When Tomorrow Hits

I won't be alone in feeling let down a little by Recurring but it was one of the first 'free' records I received, a European promo-release sent to Swansea University Radio Station where me and Kempernorton and someone else I can't quite picture ran the short-lived but much loathed Afternoon Radio Show.

For this reason, I love it a little more than I ought perhaps.

As for the radio show well... imagine something like Mark and Lard only extracted of all discernible humanity, banter, wit, wisdom and gentility and instead laid heavy with nasty music that spoiled people's lunches, odd mumbling from the corners of the studio and John Peelesque accidental speed twitches that pre-dated those Manc glitchcore speedfreaks by a good 15 years.

We opened every show with Coil's 'Circles of Mania' because that was the name of our show.

We got loads of free records sent to us - the world had no idea we were shedding listeners like Ebola sheds cells. Fifty listeners went down to around nine in the first few days, people tried to force their way into the studio demanding we turn off the latest Foetus 12" or Boyd Rice 'special'. Sometimes we played This Mortal Coil or Cocteau Twins and dedicated them to fey looking indie-goth QuiteLikeTheCure girls who sat in the coffee bar three storeys down.

It didn't work any better than spreading William Blake poems and Anais Nin porn/erotica around our rooms while pretending to have consumption and lyi9ng on the bed like Chatterton.

But Recurring...well, it was a disappointment, a sad flutter when everyone wanted a soar but it did have the ever bouncing, indie-propelling Big City to cheer too and the European version had the cover of Mudhoney's When Tomorrow Hits that later, much later, became my third favourite Spacemen 3 song...

It's has a wonderful slurred, drugged feel, far superior to the Mr Sheen original; the sound of the Spacemen toppling over one another to get to end of the tunnel, the sound of the Spacemen struggling with their inner demons, staring at each other over a round table and realising that the whole band thing is just never gonna work again...

Spacemen 3 - When Tomorrow Hits

A Yousendit Pharmaceutical Challenge

The whole album should have oscillated between tracks like this and tracks like Big City. I'm still holding out that one day Sonic'll get it together and play that album through (i'm guessing Jason is past it)