Or is it...?
So there you have it for the main thread of Hawkwind-dom. It's been a while since we've gotten a really classic BLANGA disc, but there are flickers here and traces there, and as long as our good Captain Brock wants to keep piloting this starship, we're gonna follow along in his slipstream, because he's led us to so many magical places already.
Things changed again for the band after Take Me To Your Leader, when Davey again left in a huff, to be replaced with his bass tech, Mr. Dibs. Tim Blake has returned to play synths, and new guitarst Niall Hone stands where Huw Lloyd-Langton once worked his magic. This crew have toured, but not yet released any studio product, so we don't know what the future (or present) holds for them in the BLANGA department. Only time will tell, I guess.
Some other parting odds and ends for your consideration:
I will not review or recommend any of the many hundreds of semi-official boots and compilations that are available online and in traditional music stores these days. Stick with the albums listed in this guide, to at least provide a glimmer of hope that the artists involved with the products may get their fair share of the proceeds. Late period solo albums also often feature dodgy, revisionist credits, so unless you're a completist trainspotter with a Hawk-logo anorak, you can probably find better things to spend your hard-earned dosh upon.
Calvert's solos are primary the exception to this rule, and his Live At Queen Elizabeth Hall (featuring Inner City Unit's Steve Pond and Dead Fred, see below) and Captain Lockheed And The Starfighters are damn good BLANGA slabs.
Greasy Truckers, a 1972 benefit album with Hawkwind, Brinsley Schwarz, and others, features superior Space Ritual quality BLANGA. Worth tracking down if you can't get enough of the Ritual. And who in their right mind can? Anything by Lemmy's star-vehicle Motorhead is worth having, of course. Their body of work merits its own separate BLANGA guide (maybe next century's project).
I also heartily endorse anything by the brilliant Inner City Unit, which featured Nik Turner, astonishing keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist (at the same time) Dead Fred, the widdly guitar stylings of Trev Thoms (early ICU), and the brawnier, more BLANGA fare of guitarist Steve Pond (late ICU). The President's Tapes LP and Blood And Bone EP are the high points of the ICU pantheon from a BLANGA standpoint. "Paint Your Windows White" from the latter is godhead Desert Island Disk gotta have kinda stuff.
Pond and Fred have also recently reunited under the Krankschaft moniker with an excellent, properly-credited collection of their insightful interpretations of some of the Calvert classics they once played with Mad, Missed Bob. "The Flame Red Superstar" A great addition to the canon. And that's it for now, so HAPPY BLANGA until next we meet again.
Comments and commentary always appreciated, the more thoughtful, the better,