THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: Robot by Robert Calvert

ROBERT CALVERT AT GONZO

RAY BRADBURY OBITUARY

Ray Bradbury, one of the most influential science fiction writers of the last century has died in California. Amongst other things he was the author of Fahrenheit 451, the novel which directly inspired the late Robert Calvert's book of poems Centigrade 232 and as that novel has been republishd by us and together with other stuff available from the Gonzo webshop. So, it seemes appropriate to ask our friend and colleague Richard Freeman to remember Bradbury's life for Gonzo Daily.

Ray Bradbury passed away on 5th of June in his California home at the grand old age of 91. He was one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 20th century. But it could actually be argued that much of what he wrote was horror and fantasy, rather than hard science fiction in the mould of Asimov. His childhoon influences included Edgar Allen Poe and Edgar Rice Burroughs as well as H G Wells and Jules Verne. He was also greatly effected by early silent horror movies.

Some of his early work was published by companies such as the famous Arkham House (set up to publish H.P Lovecraft’s work after his death) as well as in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s.

His first major work, The Martian Chronicles follows mankind’s collonization of Mars after atomic war has devistated it. The Martian’s themselves are wiped out by germs carried by the invading eathmen, who in time become the new Martians. Bradbury himself insisted that the book was fantasy rather than science fiction.

In, arguably his only hard science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451 Brabury depicts a near future when books have been outlawed by the anti-intellectual government. TV, radio and other mediums have entirely replaced the written word, and books themselves are burned. The work has a particular resonance as in the real world there seems to be a strong,and growing anti-intellectual feeling. Only recently a report in the UK found that young black men equated intelligence with ‘being gay’. With the government closing library after library and the public seemingly addicted to proletarian reality TV and ‘talent’ shows I would recommend the Fahrenheit 451 sould be on the English syllabus in each and every high school.

Alarmed by the rise of the e-book he once wrote…

"We have too many cellphones.We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now."

His main contribution to cryptozoology was the short story Fog Horn about a sea serpent that mistakes the fog horn on a light house as a mating call. It was the inspiration for the film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The monster in the movie was famously animated by Ray Harrthausen a lifelong friend of Ray Bradbury.

ROBERT CALVERT: New CD

I am particularly fond of the work of Bob Calvert, and have been ever since I read a veilely biographical story by Michael Moorcock called 'The Opium General'. A month or so back Graham Inglis, Corinna and I oversaw the reissue of the reissue of his first book of poems. Now it is good to see that we have a CD out...

ROBERT CALVERT joined HAWKWIND in the early seventies and he co-wrote their massive hit ‘Silver Machine’.

After extensive touring with the band and co-writing their biggest hit, ‘Silver Machine,’ he left to begin a solo career, with the concept album ‘Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters’. This live set contains 5 tracks from that classic debut album as well as ‘Spirit of the Age’ which
he wrote and recorded with HAWKWIND when he rejoined in 1977 for their album ‘Quark, Strangeness and Charm’.

Sadly he passed away in 1988 after completing what was to be his final tour.

Tracks: 1. Ned Ludd, , 2. Test Tube Conceived, , 3. Quark,Strangeness and Charm, (Only) , 4. The Dreams of the Cold War Kid, , 5.Telekinesis, , 6.Standing on the Picket Line, , 7. All The Machines are Quiet, , 8. Lord of the Hornets, , 9. Save Them From the Scientists, , 10.Fable of a Failed Race, , 11.Spirit of The Age, , 12.Ship Of Fools, , 13.The Right Stuff, , 14.Catch A Falling Starfighter, , 15.The Song of The Gremlin, , 16.The Aerospace Inferno, , 17.Ejection, , 18.Silver Machine Blues. .

BOB CALVERT/HAWKWIND: The Genesis of 'Spirit of the Age'

OK, I admit it, I am more than slightly geeky.

