UKC

One free ticket available to see Spiritualized at the Manchester Apollo on Monday (24th) due to friend cancelling at last minute, DM me if you'd like to arrange to meet me at the door. They're e-tickets on my phone so we'd all need to go in together

Is this the Pure Phase tour? 

Yep

I fancy that, but unfortunately I can't get to Manchester for Monday. Good luck. 

I saw them in Glasgow on Friday. You're in for a very out-there night! Enjoy!

How was it?

I went to the first night in Belfast and it was excellent 

Pretty awesome thanks. Pure Phase from start to finish with Cop Shoot Cop as the encore, with strings, brass and backing singers. Jason had a lot of notes in front of him on a music stand. I assumed they were lyrics, I'm sure even a brain as fried as his must be can remember 3 chords.

Nice. I'd love it if they toured 'Ladies and Gentlemen...' next, a seminal record from my youth. 

I'm still waiting for Spacemen 3 to get back together. Three chords good, two chords better, one chord best. Never gonna happen, but I can dream.

This might be the best version of Walking With Jesus I've heard, I've been listening to it all week https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TqOp7FbMfkA&pp=ygUbc3BlY3RydW0gd2Fsa2luZy...

That's really nice. 

I picked up 'Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands' by Will Carruthers a couple of years ago. Well worth a read if you haven't already.

Excellent. I saw them at the Barras during the Ladies and Gentlemen....tour. Full band, choir, brass and strings, it was amazing how many people they fitted on the Barrowlands stage! I don't use the old-fashioned phrase often, but it was mind blowing. And indeed, Cop Shoot Cop was the highlight, an orchestration of feedback and noise, both hellish and heavenly, ultimately ecstatic. 

Near the top of my all time favourite gigs list.

They rescued Glasto 98 for me. It was my first ever festival and the rain and mud were biblical. Spiritualized played the Other Stage on Sunday night and took me out of the misery for an hour. L&G was permanently in my walkman at that point of my life, I used to listen to it about 3 times a day. 

Listening to the perfect perscription just now, just checked the date 1989! F@#k me was it that long ago?

Didn't they try to induce lightning, or was that The Orb some other time? Or was it just simply a thunder and lightning storm in 98? I was there and it was a suffer fest - people go on about 97 being the legendary mud year but 98 was far worse because it was colder and wetter - very easy to slip and fall over. 

Not that I remember. I do remember you couldn't sit down or venture off the main drags or you'd be knee deep in muck.

Most of my mates were a bit older than me and went in 97 too, 98 was worse for the mud apparently. It was also the year they tried to suck the mud out of the dance tent with the poo wagons but ended up blowing tons of shit in by mistake.

I work in events and have had quite a few opportunities to go to Glastonbury and always turned them down. I think that initial trauma really stuck... I got up on the Monday morning, everything I owned was f***** and ruined, I didn't even wait for my mates, just got on a train and left. It was bedlam, people were so wrecked by the conditions they were just smoking huge joints on the train and necking Special Brew for breakfast. The staff basically shut the doors and opened them again in London. I got shepherded through the underground by a kindly old hippy couple to the right train heading north and didn't go to another festival for 5 years.

I think I've got pretty much everything they ever released - bootlegs, live cds, etc etc - but 'Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To' is still my fave and I think that's 40 years old now....

Oh God I forgot about the dance tent sewage debacle! My main memory was that while Sonic Youth were playing I was just about on the cusp of finally “getting” them but I had an attack of the shivers and had to go back to my tent and cook up emergency noodles for warmth! 

Ha! I was also at that Sonic Youth set, my older mates were really into them and I was also trying to get what the magic was. I always liked the odd track (Diamond Sea was a particular favourite) but they generally left me a bit meh. I think I bailed out to go and cry in my leaking tent and smoke another joint to numb the pain.

Unexpectedly, Neneh Cherry was the highlight of that Glastonbury for me!

Their '93 set that closed the NME stage on Sunday night was a standout. Scorching all weekend, bubbling cumulus clouds, lingered well into the night when the fireworks that accompanied their final tune, Smiles, seem to bounce off and around the clouds in a trippy dance with the light show, creating an other worldly atmosphere. Certainly seemed like lightning....

My first time seeing them and better than The Orb on before them.