One of the first live bands I ever saw, when I didn't know how good I was getting it (come on - MBV twice, Sonic Youth by Nirvana, Fugazi ca. Repeater, Shamen supporting Happy Mondays, Dinosaur Jr., Young Gods etc etc) and I barely remember it, but someone else who was there tells me they commenced the gig by walking on stage, picked up their guitars and then stood in front of the amps until the feedback reached earbleeding levels. They were touring A Gilded Eternity then, and I would readily stack that album against anything that Spacemen 3 came up with. Fundamentally, you can take any Spacemen 3 album and track by track pick out where they nicked this sound and that lick from. Not only are they record collector rock, but these days you own all the records they stole from. If you can say that about Loop, I still don't own those records. I don't think they're readily reducible to the sum of their influences...they mainly sound like drugs.
Saw Dead Meadow play last night (supporting Blue Cheer, no less, who were terrible) and realised that short of Sunn O))), I hadn't seen a band recently that went in for dry ice, back lighting, strobes and the whole apparatus that was part and parcel of any gig for a band like Loop. Who now is out there making acid superfluous? Whose goal is to induce total sensory derangement through sonic attack? What happened to that whole volume aesthetic? What happened to leaving a gig barely able to stand, uncertain as to what the hell you'd just heard? That was Loop. They were an incredible band and it is ridiculous that their albums are out of print.
Robert Hampson had been a roadie for Spacemen 3 so there was bad blood about who precisely was stealing whose thunder - you can probably disregard anything Sonic Boom has to say on the matter as being strictly personal. There was a brief period in between Loop and Main where Hampson joined Godflesh - haven't heard anything from that time, but I think it's indicative. Loop were closer to Skullflower - Skullfower even lifted the same Apocalypse Now sample on Obsidian Shaking Codex - Spacemen 3 were closer to Yo La Tengo.
Though it might not be apparent, I actually love Spacemen 3 deeply.
The support band at the Loop gig was a very young Therapy?, back when they really wanted to be Northern Ireland's answer to the Jesus Lizard. Believe it or not, they were actually pretty good back then...James Joyce is fucking my sister, indeed.