This has proved to be to my advantage in my twin careers of Cryptozoologist and Rock Music Historian. Wherever possible I like to dot the I's and cross the T's and I get mildly obsessed about it until I do.

The other day my friend and colleague Graham Inglis wrote in passing something to the effect that he was surprised to see that some Hawkwind lyrics had appeared in Robert Calvert's Centigrade 232 book of poems that we remastered and published for Gonzo a couple of months back.

I asked for some details. He just gunted and got on with the serious business of feeding our colony of Rio Cauca Caecilians, but I kept on at him over the next few days, and eventually - with very bad grace, because he is a private man and does not like being hustled - he plonked this on my desk:

"Spirit of the Age" (SOTA) first appeared in Hawkwind's set in Autumn 1971, in the form of the poem, "The Starfarer's Despatch". This is the poem that laments that "your father refused to sign the forms to freeze you," and concludes with a description of how the android replica is playing up. There's no mention of spirits, whether of the age or otherwise, nor anything about clones or telepathic men.

Years passed, and the next Hawkwind lineup to do any sort of SOTA was the post-Lemmy / post-Turner one, in late 1976. The now-well-known refrain of:

That's the Spirit of the Age...
It's the Spirit of the Age...

(or slight variations on that theme) had its first run-out. However, the main lyrics saw a drastic change. "The Starfarer's Despatch" was dropped, and Calvert instead sings about "the shape of things to come," and scientists "holding test-tubes up to the light." I don't know if this material is from any Calvert poem or whether he penned it specifically for Hawkwind's SOTA. Anyone got any ideas on this?

A year later, and the much-acclaimed "Quark, Strangeness and Charm" album was recorded. SOTA had another massive overhaul, in that most of the 1976 lyrics were ditched, apart from one verse and the refrain. However, "The Starfarer's Despatch" returns to the Hawkwind playlist as Verse 2 of SOTA, and then "The Clone's Poem" as Verse 3 finally introduces clones and telepathic men to the song.

"The Clone's Poem" was also published that year (1977) in Calvert's "Centigrade 232" book of poems, two poems after "The Starfarer's Despatch". I wonder if Bob had written it that year, for Hawkwind, or whether it was much older.

The SOTA recording that actually made it onto the 1977 album (as the opening track) fades in after the first verse. The general fanbase thus didn't get to hear the full version (and its references to test-tubes) until 2009, when Cherry Red re-released the Quark album with a bonus disk of alternative or full-length tracks.

Live performances of SOTA from 1977 onwards have (so far as I know, invariably) followed the vinyl format and omitted that first verse. That is, "The Starfarer's Despatch" and "The Clone's Poem" now supply all of the non-chorus content.

I don't know about you, but I found that really interesting. It is my spacerock Easter Egg hunt for this holiday weekend. Slainte...


SOTA (Hawkfest 2010)


ROBERT CALVERT: Starfarer's despatch


ROBERT CALVERT: The Clone's Poem

ROBERT CALVERT: Starfarer's praise

Graham Inglis and I have been mates for over twenty years, and for the last seven he has been sharing my house in rural North Devon. He is a mega-Hawkind fan, and when I first started to work for Gonzo Multimedia, and my first job was to prepare a new edition of Robert Calvert's book of poetry Centigrade 232, one of the first things that I did was to ask for his aid. We worked hard on the new edition, and it was published last month.

Apparently one of the major reviewing dudes in Hawkwindland is a chap called 'Steve Starfarer' who runs a website called http://www.starfarer.net/ which describes itself as: "...a less-than-reverent fan site devoted to Hawkwind, inventors of space rock".

He recently gave Centigrade 232 a through and pretty good review, culminating: "It has so much more impact given the way it is presented in this new edition. And the wider availability is excellent, perhaps affording Calvert the best chance at the recognition that he sought, nearly twenty-five years after his passing. Good job all round".

