"It's
not a real world we're living in, it's a Science Ficton one
and Rock will reflect that if only because Rock music
is this generation's literature." - R.C.
The following
list of Calvert's works is broken up into six parts.
The works are listed according to their date of release.
This part [ I ] includes the works from the early 70's up
to '73.
jump straight to
part II/
III / IV / V
/ VI
Calvert contributed various articles and poems to the highly influential
underground magazine FRENDZ.
Various poems of him were also published in the influential NEW
WORLDS magazine. Founded in the early 60s and edited
then by Michael
Moorcock and later on by Hilary Bailey.
NEW WORLDS became THE platform from which NEW-WAVE movement in Science
Fiction literature took off - featuring authors like J.G.
Ballard, Thomas M. Disch, Norman Spinrad, Brian Aldiss a.o.
After the usual problems with such an undertaking the magazine was
awarded with the Arts Council's price - which again led to a heavy
debate in the parliament on how it was possible that the state itself
no only tolerates but even supports such an obscene forum of obviously
sex-obsessed, neurotic, mentally deranged and-what-have-you-writers...
Calvert was featured at least two times in NEW WORLDS with his poems
Ode
to a Time Flower, (New Worlds Quarterly 5; London; Sphere 1973)
and The
Naked and Transparent Man Gives Thanks, (NW 10; London; Corgi
1976) >Read three three
short prose-pieces that Calvert contributed to FRENDZ: >Street
Theatre Police Brutality Read All Abaht It! >The
Last of the Listening Ears >Reclusion > a short-prose
text from 1974: Cattle
at Twilight (first publ. in SOUNDS) >Read
Calvert's comments on his involvement in FRENDZ a. o. magazines
on the QUOTES
pages. >Read
more on Mike Moorcock`s bio, works and his connections to Calvert
and Hawkwind on the Collab-Relations,
the Quotes
and Hawkwind
pages. > Now online is a resource
on the New Worlds Magazine: www.newworldsmagazine.com >
"Friends magazine was a rebel offshoot
from the UK edition of Rolling Stone back when Rolling Stone could
still be considered almost an underground mag." > more infos
on Friends/Frendz mag. can be found on Phil Franks highly recommendable
site.
early 70's- THE
BOX- stageplay/monologue
A recently
re-discovered early monologue/stageplay (one that Beckett might
have written on a 'funny' day...) > Click HEREto read more about it and get a taste of Calvertian humour -
AND:
read the COMPLETE script of THE
BOX... - and...what's more: take a chance to listen to a
couple of excerpts, read by Mr. Calvert himself -
'X
- In Search of Space was Hawkwind's
2nd studio album and established the band's style of hynotic free-flowing
improvisations, often accompanied by tribal rhythm's - in contrast
to Dave Brock's acoustic guitar based pieces - remnants of his days
as a busker, often with a melancholic touch.
ISOS features for the first time the significant graphics of Barney
Bubbles, including photos
by the seemingly ever-present photographer Phil Franks. Barney
also did most of the work on The Hawkwind Log, a booklet that came
with the album, featuring a collage of texts and photos - supposedly
a found log-book of a spaceship, carrying the (last) notes and contemplations
of it's travellers through space - somehow the seed of Calvert's
concept of the soon to come Space Opera - the Space
Ritual. Consequently the Log also features several Calvert poems
like Co-Pilots
of Spaceship Earth and Ten
Seconds of Forever - pieces, that should become standards of
the Calvert / Hawkwind repertoire.
Though Calvert was already much involved in the band's live appearances,
his musical & poetical contributions unfortunately didn't show
up on those early studio recordings.
However, IN SEARCH OF SPACE has recently
been re-released (incl. digital remix of the orig. masters - fold-out
cover...) and now contains 3 tracks, featuring Calvert collaborations:
SILVER MACHINE (the -then- soon to become
top-ten hit) / SEVEN BY SEVEN and a fantastic raw-and-roaring version
of BORN TO GO
- one of the band's best live performances, featuring some frantic
Calvert vocals - probably the
earliest example of (psych)-Punkrock. This track alone would
make the CD worthwile to own.
The one and only
mega-hit single that Hawkwind ever had. Inspired by a typical 'pataphysical'
essay by the french writer Alfred Jarry ("How to construct
a Time-Machine"), Calvert provided the
lyrics - actually refering to the shiny racing cycle of his
childhood days...
