Spacemen3 book - anyone read it?

Buick6 said:

I'm reading it now that DREAMWEAPON book that came out a few years back.It's funny that someone has written so a praising book about them, and making them out to be such a revolutionary influential band, for just some indi band...

But the thing I find most hilarious is how this guy is going for the Victor Bockris shtick by making these kinda average shmoes to be some sort of extraordinary, drug-fucked poet laureates...And how the author seems to understand the thought processes inside Sonic and Jason's heads!

Did he really hang out with them and get such a deep insight, or is he just projecting his own romantic ideal of who these guys are?

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Haven't read it, I remember at the time reviews saying it was a kinda fan-type thing. Just some indie band! Just some indie band! You leave them alone you horrible neanderthal They were hugely influential! They created ummm The Dandy Warhols lol.

The amazing writing of Erik 'Dreamweapon' Morse:

"The guitarist's lithe 74-inch frame only reaffirmed his enormous presence as he stood watching from three rows back, his eyes locked onto Jason's, before circling the perimeter at Will, Jonny, and Mark."

A monkey. A monkey could write a better biography of Spacemen 3 than this. (Although I quite liked the rimming analogy.)

Spacemen 3 are great ... tons of obsessive detail, very specific with amps, odd tunings, etc. Not just 'an indie band' at all. Far weirder & more rigorous. Roots in La Monte Young, etc. The live version of 'Suicide' justifies their rather humourless existence all on its own.

CHAOTROPIC said:

Spacemen 3 are great ... tons of obsessive detail, very specific with amps, odd tunings, etc. Not just 'an indie band' at all. Far weirder & more rigorous. Roots in La Monte Young, etc. The live version of 'Suicide' justifies their rather humourless existence all on its own.

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I mean, they're my favourite band ever but influence? Their legacy kinda extends to, um, National Socialites and Patricide really, dunnit? I mean, what a legacy but still.

loved this band as a teenager. 40 min rock songs! wall of noise! early gospel and indian classical influeces! they turned being a stoner into a religion and somewhat of a political statement... really liked the first spiritualized and first couple of spectrum records too.

Great band, shite book. Playing with fire's the one that stands up best, some lovely weightless space ballads on that one. My first introduction to droney music really, coinciding with smoking weed for the first time and getting into lots of 60s stuff. Found out about the Stooges/MC5/13th floor elevators and The Cramps through them. Spacemen 3 were a really 'record collection rock' sort of band, not very original or innovative in themselves but they served as a good introduction to a lot of stuff for me anyways.

mistersloane said:

I mean, they're my favourite band ever but influence? Their legacy kinda extends to, um, National Socialites and Patricide really, dunnit? I mean, what a legacy but still.

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Spacemen 3 were pretty influential on a certain strand of US Indie from what I can gather, along with Jesus and Mary Chain and MBV. Im thinking of Galaxie 500, Mercury Rev, Low...

mistersloane said:

I mean, they're my favourite band ever but influence? Their legacy kinda extends to, um, National Socialites and Patricide really, dunnit? I mean, what a legacy but still.

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Pfff ... that should be enough of a legacy for any band Actually, a whole bunch of the musicians I hang out with at the moment are total Sonic Boom acolytes, right down to only playing in A or E & the nursing of ostentatious yet minor smack habits. Sonic & Jason are worshipped with surprising intensity by a not inconsiderable number of impressionable longhaired jam-band spaceheads.

I was at a Spectrum gig about two weeks ago. Companionable musos offered me crack & heroin & I kept tripping over people's hair.

CHAOTROPIC said:

The amazing writing of Erik 'Dreamweapon' Morse:

"The guitarist's lithe 74-inch frame only reaffirmed his enormous presence as he stood watching from three rows back, his eyes locked onto Jason's, before circling the perimeter at Will, Jonny, and Mark."

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That really reads like slash fic. Does he detail them humping each other shortly after this?

Buick6 said:

Don't get me wrong, these guys are probably my favourite Limey band..

I guess they influenced Loop!

and that 'Dandy Warhols' reference is hilarious. The Dandies write good singles, but possibly the dullest piece of shit I've ever seen live.

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Ah yeah Loop, good call. Their stuff is finally being reissued at the moment. I was trying to blank out Benny's message cos I detest Mercury Rev. I quite like bits of the Brian Jonestown Massacre though, and they blatantly ripped off the Spacemen.

