Nightmare 2009: Honey You Want Me

The really storming olde band at Christmas ATP was Spectrum. As you will recall, Spectrum were the band Sonic Boom formed after the Spacemen 3 split up. Here I think they were basically Mr Boom and a bunch of new musicians, and they treated us to a greatest hits set of the Spacemen and early solo music of Sonic Boom. It took a while, though, for it to be apparent what they were up to. 'How You Satisfy Me', from Sonic's first solo record, started the band on the path of escalation. When that was followed shortly afterwards by a cover of Mudhoney's 'When Tomorrow Hits', it was no surprise when the next track was… 'Revolution' (itself covered by Mudhoney; seek out their version, if you like funny things). After that we had 'Suicide' and maybe one or two other Spacemen classics. The band even accentuated their Spacemen 3 revivalist shtick by having the other guitarist play sitting down, just like Jason used to.

I must say, however, that 'Revolution' was the teensiest bit disappointing. At the time, I thought maybe that the drummer had fluffed it, but he played a stormer on later tracks. Listening to the recorded version, I think maybe the problem was that the drums were mixed too loud. Everything else they did was so impressive that this was easily the set of the weekend. Sonic finished off by doing his little salute thing, god bless him.

Let me return for a second to 'When Tomorrow Hits'. It was a good track for the Spacemen 3 to cover, as it deals with heroin addiction, and not in the kind of jokey way you would expect from Mudhoney. It is a dark and brooding tune, qualities well brought out in the version played by Spectrum. I must seek out the Spacemen 3 record on which it appears (Recurring, isn't it?), to see how it compares to the original version.