THE FRIDAY ROCK SHOW SESSIONS LIVE AT READING '86

Halfway through the 80's Hawkwind were a hard rocking unit, as if they wanted to recover some space occupied by Motorhead since Lemmy left 10 years earlier. Unfortunately, some Hawkwind songs do not fare well from this straightforward approach.

Songs like Utopia and Masters of the Universe work well under the increased speed and riffing. But Assault and Battery is indeed very much battered here and is stripped from it dramatic build and melodic harmonies. Magnu suffers the same treatment. The sung parts are quite well but the rhythm has lost all of it's droning power and is reduced to the most basic of rock beats: kick-snare-kick-snare.

Assassins of Allah (Hassan I Sahba) is just dreadful. They've done like hundred of amazing performances of this tune but this is bland hard rock here. The one reason you might want to check this album out is because they have Lemmy on Silver Machine. Not that it is any better then the original but still, it's quite something of an event, unique to this festival.

For all casual fans, you can easily skip forward all of Hawkwinds output from 1980's Levitation up to 1990. Even the live output won't challenge you.