There's something about the idea of indie slash fiction that makes me want to gag. And not in the good way.

mistersloane said:

Ah yeah Loop, good call. Their stuff is finally being reissued at the moment. I was trying to blank out Benny's message cos I detest Mercury Rev. I quite like bits of the Brian Jonestown Massacre though, and they blatantly ripped off the Spacemen..

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God, along with the Jesus & Mary Chain they basically invented shoegaze. In fact, I reckon Spacemen 3 were even more important than J&MC, what with their ten minute tuneups between each song & resolute non-acknowledgement of the audience. J&MC couldn't see their audience for all the smoke & strobes but Spacemen just sat on chairs looking concentratedly at their guitars. I'm sure My Bloody Valentine owe them a lot, let alone bands like Slowdive who were a kindof photocopy, getting the broad idea but completely missing the rigour & detail, & the homage aspect of it, the sense of historical continuity. Loop knew them in the early days & their sound is really just one take on Sonic's idiosyncratic approach to music, drugs & the guitar.

BJM are kindof amazing. You have to admire their (Anton's) bloodymindedness. The artwork of his albums is brilliant too, top to bottom. Saw them live last year at the Kentish Town Forum. After every song / ten minute one-chord directionless drone / guitar change, he'd come to the front & say, "please, PLEASE, London, stop STABBING each other!!". & then, in the green room after the gig, the crazy motherfucker stabbed his own guitarist

Dandy Warhols are just shit aren't they?? All very , making them limited & a bit :slanted:

loop, main, great stuff... what about the hair and skin trading company? where do they fit in with this stoner fuzz axis? and people always mention 13th floor elevators, but i know nothing about that band.

zhao said:

and people always mention 13th floor elevators, but i know nothing about that band.

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Often said to be the first psychedelic band, though I have no idea if this is true or not. Spacemen covered their paean to LSD, 'Rollercoaster', and also pilfered quite a lot of their ideas and record sleeve imagery. Good band, as long as you can put up with that electric jug sound going all the way through every song...

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zhao said:

loop, main, great stuff... what about the hair and skin trading company? where do they fit in with this stoner fuzz axis? and people always mention 13th floor elevators, but i know nothing about that band.

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H&S Trading Co were the other two out of Loop when Hampson left to make less rockist music I think, they had the best name in the world (after a shop in London) but the records weren't all that, kinda cut-ups and drones if I remember rightly.

mistersloane said:

H&S Trading Co were the other two out of Loop when Hampson left to make less rockist music I think, they had the best name in the world (after a shop in London) but the records weren't all that, kinda cut-ups and drones if I remember rightly.

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nah i got one that's straight up rock. not terribly interesting but sounds pretty decent.

Buick6 said:

I saw BJM in Willamsberg last year and they were boring as shit, a big letdown as I really dig their sound and attitude. The just weren't deadly enough, and all these 'nu gazer' bands are even more boring than the first wave of shoegazers, and it shit me that they have 3 guitars playing the same fucken chord, you'd think they'd at least make things more trippy and textured. There's nothing worse than a 'head band' that sound totally shit on drugs!

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Yeah, they were oddly underwhelming live. Strange, given their reputation. I love the idea of them but in the flesh they just weren't single-minded enough to really make me bug out (not helped by the fact that the house lights were way up & the sound was really quiet). It was actually quite boring apart from the real onstage tension ... the guitarist was totally loaded & kept getting in Anton's face & there was an uncomfortable sense that it could have exploded into unpleasantness at any time, which of course it did after the show. They're channeling a real Altamont darksideofthesixties trip but projected too much ego in the music, for it to be really psychedelic, I think.

I mean, in many ways, unlike Spacemen 3 actually, they're too shackled to the trappings of 60s psychedelia to really create trippy music. It's just music that sounds superficially trippy, that pays lipservice to an idea of trippy, without actually trying to change the brainstate of the listeners into anything that resembles an actual trip. Like one of those eerie 'gothic' chain pubs that's all bats & red cocktails & coffin-shaped tables & bartenders in vampire capes. It's a costuming, roleplaying attitude, an emulation, rather than an attempt to really explore the possibilities of a particular kindof sound. I love Anton's total curmudgeonly hilariousness though, although I hope never to meet the cunt.