Spiritualized: Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space

My mischievous friend David F did a tape of Spiritualized's Lazer Guided Melodies (that wasn't what made him mischievous). When they played at the Leadmill — it must have been about '93 — I agreed to meet David at the gig. No mobile phones then, of course, but he looked quite distinctive, especially from the rear — a long dark ponytail — so I was confident of finding him. I arrived at the show, spotted David's back and was just about to tap him on the shoulder when I looked around me and found I'd stumbled into a scene reminiscent of the denouement of The Thomas Crown Affair. The audience was made up entirely of men with long dark ponytails, and David's back was not David's (I don't think he made it that night).

What I noticed that evening was how many of the songs shared the same dynamic: start with a drone, then build around a bassline, before the guitar and/or sax takes wing — or something like that. Still, I bought Ladies and Gentlemen…; partly because the review were good, but mainly because I needed something to do, something new to listen to. This was the same time, in May 1997, when I sent my mum out shopping for David Byrne's Feelings. I was recuperating from a bout of pneumonia and pleurisy, and directed not to leave the house for weeks on end. I was taking more, and bigger, antibiotic pills than I've ever taken in my life (it took me 18 months to recover from what they did to my body), so the arrival of this CD in a big blister pack with pretend chemist's instructions was spookily apt.

I think I quite liked it at the time, and it sounds pretty impressive blasting out of the speakers now, but it never got played regularly round at mine more than a month or two after its release. Still, when Guy asked me earlier this year if I'd like a ticket to see Spiritualized do one of those "whole album played in order" retrospectives for Ladies and Gentlemen…, I said yes. Despite being a member of the South Bank Centre, having an office 150 yards from the venue, and going in person to the box office on the day tickets went on sale to members, Guy couldn't get us any tickets (I forget if they were completely sold out, or just in the front stalls, which is the area we snobbishly think of as our preserve). I know they added a second date, and then even more dates at the Barbican, but by that time the moment had passed. Andy went to one of the shows, and used the word "spellbinding", which he doesn't do lightly, so maybe we missed out.

Here's another thing I'll be missing out on: next week they're releasing a boxed set version of the album. The industry has worked out that, while consumers-at-large are so casual about most albums that the price has to go down to a fiver or less to capture their interest, there are a few albums for which the "true fans" will part with upwards of a hundred quid. So give them all the special gigs and deluxed editions you can, and milk them for all their worth. Fair enough, I don't really resent them doing that, but that isn't for me. (If they produce an deluxe Alasdair Roberts boxed set, however, I'll buy it.)

Surely the worst publicity that drugs can get is when people who take them become obsessed with talking about drugs, writing about drugs and singing about drugs? The selling point is that drugs expand your horizons, but if drug takers show that, quite the reverse, it narrrows your interests down, then that exposes the lie of the sales pitch. How dull they have become.

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