The Weird Tapes are a set of music tapes by the English spacerock group Hawkwind. These tapes were issued in the early eighties and contain live recordings, radio sessions, outtakes and demo performances. Band leader Dave Brock collected this material from his own private library and issued them as forty-minute cassette tapes on his own Weird imprint label. The first tape was made available through mail-order at the beginning of 1980, whilst the last tape was first issued at the end of 1983. When Brock hooked-up with Rob Ayling of Voiceprint Records at the end of 1999, this material was re-released on CD without alteration.' So far I used the information from the unsurpassed Wikipedia. Also thank you for the song listing, because none of this could be found in the CD-booklet. In fact, the point of this reissue escapes me since - as far as my ears can determine - there's again no alteration whatsoever. Even worse, this time there's even less information provided than in the first release; that one at least contained the band's line-up. So maybe it's re-released because The Weird Tapes were no longer available. That could be, because these tapes were already difficult to get the first two times around. Anyway, what you get is bootleg-plus quality recordings which will probably satisfy the hardcore Hawkwind-fan. More casual listeners I would redirect to one of the re-releases of official live recordings as the sound quality of those is much better. ** André de Waal (edited by Peter Willemsen) Where to buy? |
