Hawkwind vs Pink Floyd

Upbeat Tango Monday wrote: I prefer Stacia's boobs to both of these bands combined. I used to like PF more back in the day.

Really? As a red-bloodied male of 60 years vintage even I struggle to get excited by the prospect of the tits of a woman five years my senior, but each to their own. [Gravity is cruel].

Hawkwind are great and all that, especially with one of their many classic line-ups comprising of Brock & Turner with variously Lemmy, Calvert, Dikmik, Anderson, Dettmar, House, King, Powell etc., etc., etc., but they had neither the depth nor the breadth of Pink Floyd despite the carousel of fine musicians who have played with them over the years. There are a few of terrific highlight albums in their mahoosive back catalogue but the really stand-out ones are oddly the least "Hawkwind" sounding with their eponymous debut and Quark, Strangeness and Charm being the most notable of those. The sequence from In Search of Space to Warrior on the Edge of Time is probably their most popular but of those Hall of the Mountain Grill is the only one I play with any regularity (and not that often in all honesty). 

I couldn't care less about popularity or what ironic t-shirts fashionista's wear - not that long ago it was fashionable for young girls to wear Motorhead t-shirts and studded leather jackets or t-shirts with the Nirvana dead smile face logo... I recently saw a cropped sleeve Led Zepp shirt on someone who clearly had never heard of them. None of this matters to me, I wear a Beatles sweatshirt even though I don't care for their music very much because try as hard as I can, I cannot make the shirt play Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and putting it on doesn't make me want to play any of their albums. (I wear Converse high-tops but have no inclination to play sports of any kind, least of all baseball). There is nothing generic about Pink Floyd's music, it simply broke out of the narrow confines of the underground music scene that spawned it - that does not lessen or distract from the actual music for me any more than preferring to put Coca Cola in my Cuba Libra rather than some lesser known carbonated plant extract soda. Ask the average "man in the street" about Hawkwind and they'll come back with Silver Machine, Lemmy and Stacia (ffs! ...and if you don't get the sarcasm in my earlier post then so be it). Ask even the most die hard music fan about Space Ritual and a few may know of the album of that name and fewer still will mention Nik Turner's alternative Hawkwind ensemble. Given the number of bootleg recordings of live Floyd shows that do feature lesser known songs, and the recent playing of songs like Fat Old Sun and Remember the Day by Gilmour during his solo shows, you cannot base everything on what was released on Delicate Sound of Thunder and Pulse. 

You prefer Hawkwind to Pink Floyd - good for you - I prefer both to Eloy and the world continues to spin on its axis. Bashing either band doesn't make the other any better.