Sunday, August 8, 2010

Spacemen "2" Reunion

If there’s one band that I love more than Spiritualized, it’s Spacemen 3.

And there are very few bands that I love more than Spacemen 3, so that’s saying something.

While Jason “Spaceman” Pierce was busy with rehearsing for the Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space performance at Radio City Music Hall last week, a few weeks prior to that even found Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember gathering with former Spacemen bassist Will Carruthers for a 2/3rd reunion of S3. The set included some guitar work by My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields and the Jazz Butcher’s Pat Fish.

The performance was to help with former Spacemen cover artist Natty Brooker who seems to be suffering some unknown ailment.

Speaking of the possibility of a Spacemen 3 reunion, it’s been quite apparent that the primary holdout is-and will remain-Jason Pierce. He’s refused what could only be considered as more than few lucrative offers for a one-off show, but having seen Spiritualized on a few occasions, I can safely say that they’re good enough to make you forget about any kind of Spacemen 3 reunion anyway.

There were reports that Spiritualized’s performance of We Are Floating In Space were loud as fuck and that the biggest complain was that Pierce remained seated and in a near-coma state throughout the show.

That actually is pretty common for the Spaceman, but what blows my mind is that when he’s seated and his eyes are closed, he knows exactly when the freak-outs abruptly end and go right into a soft passage at the drop of a hat.

You’d think he was dead if you didn’t see his foot tapping.

The other complaint that I read about was the ungodly price of merchandise, including an $80 t-shirt made just for the occasion. I hope some enterprising screenprinter took full advantage of that ridiculousness and made a bunch of bootleg shirts for us normal folk.

Here’s some footage of the reunion gig that Pierce didn’t participate in.



And here's some footage of the gig that Pierce did manage to find a seat for.

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