than just about any other band: hell, even RafaelBenítez would be impressed.  Thiscontinues into individual gigs, too. At the Bridport gig, people further backfrom the stage might have thought the distorted wah-wah guitar riffing wascoming from Dave Brock, but it was Nial Hone... and Brock made a"showcase" gesture with his arms at one point, as if to say "no, it's him doing it, folks!"

Incidently, Hone is the newestmember – he joined in 2008, from the psychedelic prog band Tribe of Cro.

Dibsy would be playing bass onthese tracks, but during other pieces, Hone would switch to bass duties, and MrDibs sometimes used a weird figure-of-eight object – an electric cello.Meanwhile Tim Blake generally plays keyboards or the theramin, but did the leadguitar on some tracks, on his keytar. Prior to the gig there were rumours of asurprise guest (what, rumours among Hawkwind fans? – wow) but as it turned outthere weren't any.

Mr Dibs surprised a lot of us bycoming onstage in a kind of black kilt, and chunky calf-high boots with arraysof silver buckles, and with bare legs showing!

The Hawkwind setlist

This current tour promotes the newstudio album "Onward." Naturally enough, there was some new stuff, some from that rather good"Onward" album, but older fans were comfortable with hearing thelikes of Hassan i Sahba, Sonic Attack, Assault and Battery / Golden Void,Damnation Alley and Psychedelic Warlords – all of these dating from the "goldenage of Hawkwind" in the 1970s. Love in Space was a surprise return to the set, though, a Brock cosmic balladfrom the mid 1990s.

One oddity is that the new album makes heavy use of dynamicrange compression, and during "The Hills Have Ears" I was listening toRichard Chadwick's drumming and Nial Hone's guitaring, and I reflected that itsounded clearer live than it does on the studio album. Now, I call that weird.

And so the tour is under way...

Hawkwind's blend of old and new stuff was performed in apretty high-energy way... and the band looked like they were enjoyingthemselves. No "first night nerves" then, or any loose bits; theylooked well-prepared and just got on with the biz. The night was extremely hot in the other sense of the word, too, as most of us were sweating profusely.

Next stop for me is theSouthampton gig in just over a week, and I'll be interested to see if there'sany differences in the setlist or performance. For now, I'll just say the Hawkwind legacy of space rock is still safein Dave Brock's hands,