Lazer Guided Memories
Spiritualized and the Sound of Loss, Part 1
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This week – on Wednesday November 8 2023, for future readers - I went to see Spiritualized in concert. I have been going to see Spiritualized in concert, consistently, since 1992. Some of the best concert experiences I have ever had have been with Spiritualized (and this particular two-and-a-quarter-hour show, at Basilica in Hudson, was right up there, too; we’ll come back to it). But then, some of the best at-home musical experiences I have ever had have been with Spiritualized, too.
For context, especially for those who don’t know: Back when he was part of Spacemen 3, alongside Sonic Boom, Spiritualized’s sole permanent member Jason Pierce (a.k.a. J. Spaceman) made a record called Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To, and over the years Pierce took more than his share; at a certain point they almost killed him. Without sitting down to ask Jason which came first – the trippy music or the drugs – it’s hard to comment on the wisdom or otherwise of his decisions, and as you’re about to read, I am certainly not going to be the proverbial person living in a glass house throwing stones. Either way, whether loud or soft, harsh or hushed, electric or acoustic, caustic or constrained, large line-up or small - and crucially, whether performing live on stage with strobes and haze and occasional lasers, or delivering recorded sound through my choice of format and home system - Spiritualized can warp the senses.
It’s proven a scary place to be at times, because when music gets you that high, the only place to go is down, and if you peak too early – and it’s happened for me at Spiritualized shows – the rest of the night can lead to diminished returns. But when it all comes together, as it did at Basilica, there is nobody else on this planet like Spiritualized to create an otherworldly dimension where melody and rhythm and frequency, and volume and visuals and velocity, all contract, expand and expound in this mind-altering alternative universe. At that point, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to get lost inside.
And Spiritualized have a lot to do with loss. I didn’t realize just how much until Thursday of this week, the day after the latest chapter in our long-standing relationship. Listening back on their extensive catalogue, looking back on the shows I attended, reflecting back on some of those I missed, connecting back up with people I saw and listened to them alongside, I thought of all that we have lost along the way - friends, lovers, venues, buildings, and memories themselves – and the music takes on a different resonance. But by God – and Jason Pierce has referenced God a lot in his songs - have there been some incredible experiences along the way….
Spiritualized performing “The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)” from the latest album Everything Was Beautiful, at Basilica, Hudson, Nov 8 2023. Video shot by Van Bolle. Thanks Van.
“You got to hold on, baby…”
LAZER GUIDED MEMORY 1: Friends, 1992.
We were all in the know. And we all knew that the debut Spiritualized LP Lazer Guided Melodies was something else, something special. In those halcyon days when I was DJing Limelight and living with my girlfriend but not yet betrothed and talking kids, and had money in my pocket at all times and the ability to stay up all night, a group of us would go out of a weekend, someone having scored some A-grade MDMA, and when the clubs were closing and we were still tripping, it was always all back to ours to come down and see in the dawn together. And the soundtrack, always, was Lazer Guided Melodies: it match-made and married our loved-up mood.
I make no apologies for taking those drugs to dance and listen to music to, by the way: everyone should be fortunate enough to have a positive experience with MDMA (ecstasy), LSD (acid), or psylocibin (mushrooms) in their lives, and I am heartened to see that we are moving into a different cultural conversation about the medicinal powers of these drugs. (Check Robert Burke Warren’s reasons for going back to college, or the recent Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on this topic.)
Regardless, Lazer Guided Melodies was perfect in those scenarios and it is perfect still: 65 minutes long, it journeys from the early pop sensibilities of “I Want You” and “Run” through the dreamy, trippy Spiritualized sound that was still coming together – and ends with a wide-ranging quartet that always seemed to extend our collective E’d-up mood that little bit longer, starting with the gentle vocal of “Shine A Light” (played this week at Basilica) through the ferocious “Angel Sigh,” the twisty “Sway” and the conceptually brilliant countdown finale “200 Bars.”
