or whatever

Pre-Spiritualized gig conversation with my +1

• +1: So, I don't really know much about Spiritualized- tell me some background.
• Me: Well; in the mid-80s, in Rugby, there was a band called Spacemen 3. Spacemen 3 were made up of Jason Spacemen (Jason Pierce), Sonic Boom (Pete Kember) and Pete Bassman (not sure). They were signed to Fire, and they started out with pretty lo-fi, heavy-distortion led songs about jesus and heroin and love, before moving on to slightly more groove/ dance led songs about jesus and heroin and love. Then, around the end of the 80s, Jason and Sonic fell out. Jason went on to form Spiritualized, with his then girlfriend Kate Radley, a guy called Mark Refoy on guitar, who later had a solo side project called Slipstream, signed to Che, actually I once met the guys from Che after an Urusei Yatsura gig but anyway, back to Spiritualized- they had an absolutely amazing first album (Lazer Guided Melodies), and an ok second album (Pure Phase), containing songs about drugs and love and jesus. Some of them are slow songs, generally using only major chords, some of them are faster and more blues based. I think of Spz songs as round shaped (slow/major) or square shaped (fast/blues). I usually prefer the round ones. Then, possibly on account of the amount of heroin he was mainlining, Kate left Jason, and married Richard Ashcroft, the living epitomy of a northern monkey. Most of the Ladies & Gentlemen... album is about that breakup. And drugs. And jesus. Kate still appears on it, it's her voice that you hear starting the opening (title) track, for example. L&G is be far the band's most critically acclaimed album, and brought the band to prominence in 1997/98. It's still sold under 130k records in the UK though. We [Sony] are releasing a 10th anniversary edition of it. 12 years after it was first released. I got to work on 1 Spz album while they were still signed to BMG (Let It Come Down), which was great. I built the best website ever and bought up all the gaps in my personal 12" collection from ebay. Jason was really nice to deal with. After they left BMG for Sanctuary, and then Universal, he got very ill (pnuemonia possibly), but is better now, and the gigs have been back on form over the last 18 months. I went to see them on my own at the Roundhouse last year, it was phenomenal. I even bought a t-shirt. Right; shall we go in?
• Editor's note: I have been waiting literally 15 years to have that conversation. I realise it's not really a 'conversation' as such, more a human wikipedia recital (this also means some of the detail may require citation).