Hawkwind has tons of great music.

Something like this.

Hawkwind.

^ this........and by god Mick finally got one right.....

;)

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.

I guess I should have ended this post and all future joking type posts with a 

I love chocolate and would eat it daily if it was more obscure. 

But they are not mutually exclusive. However, liking the something for the wrong reason is perfectly acceptable whereas disliking something for the same reason is not. It's okay to like artisan craft chocolate because it's hip and trendy despite its bitter, grainy taste not quite living up to the hyped-up price ticket and hand-made packaging. All that distinguishes the artisan from the mass produced is marketing. Our local deli sells grissini bread sticks dipped in dark Belgian chocolate compared to the more popular Cadbury's Chocolate Fingers that are essentially the same thing in a different guise. I know which I'd prefer to have or give as a present but when it comes to having a chocolate coated biscuit to have with my afternoon tea I know I'll not be buying the product that is 850% more expensive. Rejecting the mass marketing of a popular product while espousing a similar but less popular product is still succumbing to the persuasive power of marketing. More people liking Cadbury's chocolate does not affect the quality of their product (selling the company to an American corporation who changed the recipe did that). Anyway, metaphors and analogies are great and all, (for entertainment purposes only), but music is not like chocolate and sometimes you just have to assess music as music and not as some neatly marketed package. 

Pink Floyd (or Yes, Genesis, Kansas, Tull, Marillion, Oldfield, Moodies or even Zappa) releasing music that has popular appeal does not (or at least should not) distract from everything else they did, nor should it be rejected outright simply because more people liked it than the smaller percentage of music lovers who once did. Frankly, anyone who argues against the quality of music is on a hiding to nothing.

Nobody even really knew what Pink Floyd  looked like back in the seventies! Amon Duul and the more musical splinter were darker than Pink Floyd back in the late 60s. Then Amon Duul II got happier and Pink Floyd got darker. Hawkwind always remained "out there" , cynical and foreboding. On the other hand heir lyrics can even get playful and are fun to listen to. Calvert and Moorcock's oratories were always neat   When The Wall came out I remember a lot of real Pink Floyd fans disliking it. I don't even think I ever bought it because everyone had it even though they disliked it. I remember borrowing a copy from a friend who hated it then it got passed on to another friend who couldn't wait to get his paws on it. It had a transparent sticker on the plastic wrap that everyone saved. 

I really don't get the X vs Y comparisons - while Hawkwind were compared to Floyd in the early days, Floyd had moved on from acid-fuelled Space Rock (not that they ever did that much of it in the first place) and out of the Ladbroke Grove underground scene months before Hawkwind formed so I suspect that the comparisons arose not because Hawkwind were particularly influenced by Floyd but because they stepped into the vacant space at just the right time. Despite Brock's busking cover of non-psych/non-space rock Cymbaline I don't see that much to compare them.