Lazer Guided Melodies may be perfect still, but playing it on Thursday I couldn’t listen without thinking back to those early weekend mornings, Manhattan ‘92 and of what became of us all. I see my then-club partner, N, who a dozen years down the line, would be convicted of Murder for “depraved indifference” in a high-profile DWI crime for which he also got hit with vehicular manslaughter for driving three times over the limit, without a license, at speed, and attempting to flee the scene of the crime. (This took place a decade after I ended our partnership - primarily because of his alcoholism, I should state. Sadly I saw something like this coming.) I see N’s ex- wife K, who would marry N at City Hall (and I would be best man), because they were having a baby, but who would be forced to leave him and head home to England because she too could see he wasn’t going to change his alcoholic ways and focus on being the incredible character he could be when sober; K and I have lost personal contact though I gather she is doing okay.
I see my girlfriend P, later my wife, the mother of our children, and now my ex-wife, our relationship destined to be forever strained by the difficulty of divorce. I see H amongst us occasionally, he who was always impossible to understand because he whispered through his hands, even in nightclubs, but who always had his finger on the pulse; unfortunately, he didn’t have the right paperwork and is now back in NZ, where I saw him in 2016: he hadn’t changed, in all the best ways, and had done, in all the best ways too. I see Q, always radiant, always interesting, who after a short-lived marriage with one of the musicians from the Communion tour of which you’re about to hear, married well and happily and seemingly for good, and had the children to go with it, only for her husband to die in a freak tractor accident on their upstate land, upending the family’s entire existence.
And I see Pete, sweet, lovely Pete… Well, he could be a bit of a handful back then, as I guess we all could, but he later moved to Chicago and eventually to Sydney, where his brother had migrated (also from England) and offered him a job, and we also reconnected down under in 2016. There, Pete was just a doll: so generous, so giving, so full of life, so in love with his wife and daughter, so still fanatical about music and football and all the good things in life. It wasn’t just a friendship renewed, it was a friendship invigorated, and I was so happy to see him so happy and couldn’t wait to see him again. And then Pete died suddenly and violently too, the circumstances still somewhat unclear except it was sudden and violent, and wrong. I miss him more than I miss the others, because we can’t get him back, any more than Q can get her husband back, or the father who was in the car hit by N that night on the Lower East Side and who was lucky to survive with his own life can get his daughter back, or can the poor deceased woman’s husband and children get her back. I listen to Lazer Guided Melodies and I hear all that, and I know there will be no Friends reunion episode for us. But none of that detracts from the album itself, still so beautiful, so imaginative, so moody, so rooted to a moment in my life and yet so utterly timeless.
“Run” from Lazer Guided Melodies; the perfect come down pop song.
“…to those you hold dear”
LAZER GUIDED MEMORY 2: Communion, December 1992.
When the Rollercoaster tour set off around the States at the end of that same year, Spiritualized were at the bottom of a bill that also boasted Blur, Curve and the Jesus & Mary Chain – a very incongruous, very British Lollapalooza. By a quirk of booking policies, the groundbreaking Communion night tour I had helped put together from our Limelight club night, featuring Meat Beat Manifesto, Orbital and Ultramarine, on which I was the resident DJ, found itself in the same city on the same night as Rollercoaster no less than three times in a single week, according to the archived tour dates I’ve called up in Denver/Boulder, Salt Lake City, and LA).
Despite this mad double booking, I specifically recall getting to a Rollercoaster show early enough that I caught Spiritualized in full, and even in that shortened opening capacity, they were as deep and dreamy as I had hoped. Similarly I specifically recall being able to bring some of the Communion tour members over the next night – I can only presume our nightclub extravaganza started much later in the evening than Rollercoaster. Quite who joined me I don’t recall, but what I can tell you is that they were equally blown away and as happy to have had the opportunity as I was to turn them on.
As for that Communion tour, it was like a modern-day Motown package: one tour manager, one soundman, one lighting designer, and two road crew (or was it just one?!) for all three acts, and we all fell in love with each other and all had the time of lives, all equally dedicated to the successful presentation of a night that progressed each evening from ambient to techno to full-on industrial techno. The friendships formed on the Communion tour were real and they too were clearly for life, and yet here we are thirty years down the line and damn but I haven’t spoken or communicated with any one from that package in years, the lone exception being Paul Hammond from Ultramarine who I reached out to a year ago after hearing him interviewed on the C86 podcast, and who reached back to me and we each wrote of how much fun that tour was.
