The Text Of Festival

They Say...

Review by Dave Thompson, All Music Guide

When this album first appeared in 1983, there was indeed rejoicing in the streets -- an apparently bona fide Hawkwind live album that not only predated the decade-old Space Ritual set, it also delivered a clutch of previously unrecorded songs. The closing salvo of "I Do It" (aka "We Do It"), "Come Home," and 20 minutes of improvisation around a theme of "Shouldn't Do That" represented uncharted territory for even arch-collectors. It really was a treat. Since that time, of course, the original double album has been revealed as merely the first shot in a barrage of reissues and repackagings that continues to this day, with the most pernicious being the crop of albums ignited by a 1985 reissue of this same set, In the Beginning, that sliced away the improv and made a few minor cuts elsewhere -- and then palmed itself off as an entirely different recording. The fact that there are now box sets that include both the full and edited shows, still in the guise of different albums, only adds to the collector's frustration. Or else it makes him/her laugh. The music itself, of course, is unimpeachable, with much of it capturing the band in considerably more disciplined form than one would ever expect from a period live recording. And it turns out there's a good reason for that. While a good half of the album (from "Paranoia" on) does indeed seem to be live, possibly at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in 1971, the remainder was taken from two BBC studio sessions recorded during August 1970 ("Hurry on a Sundown") and May 1971 (a turbulent "Master of the Universe" and a mesmerizing medley of "You Know You're Only Dreaming" and "Shouldn't Do That"). The sound quality is somewhat less than one normally expects from BBC recordings, suggesting they might even have been taped straight off air. Presumably, too, the lack of any firm information as to the recording's source can be put down either to ignorance or the hope that the BBC itself would not notice the unlicensed use of the material -- and so many similarly vague reissues later, it would appear that they didn't. Such caveats notwithstanding, however, Text of Festival represents a genuinely vital chunk of Hawkwind history. It's just a shame that future re-releases (and re-re-re-leases) would do so much to demean it.