Jim Connelly

Certain Songs #2421: Spiritualized – “Medication (Royal Albert Hall, Oct 10, 1997)”

August 15, 2022 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997
Year: 1998

. . .

One of the highlights of the titanic Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 album was “Medication,” which had been the opening track on Pure Phase, but because I first heard it on the live album, that’s the version that I love the most.

Either way, “Medication” is a textbook class in quiet/LOUD/quiet, drifting on on the shimmering connective tissue of Thighpaulsandra’s shimmering keyboards, over which J Spaceman sings about drugs. If you can believe that.

Certain Songs #2420: Spiritualized – “Electric Mainline (Royal Albert Hall, Oct 10, 1997)”

August 14, 2022 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Royal Albert Hall, Oct 10, 1997
Year: 1998

. . .

I’ve only ever seen Spiritualized one time, on April 2, 1998 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. All things considered it was a pretty good time to see them, as they were touring Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. And sure, while they were the opening band and only got an hour, they were the opening band for Radiohead on the OK Computer tour, and half of the eight songs they played are songs I’m writing about.

It was also a preview of one of my favorite albums of 1998, and the greatest live album of the decade, give or take Nirvana’s Unplugged album: Royal Albert Hall, October 10, 1997

Certain Songs #2419: Spiritualized – “Electricity”

August 12, 2022 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Year: 1997

. . .

So far, I’ve been writing about the slower — or at best, mid-tempo — Spiritualized songs. And for good reason: on their first two albums, that was all they really had.

That all changed with “Electricity,” an absolutely crazed raver that sits smack dab in the middle of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space , guaranteed to wake up anybody who might have started drifting away on the drugs the album packaging invited you to take.

Certain Songs #2418: Spiritualized – “I Think I’m In Love”

August 11, 2022 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Year: 1997

. . .

This is where I came in. I’m pretty that while I’d heard Spacemen 3 at some point in the 80s, Spiritualized didn’t really cross my radar until the massive critical acclaim for Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space was so overwhelming, I needed to check it out.

And while I would fall short of calling it a masterpiece, it’s where Jason Pierce well and truly added the gospel that had been lurking around the edges of the first two records, a psychedelic gospel rock stew that could be utterly transcendent, like on the too-short-at-8:10 “I Think I’m In Love,” a gorgeous roar of a fucked up song.

Certain Songs #2417: Spiritualized – “Lay Back in the Sun”

August 10, 2022 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Pure Phase
Year: 1995

. . .

It will probably surprise no one that Spiritualized’s second album, 1995’s Pure Phase, wasn’t so different from their debut, 1992’s Lazer Guided Melodies, with the possible exception that the songs had maybe a little more organ and a little less synth.

Whether or not it was better or worse is hard to say, though it did have a couple of songs that I guess would be considered classics, the opening track, “Medication,” which bounced from near silence to roaring noise, and “Electric Mainline” which was an instrumental that built and built to no real resolution. I’ll deal with both of those songs when we get to the live album in a few days, but Pierce was so taken with “Electric Mainline” that he temporarily renamed the band Spiritualized Electric Mainline for this album.

Certain Songs #2416: Spiritualized – “Run”

August 9, 2022 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Lazer Guided Melodies
Year: 1992

. . .

I will say this for “Run:” I’m pretty confident that it’s the only song that will ever be recorded that combines a lift from the Velvet Undergound and a lift from a song that I first heard in a cover version by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The cover is “Call Me The Breeze,” a J.J. Cale song that I first heard via Skynyrd’s cover on side three of One More ~~For~~ From The Road, a record that I absolutely adored when I got it way back in 1977. And of course, it’s been covered countless times, but most certainly not in this fashion.

Certain Songs #2415: Spiritualized – “I Want You”

August 8, 2022 by Jim Connelly 1 Comment

Album: Lazer Guided Melodies
Year: 1992

. . .

In the beginning, there was Spaceman 3, who sounded exactly like their name, and whom I could never get into, though I’ve tried more than once over the decades. So let’s pin the blame for that squarely on me, and instead focus on Spiritualized, the band that J Spaceman — AKA Jason Pierce — formed in the aftermath of that band’s dissolution.

The first Spiritualized studio album — the perfectly-named Lazer Guided Melodies — came out in 1992. The most recent one — the also perfectly-named Everything Was Beautiful — came out just a couple of months ago. Over that three-decade period, Pierce has occasionally resurfaced to put out another studio collection, issuing a grand total of nine.

Certain Songs #2414: The Spinanes – “Epiphany”

August 1, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Manos
Year: 1993

. . .

There are two things that when I started doing the research for this post a couple of hours ago that really kinda flummoxed me. The first one is that Manos came out in 1993. But in that weird way that I can normally kinda place when records came out by where I listened to them, I could have sworn it was more like 1995 or even 1996.

That said, based on when I put songs from it on compilation tapes, it looks like I got it in early 1994 — from Ragin’ Records, no doubt — and it was one of those records that was part of the transition from Fresno to Oakland, thus me placing in the mid-1990s.

Certain Songs #2413: Spinal Tap – “Big Bottom”

July 31, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Heavy Metal Memories
Year: 1982

. . .

1970 was truly a historic year for British Heavy Metal. Not only was it the year Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep released their first albums, it was also the year that a pair of British bands stopped fucking around and started kicking out the jams. The first of those bands was Deep Purple, who had made their name with with heavyish covers of Joe South & Neil Diamond songs, as well as long arty suites, and had even released a collab with the London Symphony Orchestra before solidifying with a new bassist and Jesus from Jesus Christ Superstar to release the immortal Deep Purple In Rock. The other was Spinal Tap, who, to put it frankly, were a bit of a mess.

Certain Songs #2412: The Special A.K.A. – “Free Nelson Mandela”

July 30, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: In The Studio
Year: 1984

. . .

Because musicians lead complicated lives, when I write these things, there is sometimes confusion as to what to call the song I’m writing about as well as confusion as to which artist to credit for the song.

In today’s case, it’s both!!!! Is the song called “Free Nelson Mandela” or is it just called “Nelson Mandela”? Is the group “The Special A.K.A.” or is it just “The Specials”? Both the song and the group can easily be found under either name. So I’m going to make the arbitrary decision to go with how I first got to know this song — the single that came out in 1984 — while trying to untangle some of the threads that created all of the confusion in the first place.