The review can be found: http://www.starfarer.net/c232bkcd.html about half way down the page. I accept his criticisms (which are pretty minor) but I would like to set the record straight on one matter, the cover.

Steve writes: "I was surprised to see that the cover has the same image as the 2007 Voiceprint edition’s, although it’s provided in a larger format: approximately 6” x 9”." Further on he writes: "Further digging reveals that Gonzo and Voiceprint are in fact the same outfit, more or less, which explains why the new edition looks so similar to the previous one: they probably reused the same printing plates etc.. "

Not actually the case. Keeping the cover was my choice and mine alone. Rob Ayling originally asked me for a psychedelicy cover, but I put the whole package together trying to bear in mind that Calvert wished to be known as a poet rather than a rock music performer, and I thought that the cover of the 2nd edition was really rather nice. I have never actually seen the first edition, and as far as I am aware no-one at Gonzo actually has a copy, so I had to err on the side of caution whilst correcting errors, and deciding what bits of artwork to leave out and what to keep in.

Thanks for your kind words Steve. I appreciate them. I hope that the next time I design a Hawkwind related package it, too, will meet with your approval.

Slainte
Jon

BOB CALVERT: Poet's Corner

There is a new edition of Robert Calvert's seminal book of poetry Centigrade 232. How do I know? Because I designed and typeset it, my wife Corinna proofread it, and Graham and I went through and fixed some cock ups that had been there since a much earlier edition.

Robert Newton Calvert: Born 9 March 1945, Died 14 August 1988 after suffering a heart attack. Contributed poetry, lyrics and vocals to legendary space rock band Hawkwind intermittently on five of their most critically acclaimed albums, including Space Ritual (1973), Quark, Strangeness & Charm (1977) and Hawklords (1978). He also recorded a number of solo albums in the mid 1970s. CENTIGRADE 232 was Robert Calvert's first collection of poems.

FROM THE ORIGINAL EDITION:

Robert Calvert was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1944, but moved to
England at the age of two. He went to school in London and Margate, and later studied building technology at Canterbury Tech.

Always interested in the literary arts, he began writing and performing poetry around 1967, and in that year formed a street theatre group in London’s Chalk Farm, called ‘Street Dada Nihilismus’. Shortly afterwards he met up with
Britain’s premier space-rock band, Hawkwind, with whom he has now evolved from resident poet into lead singer. He co-composed the band’s hit single, Silver Machine, and directed their unforgettable Space Ritual stage show, appearing as poet and narrator. As well as recording with Hawkwind, he has also made two solo albums, Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters and Lucky Leif and the Longships.

More recently he has turned his wide talents to the theatre, Stars that Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice, his play about Jimi Hendrix, was staged by the
Pentameters Theatre in 1976, and he has since written a full-length stage play scheduled for production in the Spring of 1976.

Buy it on Amazon.co.uk
Buy it on Amazon.com

Hawkwind UK Tour Dates!

Those Lords of Space Rock Hawkwind fire up the engines for a UK date this summer in Cornwall. The concert is the bands only UK date until their full tour of the UK in December. They are playing the following date

Fri 12th August
Falmouth, Cornwall
Princess Pavillion

The support for the date will be the Huw Lloyd langton Band. Huw Lloyd Langton was of course a longtime member of the band
For more details of the concert please go here:

http://www.carrickleisureservices.org.uk/default.aspx?page=285

UK dates for the band during December have also been announced

Wed 7th December
Sheffield
The Plug

Thu 8th December
Birmingham
HMV Institute

Fri 9th December
Manchester
Academy

Sat 10th December
Shepherds Bush, London
02 Empire
Tickets for all the concerts including the concert in August can be purchased here:

http://www.seetickets.com/Tour/HAWKWIND

Hawkwind CDs and DVDs can be purchased directly from the Gonzo website Here:

http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/site.php?s=2&action=list_table&t=products&filter_id=152&dbf_search_for=Hawkwind+%28artist%29&image.x=11&image.y=14