Spacemen 3 - classic or unutterably shite?

Interview with Will about the book: http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/The_Tom_Dunne_Show/Highlights_from_Tom_Dunne/156575/Playing_the_Bass_with_Three_Left_Hands

woa

Need to order this.

Mine arrived Saturday

I nearly lost my shit the other day when I thought I heard an S3 clip being used in a commercial and then I realized it was just some dumb song w a drum loop sampled from "I Love You"

If anyone's in the US, there are a bunch of new copies on Amazon Marketplace that come to like $15 w/ shipping which is prob 8-10 cheaper than you'll pay getting it shipped from the UK.

i had no idea about this - gonna order a copy now!

Read Will's book in one sitting - yes it's that great.

Got my copy the other day but I'm going to save it for a trip here in a couple of weeks. Figure it'll be the perfect timekiller.

short extract here:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/26/spacemen-3-will-carruthers-playing-the-bass-extract

Humblebrag ahead...

So I finally tracked down the Rosetta Stone for this sort of thing… pic.twitter.com/gYCrR0ptva

— Chris Barrus (@quartzcity) July 2, 2018

nice!

that's awesome

jealous

i've read the writing on the wall

A couple days ago, all of Spacemen 3 (except for the Losing Touch With Your Mind comp) disappeared off of Apple Music. I wondered what was up and then I learned that Spacemen 3's old manager (and sole corporate officer of Adasam Ltd.) and Apple are being sued for pirating hundreds of recordings that he falsely claimed licenses to.

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/apple-hit-with-lawsuit-by-songwriter-heirs-for-allegedly-running-a-massive-music-piracy-operation/?fbclid=IwAR3SLF3-vctvj0P0EbU-e1S3y8pxzXeZjnEQ7H8zLMM1DEZXwAKBxZo8v1w

Holy shit at that -- but also how perversely appropriate that S3's stuff gets caught in yet ANOTHER weird legal zone.

Is this the same guy that runs Spaceage records who Jason and Pete both hate?

unutterably shite

the arts centre live piece where the band were so munted that the bass player forgot to turn on his amp, and the PA keeps announcing the screening time for "Wings of Desire", is one of my all time favourite records.

Are they on any other streaming services?

They only have one song on Spotify and that's only because it's on MGMT's Late Night Tales comp

Is this the same guy that runs Spaceage records who Jason and Pete both hate?

Yeah. Will's book talks about the shit stuff he was doing back then. The guy who hired me into the music industry once told me "an idiotic and ignorant t-shirt salesman has no business managing an important band." I never forgot that...

Anyway, my hope is that Adasam will be so far in the fucking hole with insolvency that SP3 can finally get their own music back. Crazy year gets crazier...

the arts centre live piece where the band were so munted that the bass player forgot to turn on his amp, and the PA keeps announcing the screening time for "Wings of Desire", is one of my all time favourite records.

cosigned

Maybe a perfect band for an ILX covers album.

Are they on any other streaming services?

They only have one song on Spotify and that's only because it's on MGMT's Late Night Tales comp

― groovypanda, Monday, May 11, 2020 5:24 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same on Amazon Music and Tidal.

> the arts centre live piece

> an idiotic and ignorant t-shirt salesman

ironically, the person who first put out an extract from the contemporary sitar music thing went on to sell t-shirts on a my bloody valentine tour (one of the che / cheree people, can't remember which)

Nick Allp0rt, perhaps.

yeah, i mail ordered stuff from him a few times and he said once he was taking a few month off to tour with mbv. the spacemen3 thing was initially a flexi (5"?) shared with 2 other bands, but is now part of the Dreamweapon lp.

I wonder if that's the same item with a really early (and pretty terrible) Bark Psychosis tune.

yes, clawhammer. and the third band was the fury* things.

* not furry things

I wonder if that's the same item with a really early (and pretty terrible) Bark Psychosis tune.

BTW in addition to being SP3's old manager, the Adasam guy was also Bark Psychosis' manager. Graham Sutton has been at war with him for a long time and also recommend that people *not* buy the Record Store Day re-release of Independency.