The other Paul on that tour – Hartnoll – and his brother Phil, a.k.a Orbital, were good running buddies for many years thereafter; it was such a joy to watch them play venues from from the Hacienda to the Albert Hall to headlining the real Lollapalooza in 1997, only five years down the line, and know that we’d hosted their first ever American live shows. And yet the last I saw of the brothers Hartnoll must have been in Manchester a solid decade back; I recall their backstage rider now extended to little more than champagne and that we all agreed that it shouldn’t get wasted. (Somehow I made it to the start line of a fell race back across the Pennines, close to Hull in Yorkshire, by mid-morning the next day!) The other members of the tour, including Jack and Johnny from Meat Beat (a far more influential act than history gives credit for), are now scattered to my wind; perhaps this post will serve to renew some of those friendships.
“…Hang on to people you love”
LAZER GUIDED MEMORY 3: Tramps 1995
Spiritualized’s second album was released under the band name Spiritualized Electric Mainline, the latter two words of which were also the name of a song on the album and the title track of the 12” EP that is the only vinyl I still have by the band, sadly. The actual album was called Pure Phase, produced with completely separate mixes in each channel. Somehow, it was more astonishing than the debut, certainly more ambitious, not just in terms of that crazy mix but with its wide array of instrumentation, a guest appearance from the Balanescu Quartet, memorable songs like “Lay Back IN The Sun” and “Let It Flow” and the almost impossibly ecstatic chill vibe of “Electric Mainline”. (It also upped the running time, now at 68 minutes.) But for all the acclaim and UK success, the act was still playing clubs in the USA, and I saw them October 1995 at Tramps - not far from Limelight, a club with which I had disassociated though P, my now-wife, now pregnant with our first son C, was working there instead.
I attended this Spiritualized show alongside my friend Jon Davies, a regular at Communion whose company – and good taste - I greatly enjoyed. Whether Jon let me in on one of his joints that night I don’t specifically recall, but I do remember this show being on a level like almost no other club gig I’d witnessed – the intensity, even in the quietest moments, rooting me to the spot. (And I did not stand still for anyone in those days.) I am also convinced that the group – which still featured Jason’s partner Kate Radley – was largely hidden from sight behind a wall of green lights that essentially shone out at and blinded the crowd. I also recollect a rotating color wheel and for all that I suspect there may be a video or two on You Tube to prove my memory wrong, I don’t want to go there; I want to hold on to what I’ve got.
Jon – I call him JD - had already moved to Brooklyn by this point; a year later, after our son had been born and we’d spent six months in the UK, we joined him and his partner Ronnye in the neighborhood. It fact we moved in not far down the road from them. It was the consummation of a beautiful friendship thar extended to attempts to make music together and occasionally DJ together, though JD and I were always at our best when just hanging together and talking about and listening to music together… and going to see Spiritualized together. Jon and Ronnye moved up to Binghamton some point down the line, and a year back I decided to reach out to him; we had a lovely catch-up on the phone and he and I exchanged text messages this week after this latest Spiritualized show, me seeking reminders and confirmations of gigs attended, JD successfully filling in the gaps in my memory. Jon and Ronnye are not a loss because they are still here and we are still in contact, and writing this reinforces that they are only two hours away and I should go see them while I can. As for Spiritualized at Tramps, the gig is not listed on Setlist FM, but I found this ad for the show online. Dedicated as I was to Spiritualized’s increasingly voluminous psychedelia, I clearly had no interest in seeing Wilson Pickett at the same venue that same weekend. Little did I know where my career would take me
“…Cause death cannot part us, if life already has”
LAZER GUIDED MEMORY 4: Supper Club 1997
For many, for most in fact, 1997’s Ladies and gentlemen We Are Floating In Space is Spirtualized’s magnum opus - the classic, the epic, the album that can’t ever be bested. There’s truth in that – the guest appearances now extended to include Dr. John and the London Gospel Community Choir and there was a clear sense in its symphonic delivery that this was a Major Artistic Statement, largely about Pierce’s own loss (of Kate, who went on to marry Richard Ashcroft), and his increasing addiction to the hard drugs I always successfully stayed well away from. The running length now pushed 70 minutes, far beyond the point I could endure most CDs at the time, but then this was Spiritualized, who needed a couple of long players at a time to fully stretch out, and indeed, it is a brilliant album (though I revere the first two LPs equally). But all the same, in the States, Spiritualized were still playing small venues, opening their US promotional tour in 1997 with two nights at a midtown Manhattan venue incongruously called Supper Club.
