OFF: Spacemen3

[Doug Pearson]

Ah, one of my fave bands of the late 80s (although I can't say I've
listened to them much recently) ...

On Fri, 8 Feb 2002 19:01:43 -0500, K Henderson <henderson.120 at OSU.EDU>
wrote:
>Um, if I might interrupt the boc-l 'tech' list for a moment, I have a
>question about music.  :)

Well, ok.  But your message would look better if you were using a better
browswer and had your cascading stylesheet attributes set correctly ;^).

>I was listening to a CD (Fade Out) by the band Loop (pre-Main) yesterday
>(thanks to Stephan for that), and was thinking that they (and Main also, at
>least 'Motion Pool' the only disc I have of theirs as well) were a little
>like the one Spacemen3 CD (Sound of Confusion) I had.  Only Loop is better
>(than both of these other discs) IMHO.

The story of how Loop and Spacemen 3 "relate" is very funny ... (FWIW I've
kept all my S3 albums, but the only Loop release I've kept is a live album
that has a nice version of "Mother Sky").

>Well, I was just confirming with you all the facts on these matters wrt
>Spaceman and the Sonic Boom.  Are these ratings supported by others here?

Not really ...

>Playing with Fire is the one they recommend to newbies.

I would agree with that statement, although 'Perfect Prescription' would
also be a good choice.

>***     1986  Sound of Confusion    Taang

Their most "rock".  Very Stooges-derivative, with one cover and one very
blatant re-write of that band.

>****1/2 1987  Perfect Prescription  Taang

Great album.  Classic songs, classic sounds ("Ecstasy Symphony"), great Red
Krayola cover ("Transparent Radiation").  I might recommend this one even
more highly as a starter album.

>****    1988  Performance           Rough Trade

Since it's live, more "rock" than their other albums.

>****1/2 1989  Playing with Fire     Taang

Their last "real" album.  Two standout tracks ("Revolution", "Suicide"),
and a few more songs that point towards Sonic's (Spectrum/E.A.R.) and
Jason's (Spiritualized) later projects.

>****1/2 1990  Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary... [live]
>                                    Fierce

!! This album is 100% drone !!  If that turns you off, DO NOT buy it!
OTOH, if 45 minutes of the same note sounds appealing to you, you will LOVE
this album.  This is basically the band "covering" noted avant-garde
composer LaMonte Young (who worked with Tony Conrad [->Faust connection]
and John Cale [->Velvet Underground] in the mid-60s).

>****    1990  Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To
>                                    Bomp

Demo/alternate versions of songs from the first two albums.  For hardcore
fans only, but still very good.

>****    1991  Recurring             Dedicated

This album isn't very good.  In fact, the only good song on it (IMO) is the
Mudhoney cover (done in "retaliation" to Mudhoney's hilarious cover - with
new lyrics - of "Revolution" from 'Playing With Fire', which was itself a
re-write of an unreleased-at-the-time MC5 song [journalist Nigel Cross
called the band on it and they 'fessed up]).  Allegedly, the band had
already broken up before this album (their only major label release, on
BMG) was recorded, so Sonic doesn't play on Jason's songs and vice-versa.

>***     1995  Performance: Live at the Melkweg 6/2/88
>                                    Taang
>***     1995  Live in Europe 1989   Space Age

These are probably very close to the 'Performance' album, so I can't
understand why they'd be given a different rating.

There are a few releases missing from this list, but the essential ones
were all contained here.

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com