Gerald Palmer is the guy that runs Spaceage, that's who I assumed you guys were talking about. He's the one that reissues Spacemen 3 albums and the band discourages people from buying them.

Would love to see a fine remastered Sp3 box set, but I can't imagine it happening.

I guess they have multiple people sponging off of them.

Sonic Boom has a new album coming out this year! Three videos are on youtube. They're okay? I want to like them more than I do.

Bassman weighs in on Palmer
https://petespacemanbassman.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/the-blues-according-to-adasam-and-apple/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRyie8Z1-hA

^^ awesome.

Norman Recs just mailed out they have new, limited (no idea how limited) coloured vinyls of a lot of SP3/Spectrum/Spiritualized releases https://www.normanrecords.com/promos/605 (all by Space Age Recordings)

Now on Spotify!

The Space Age Spacemen 3 vinyl reissues are bad news. Bad pressings.

Fucked Up Inside reissue is great and highly recommended.

XP HOLY SHIT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS DAY FOR LIKE 9 YEARS, AAAAAAAAA I AM SO EXCITED

It's not all their albums tho but still better than nothing and does have Forged Prescriptions which has the glorious full length version of Ecstacy Symphony

honestly I'm just going to be stuck listening to "Big City" on repeat so I'm fine with that

Just seeing their stuff on Spotify now. I see the first two albums are missing but “Taking Drugs” and “Forged Prescriptions” are there. Is that just a rights thing or do the band/fans consider these to be the more definitive documents of that era?

Separate but related question - as someone who has never heard those early albums (especially Perfect Prescription), am I gonna get a diluted/distorted vision of the band if I start with these?

Of those available, I would start with Playing With Fire

Listen to all of it because it’s all good. Taking Drugs is a collection of demos that got them a deal with Glass Records. I think Glass still owns the rights to those first two albums which is why SOC and Perfect Prescription aren’t on Spotify. Taking Drugs is great, the versions are rawer than SOC in a very good way. I’d start there to get a sense of where S3 started (Stooges/Cramps/MC5).

Forged Prescriptions collects the original recordings of songs that wound up on PP but for the most part they are not demos. They initially recorded these songs with lots of overdubs and studio trickery but decided not to go that direction because they wouldn’t be able to replicate it live. The FP version of Walking With Jesus is incredibly beautiful.

Dreamweapon has now been added!

Listen to all of it because it’s all good. Taking Drugs is a collection of demos that got them a deal with Glass Records. I think Glass still owns the rights to those first two albums which is why SOC and Perfect Prescription aren’t on Spotify. Taking Drugs is great, the versions are rawer than SOC in a very good way. I’d start there to get a sense of where S3 started (Stooges/Cramps/MC5).

Forged Prescriptions collects the original recordings of songs that wound up on PP but for the most part they are not demos. They initially recorded these songs with lots of overdubs and studio trickery but decided not to go that direction because they wouldn’t be able to replicate it live. The FP version of Walking With Jesus is incredibly beautiful.

― Cow_Art, Friday, July 31, 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Thanks, I think this answers my question. I will listen to it all of course - I was just trying to understand if there was some revisionism going on based on what they were making available. Like, Forged Prescriptions is not the director's cut.

Correct. It’s sort of an alternate version of the album that has been cobbled together. I like many of the FP versions as much as their PP counterparts, and they are different enough to be worth seeking out. But those versions never cohered into a finished album which is where PP succeeds. Sonic considers FP to be the ultimate version of that material fwiw.

BTW, supposedly the master tapes for PP were lost long ago. All digital versions are sourced poorly. Sonic has said that FP is as close as we will get to a proper remaster of PP. Fucking stoners.

I would say Playing w Fire is their "best" but that Recurring is my "favorite" and that also Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music is fucking incredible even if there not actually any sitar on it lmao

I love this band but getting a handle on how their discography all fits together has always been so goddamn confusing