I know I attended – I saw every tour at that point, and JD confirmed just yesterday that I was there, further stating that it was “one of their best shows” – and yet I can’t place it. I can’t picture the inside of the venue. I can’t see the stage in my mind’s eye. Calling it up on Google Maps just brings me to another boarded-up midtown building, a remnant of musical ghosts past. Did I see Spiritualized too often that I can’t recall the first time I saw them perform Ladies and Gentlemen, and what does it say about me if so? Or have I conflated my memories from Tramps and Supper Club into one? Chalk this one up for Loss. A Lost venue and sadly, especially given that it was Spiritualized Mk. 1 at the peak of their game, an entirely lost memory.
In January 1998, Spiritualized made it to Top Of The Pops. That is weird.
“…Hold on to those you hold dear”
LAZER GUIDED MEMORY 5: On top of the World, 1998
The next year, on the eve of two shows at Radio City Music Hall, a mark of long-overdue Stateside success, Spiritualized played in what was awkwardly known as the Greatest Bar On Earth, atop of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan; it was all part of some madcap idea to tour the tallest buildings in the world. Somehow, I scored tickets. So did JD. It proved feverishly brilliant and hellishly weird. We were whisked to the top of the WTC by high-speed elevator and into this bar that looked out across the tri-State area from 106 floors up. There was a small crowd, maybe just a couple of hundred people, in front of a make shift stage, the usual psychedelic lights reduced to club gig level, a far cry from what others (though not I) would witness at Radio City over the next two nights. By the time the group took the stage, the air was rife with the smell of weed, which the bar’s bouncers seemed disinclined to do anything about. This time I do know I toked because I do so so rarely. And it’s because I do so so rarely and because JD always packed the strong stuff, that this time I had no choice but to stand totally transfixed, unable to move. Let’s call it what it was: I was stoned. It’s not normally a place I like to be, at all, but for Spiritualized… a weed high doesn’t harm. Besides the entire concert exists in scratchy almost Super-8 fashion should I wish to relive it, displaying Spiritualized in all their club gig glory at a point they were starting to become an international story.
My lasting memory though is not specifically to do with the music; it’s that after Spiritualized concluded with the epic “I Think I’m In Love,” the house lights came up and for the first time that evening, I deigned to look behind me – where the bar itself was lined to the gills with Wall Street Yuppies, talking away loudly amongst themselves, no doubt emboldened to do so by their own choice of substances. They had evidently been allowed access to this exclusive show somewhere down the course of it, and the evidently weren’t impressed, and it was one of the most incongruous sights of any gig I’ve attended, ever. Neither crowd could make out what to make of the other; we were each in our own individual Windows on the World.
It was one of only two times I went to the top of the World Trade Center, a pair of buildings whose brute simplicity, much reviled at the time they were built, became such a permanent and endearing totem and signal post of the city I so loved. Less than three years after Spiritualized played that high, on September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four planes, flew two of them into the World Trade Centers, and took them out; as I was trying to explain to my younger son yesterday, who wouldn’t yet be born until over three years later, the world changed.
So the night that Spiritualized, with what was then a brand new line-up, on top of the world, at the crest of their commercial and critical peak, performed Jason’s songs of love and loss, of hedonism and comedown, of attraction and addiction, is only partly about the intensity and exclusivity of the experience, and only partly about that strange personal memory of the coked-up yuppies under the bright lights at the end of the night. It’s also about memory itself, about a Lost Venue, a building brought down by hate, and thousands of Lives left floating in space.
(To be continued…)
This is a fantastic read Tony - and boy can I relate having seen Spiritualized more than any other band, while also having countless late night tales, some remember, more often some not- with these albums as the soundtrack- the highs and lows- with a group of friends watching the sunrise or shivering alone in a cold basement.
Music can connect us to such a profound spiritual level. Certain bands and music can become our life’s soundtrack. The Basilica gig was the first time I’ve ever seen the band. Their concert definitely connected with me on such a level. Thank you for sharing your spiritual journey with Spiritualized®.