So this mission so far for me has kind of been a bit of a documentation of my imperfect and inglorious musical education.
From the album that helped me realise that even with nothing but a terrible acoustic guitar I could play songs like on the records to the one that helped me understand that provided you had a fuzz pedal and were capable of playing two chords, you could stand on stage in a leather jacket and force people to listen to you..
This album took me a further step towards (almost) rock and roll glory. Sound of Confusion was another blast of DIY punk revelation fucking-hell-I-can-do-this to my developing teenage mind. Coming out in 1986, a whole year after my January mission pick, and not much more than six months after my February pick, it represented - at the time - the absolute high point of what must have been in retrospect a fairly helter-skelter musical coming of age (for all of those around me having to cope with the godawful noise I was making through my bedroom walls, probably something quite appalling and traumatic to share and experience.).
Sound of Confusion made stuff even more fucking rock and roll by stripping it back even further. You could be a rock star of sorts, even if you play slowly and sometimes only played ONE chord repeatedly for a very long time, as long as you did it with swagger and feeling. And even more effects pedals. This was great for a kid with swagger and a few junky effects pedals (of the sort prevalent in the mid-80s), a yearning to be looked at on stage, but no real ambition to put in the harder yards of learning to play particularly well. It was all about the FEEL, not about the technique. Technique was for people who COULDN’T DO FEEL. At this point I could go beyond being in a band to being in a fucking great (to my ears) band.
The album itself is the first and probably the most basic of the Spacemen 3’s short and essential catalogue. But it fucking rocked. Starting off with the stomping narcotic delirium of Losing Touch with My Mind, it defined from the off a new sound that briefly caught the heart of multitude of nodding out teenage wasters. Kind of flat but plaintive vocals on top of heavily fuzzed guitars and ultra basic drums. But in the coolest way possible. The second track Hey Man was more of the same. Maybe louder and stompier. Kind of channeling the Stooges and the Velvet Underground and Suicide and lots of other nihilistic noisy dronesters. In a way no-one else got close to. The third track, Rollercoaster is where it all starts to get properly messy. An extended length thumping grind through the 13th Floor Elevator’s classic, blissful and brutal. Next up another cover version - Mary Anne - an equally brutal reimagining of Just One Time by Juicy Lucy (these guys had astonishing music taste/record collections). And then another cover - Little Doll, in the process somehow out-stooging the Stooges. A brief run through the fairly forgettable “2:35” before the album ends with another stormer, the astonishing OD Catastrophe - 9 minutes of thrashing away on one chord very loudly. Very very loudly.
This was good stuff. And I could do it too (maybe). And so completed my early musical growing up (1985-86).
Of course it wasnt that simple. When I actually got round to getting a proper proper band together it was two years later, and I was past all of this stuff and onto the next thing. In my case late 80s US pre-grunge hardcore. Principally inspired by an astonishing sampler album released by Sounds (RIP great music inky of its time) and Shigaku called Beautiful Happiness. Full of bands like Halo of Flies, Naked Raygun, early Bullet Lavolta, and the magnificent Iowa Beef Experience. That was what I wanted to be and play.
But it turned out that…as a band we were way too incompetent to actually play with the speed and accuracy to get anywhere near any of those guys. Even the most agricultural of them. So what on earth might we do? The answer came quickly. Play slowly, and with soul and swagger. Cos slow was easier. And fuzz covers all manner of slack technique. And actually (and this was the major revelation) feeling and attitude is WAY more important than technical competence. Like so much more.
So we turned back to those fucking magnificent tunes of two years previous to that, listened hard at how it was done. And put it into practice. Slower. Less chords. Louder. More fuzz. Even more fuzz. Even even more attitude. And got gigs. And then a record deal. And toured and stuff. It was great. Of course we were terrible, sold little or no records, probably cost our lovely record company a fortune (in relative terms) and split up after a couple of EPs. But it was fun on the way. And we even somehow got Pete Kember/Sonic Boom from the Spacemen 3 to produce our tunes. So it didn’t turn out too badly, really.
The Spacemen went on to put out a few more albums. The equally magnificent Perfect Prescription, the pretty decent Playing With Fire, and the frankly odd Recurring, by which time the group was so dysfunctional, the LP was split one side each between the warring factions. But it did at least soundtrack a wholly unexpected Simpson’s segment some years later. As well as whole load of unofficial/additional releases including the notorious Dreamweapon live album the story behind which is one of the highlights of Will Carruthers’ brilliant rock and roll memoir Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands.
And then they spawned the excellent but (for me) way too controlled, serious and self-regarding Spiritualized and the altogether more interesting if perhaps less immediately commercially successful career of Pete Kember, embracing everything from experimental noise to duets with Delia Derbyshire and Panda Bear, alongside a load of top quality production work, getting if anything more prolific and interesting as he’s got older.
But for me, certainly in terms of defining me musically, it all started with the Sound of Confusion. What a fucking album. Head down. Not many chords. Very loud. Very fuzzy. And loads of feeling.
Oh, and thanks @Azzarole for setting this thing off at the start of the year. A good prompt for cathartic remembering. One of the best of the mission briefs. So much great content being shared.