Space Ritual

The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London is a 1973 live double album recorded in 1972 by UK rock band Hawkwind. It is their fourth album, reached #9 in the UK album charts and briefly dented the Billboard Top 200, peaking at #179.

The album was recorded during the tour to promote their Doremi Fasol Latido album, which comprises the bulk of this set. In addition, there are new tracks ("Born To Go", "Upside Down" and "Orgone Accumulator") and the songs are interspersed by electronic and spoken pieces making this one continuous performance. Their recent hit single "Silver Machine" was excluded from the set, and only "Master of the Universe" remains from their first two albums.

The Space Ritual show attempted to create a full audio-visual experience, representing themes developed by Barney Bubbles and Robert Calvert entwining the fantasy of Starfarers in suspended animation traveling through time and space with the concept of the music of the spheres. The performance featured dancers Stacia, Miss Renee, Jonathan Carney (later of the V8 Intercepters) and Tony Carrera, stage set by Bubbles, lightshow by Liquid Len and poetry recitations by Calvert. On entering the venue, audience members were given a programme (reproduced on the 1996 remaster CD) featuring a short sci-fi story by Bubbles setting the band in a Starfarers scenario returning to Earth.

Space Ritual (band)

Space Ritual are a British space rock band, formed in 2000 fronted by Nik Turner, and composed principally of former Hawkwind members. They play a mix of early Hawkwind material and their own compositions.

History

The Hawkestra event took place on 21 October 2000 at the Brixton Academy which featured nearly all past members of Hawkwind, but disagreements between various participants led to any restaging of the event being unlikely. Chris Hewitt who had worked with Nik Turner back at Deeply Vale in the late 70s put on two gigs in 2001 with Nik's chosen name "The Isle of Wight line up of Hawkwind". These two gigs were at Stairways in Birkenhead and The Empress Ballroom in Blackpool. Chris Hewitt then started to manage the band and put together The Greasy Truckers Party 2001 at The Astoria in london, featuring members of the Hawkestra on 21 October 2001 at the London Astoria which, despite being invited, all of the then members of Hawkwind refused to participate.

Turner's band continued performing further gigs and eventually went by the name of xhawkwind.com. An appearance at Guilfest in 2002 led to confusion as to whether this actually was Hawkwind, sufficiently irking Dave Brock into taking legal action to prohibit Turner from trading under the name XHawkwind, a case which Turner lost.