60 albums
1997 - Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space

While I was aware of Spacemen 3 I wasn’t, at the time, a fan. Their live album Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music was recorded at The Watermans Arts Centre in Brentford, just around the corner from where I worked. I visited often, mostly to see films, but occasionally music (I saw Elvis Costello there a couple of times). During the recording of Dreamweapon you can hear a venue announcement telling folk that the doors were open for the evening’s screening of Wings of Desire - I saw Wings of Desire at The Watermans, and have long worried that I blithely strolled past The Spacemen 3 doing their thing on the way to the cinema. I hope not.

Spiritualized - Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

But, that’s how unaware of Spacemen 3 I was. I was also unaware of their split and the formation of Spiritualized until a work colleague lent me a CD of Lazer Guided Melodies, the copy with four long tracks, and everything changed. By the time Ladies and Gentlemen… was released I was a fan (and had filled out the gaps in my Spacemen 3 knowledge/collection).

My copy is a CD in the medicine box package and because of that:

• the packaging had to be broken to get to the CD
• 27 years of love have taken their toll on the cardboard box

… and I love it all the more for that. CDs, in jewel cases, don’t age, the case might get scratched or cracked but you put it in a new one and, Hey Presto, a mint copy again. But artefacts that are loved should show that they are loved. They should have creases and scratches, and biro-scribbled declatrations of love. So, Ladies and Gentlemen is one of the few CDs that I actually love as a thing as well as for the music.

By the time the album was properly released, the Presley estate had put the kibosh on the title track’s use of Can’t Help Falling in Love but once again the Galaxie 500 Mailing list came through and someone sent me a CD with the proper version. Apparently come 2009 the Presley estate saw the error of their ways (and the opportunity to make a few quid probably helped) and subsequent copies have that version.

I saw Spiritualized quite a lot around then, but the last time was at The Royal Festival Hall in October 2009 playing Ladies and Gentlemen in full - it was breathtaking! The whole show is on YouTube:

Spiritualized - live, Royal Festival Hall, London, UK, 12th October 2009 (play on YouTube)

I just found my ticket, it was £36.25, it was a great show, but that was a hell of a price back then - probably the most expensive tickets I’d ever bought, and would ever buy until Kate Bush in 2014 - which is unlikely to ever be overtaken, unless Kate plays again!