"Silver Machine'
was just to say, I've got a silver bicycle, and nobody got it. I
didn't think they would. I thought that what they would think we
were singing about some sort of cosmic space travel machine. I did
actually have a silver racing bike when I was a boy. I've got one
now, in fact."
Calvert's vocal-track - which had gone sort of washed out in the
original live-recording - was replaced with a new one by the ever
roaring Lemmy.
The financial success of this release gave Calvert and Hawkwind
the chance to realize their lavish and now legendary SPACE
RITUAL show. Calvert in later years on the release: " I wasn't
very surprised about the success. After all it was a single and
singles were bound to go into the charts. That's how naive I was
in these days." Well, he found out later...
Read Calvert's comments on SILVER MACHINE, Alfred Jarry and the
initial -quite absurd- concept behind it on the
QUOTES pages. > More infos on SILVER
MACHINE. >
See the original SILVER
MACHINE ad by Barney
Bubbles
1973
-
SPACE RITUAL - double live Lp - with Hawkwind
This is the (almost)
only/main official documentation of Calvert's work with Hawkwind
as their part-time singer, co-writer and "resident poet". His involvement
and influence, however, was much deeper than these early records
are showing.
Already in his first bands (which were a mix of vaudeville street
theatre and beat bands) Calvert employed theatrical elements. In
1971 these experiments reached a first climax with his conception
of the now legendary SPACE RITUAL tour for / with Hawkwind.
This show featured a synthesis of the arts on various levels: Multiple
light and slide projections, various stage effects, dancers,
the resident DJ (no, that isn't an invention of the TechNO generation
either...) and host Andy
Dunkley who did the introduction and the famous
Countdown - and last not least Calvert's poetry recitations,
linking the different songs. He is performing his own poems The
Awakening / 10
Seconds of Forever(illustrated
- plus sound) /
Welcome
to the Future (illustrated - plus sound) as well as Mike
Moorcocks "The Black Corridor" and Sonic
Attack - and is also the singer on Orgone
Accumulator (illustrated + sound) and partly on "Seven
by Seven".
Most people describe the Space Ritual as the album of the
early Hawkwind period. It has recently been re-released incl. a
new booklet and some powerful extra-tracks, feat. more contributions
by Calvert. Highly recommended, as this album is a highly atmospheric
and powerful documentation of Hawkwind's typical melange of free-flowing
heavy space-psychedelia with a strong proto-punk edge. Furthermore,
the album feat. a lot of elements, that make it a strong point of
reference for the 'industrial' music scene, which would be further
developed a few years later by bands like Throbbing Gristle a.o.
This is rarely acknowledged although instantly evident in all the
sonic experiments the feat. Audio Generators - and particularly
in tracks like Sonic
Attack. >HERE
you can read an appreciation of Hawkwind's groundbreaking
'industrial' work by Nigel Ayers
of Nocturnal Emissions > More infos on the SPACE
RITUAL.
The follow-up single to SILVER MACHINE
- actually a much better song, featuring Calvert as the original
vocalist.
But, as it often happend in the later years of Calvert's career,
misfortune struck him at a very promising moment. The single's
release coincided with a series of bombings by the I.R.A.
in London and United Artists, the band's label at the time,
began to fear they just might be the next target - if only
from negative press-reactions - or reactionary press....
So, just as the Guerilla was climbing up the charts the BBC
and other stations banned it from the air and eventually United
Artists withdrew the record from further release.
This was just one of many unfortunate incidents that happened
again and again in - or rather to Calvert's career...
If you want to get your copy of URBAN GUERILLA I'd recommend
you purchase the re-mastered-re-released version of the 1972/73
Hawkwind
classic Doremi Fasol Latido, which
includes URBAN GUERILLA as a bonus track - plus a so far unreleased
version of the Calvert classic EJECTION
- a track from his (then) forthcoming solo-debut CAPTAIN
LOCKHEED AND THE STARFIGHTERS.
A brilliant live-version from 1978 can be found on the Weird-Tape
104
...this
list is as complete as it can be from the informations I've gathered so
far.
If you know of any other works that don't appear on the following page/s,
please get in touch.
1971
- 
1973
- 
