Hardly the stuff of fluff, it’s no surprise that Calvert, who, according to the liner notes, always wanted to join Britain’s Royal Air Force (he even wore R. The album has been re-released in the late 1990s by BGO Records and is currently available on Eclectic Records (ECLCD1056) with bonus tracks. I’m too high to die” intones Calvert, and Rudolph proceeds to tear it up with yet again before the final crash.

Between the music there are humoristic dialogues of German officials inspecting the army, businessmen doing trade with Americans and some excerpts from pilot conversations from a Starfighter cockpit. Why spend so much time putting something like this together, only to make a mistake on the important bit? The only non-Calvert composition (co-written with Dave Brock) “The Widow Maker” follows, and it is pure Hawkwind: all churning guitar and Rudolph’s (or Lemmy’s? Similarities exist elsewhere to other groups outside of the Hawkwind orbit: “The Right Stuff” is first cousin to Blue Oyster Cult’s aviation-themed “ME262,” while the riffs of “Widowmaker” reimagine Black Sabbath with brass. The sketches between tracks are comedy gold, displaying a sophisticated, very British humour and help expand on the album's theme.Please consider supporting us by giving monthly PayPal donations and help keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.

The dirge-like “Catch A Falling Starfighter” is surrounded by ghostly electronics as Twink beats a funeral march over the assembled moaning of blackened Starfighter pilots. And I am hugely impressed, previously, I had the Hawkwind album around Moorcock's works, and that was fun also as a space opera.The concept was based on the German Air Ministry's purchase of the Lockheed F-104G Starfighter, which was eventually nicknamed Widowmaker by Luftwaffe pilots.

And admittedly it's the bonus tracks that have an immediacy, that the rest of the album may not have. The musical guests included Hawkwind, Arthur Brown and Brian Eno, making for a unique and legendary album. I'm very allured by psychedelia and many other releases of these spaceheads, but this is just different kind of music than majority of their releases. I first bought this album as an LP in the 1970's and played it to death, so naturally I cannot recommend it enough.Calvert must have felt a strong affinity with them as he too was unreliable, difficult to control and unstable as hell.