I confess to being a Hawkwind n00b. I have always been into prog and space rock, such as Rush, Yes, and Pink Floyd, but a psuedo-hippie buddy of mine who is also a massive Rush fan from back in the day, was playing Hawkwind on his mp3 player one day when I was visiting, and I asked him to recommend some for me. He pointed me to Silver Machine, which I didn't care for much, and Warrior at the Edge of Time, which I immediately fell in love with. I have a decent vinyl collection that can always use more so I did a little searching and found a like-new copy on blue translucent for a good price.
I can listen to this stuff all day.
Yeah, it is somewhat unfortunate that Silver Machine always gets to be the the introductory track. It was the same with me. It gets served up on too many albums in different versions. I suspect it might even be a bit of focus group marketing to target bikers, and it seems even Hawkwind themselves were beginning to ridicule it at one stage; one of the "good old boys" (mentioned in a previous post) who went to a Hawkwind concert reported that they did a version of it called "Washing Machine". It was one song of their's that was not too appealing to hard-core motorcycle devotees, and to us seemed more appropriate to "summer flowers" trying to act biker on their Quackers. One thing Hawkwind, though; keep an eye out for conduits to sci-fi books, if you are a reader of the genre.
Rush, of course. I was quite a fan of their's in the mid eighties. Had most of their studio albums, from G/P backwards (the order in which I got them). It was this energetic dirge that was the clincher for me, and actually started my attempts at playing my own music (on the keyboard, initially).
Later, when I swapped to guitar, I used to enjoy playing the slow arpeggio intro to this one, for developing finger picking.
One of the earlier ones I also tried, this time around, was this Pink Floyd song (a cover here), but to start with I was having some trouble keeping the rhythm going while simultaneously managing the vocals and so shelved it.
Now that I am beginning to push the envelope a bit, I have taken it on again, along with this slightly complicated rhythm (to sing to) from another of my most liked songs. You can get a pretty good "chord solo" going, too, with some barres, to replace the bass solo mid way through.
And I keep my eye open for inspiring covers, also, such as this guy's brilliant guitar adaptation of a synth Spandau Ballet hit, to stay motivated.
A while back there was a thread about synesthesia on this forum. Though at least one member mentioned music, he seemed to discard it as an example of this phenomena of perception, which left me wondering. I would differ. To me playing music is quite the ultimate form of essential synesthesia. Different chords express moods and colors, which are managed by the imagery of shapes in the mind's eye (so to speak), strung together by a "sensation", if you will, of movement as the tune is played out. Though I can read sheet music, I still have my own code for its "deployment". I cannot be the only one...
And having thus vented and in the process bored everyone who might have have gone as far as reading this post; that would be all from me, I believe, for this thread.
Take care.