nightraven wrote:I was pretty keen on Spacemen 3 when I was younger! I much prefer Spiritualized though. Never thought S3 were remarkable enough to warrant that kind of weird/hostile elitist response earlier in this thread though. Funny to argue so dogmatically about the artistic 'merit' of a band that ultimately isn't that far advanced from 'Piper at the gates of dawn' - they're a very similar group of bored English dudes on drugs. More stompboxes, I suppose...
Firstly, they're the Velvet Underground of their time. Joy Division and The Smiths influence were obvious and mainstream, but Spacemen 3's influence goes far beyond their sails. Note: all genres in alt rock in the late 80's and early 90's all influenced and goes back to them. These are the 3 main influencers of alt rock going into the 90's, and who sold the less and has least name recognition? That means a lot.
Even the big big records. Recurring came out earlier than Screamadelica, Ladies and Gentlemen came out earlier than Urban Hymns. They did Britpop before Britpop, they psych rock / space rock mixed in with garage drone nosie before anyone with some chill rock elements here and there, before JAMC, before Verve's Storm In Heaven. They did electronic alt rock (note the alt so not krautrock) before anyone else, and NO a few organs / keyboards on some madchester bands don't count. And ofcourse, they are one of the seminal influences on Shoegaze. Every Shoegaze band listened to Spacemen 3 FACT!!! All those proto shoegaze bands were important. They were never on Creation but its no secret Alan McGee was hugely into Spacemen 3 and their 60's vibe. They also heavily influenced post rock and acts like Sigur Ros or Mogwai or This Will Destroy You or whoever the fuck, moreso maybe on the Spiritualized sized cos of the Symphonic Rock way he went, Spectrum / Sonic Boom went moreso in the Gospeldelica route, spiritual rock, ambient rock, whatever the fuck you wanna call it with electronic elements and some noise rock, mroeso on the early work of Spectrum / Sonic Boom.
Now in terms of their artistic merit, its not only about all the beautiful simplistic songs all round their albums with their own experimental edge (hmm who does that remind you of, certain Velvet Underground maybe?), but its also about Peter Kember's (Sonic Boom) and Jason Pierce's personalities and who they are as people, and how much genuine hardship and life difficulties and crestfallen sadness exudes in their music and lyrics. Even the happy songs, you gotta understand them as people and how deeply sad they are. Jason moreso was able to get that across, theres more hopefulness in Peter's songs.
Their lyrics are beautifully insane. Heavily inspired by lyrics of 1920's and 1930's blues gospel, where its ultra depressive and pessimistic music, with really severe and harsh emotions, onto themselves and others. This mixed with lyrics about drug dependence and how it makes them feel good and be able to survive the world and their sadness they are going through.
This also extends to their amazing solo work, Jason with Spiritualized and Peter with Sonic Boom / Spectrum but also Peter's production work on albums of Panda Bear, MGMT, many other homies.