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Price: £14.00
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Track Listing |
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1. |
Mickey Mouse is going to hell |
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2. |
SSSelebration |
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3. |
Everybody wants what Sputnik Wants |
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4. |
Family X |
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5. |
Violence is FUN(ky) |
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6. |
Amazing Lover |
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7. |
Suicide SSShow |
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8. |
Fabulously WaSSSted |
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9. |
Original Freekster
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10. |
Anything goeSSS |
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New Studio Album, recorded during 2002, released on jan 01 2003
The last real album piratespace released in 2001 had seen us experiment with expanding the sss style, absorbing what we had learnt in the intervening years before reforming ..with Blak Elvis we had gone back, way back to our roots, experimenting on Suicide's blueprint of electronic rock and roll.. but I guess our hearts always lay in the songs we first wrote, love missile, rocket usa, jayne mansfield, with their almost rockabilly tradition of song structure, with the driving electronic bass we developed using the old 808 and pro 1 synth - known as the sss spacebass..its what was so original about sputnik, that dddddaddd sound - no one else sounds like that, and know what, i love it still, still searching for the 1 note riff! the ultimate in rock and roll..
so we went back to writing the tracks without a sampler, no loops like we used on piratespace, just the 3 of us sitting in degville's flat in covent garden, with an accoustic guitar a drum macinne and the spacebass..we even decided we must write back in central london, not tjs house in somerset, writing right in the center of town - the city big beat..
As usual I had been collecting ideas for song titles for the last couple of years, titles, words pictures, bits torn from magazines, videos of programs and movies which would make up the lyrical palette for the new record.
We started in january 2002, each day I trekked across town to degvilles fith floor flat right in the centre of covent garden, X coming by tube from hampstead, ready to fire up the beatbox..192 bpm..here we go, still get a shiver down the spine...
I'd become friends with Alan Mcgee who I had always wanted to meet - I even went to a lecture he gave at a music fair on rock and roll but when he walked past me afterwards I was too scared to say hello!...Its funny how you always think, oh he won't want to talk to me.... well it turned out one day my girlfriend was having dinner in a gasteropub called the Salthouse in londons Abbey road..she phoned me and said you'll never guess who's eating there too, Alan Mcgee and what she thgought were 2 roadies..she said you have to come down for a drink..
we sat there and I was not saying anything( I hate going up to strangers and saying hi I'm tony james!)..the 2 "rodies" were Bobby Gillespie and Manni from Primal Scream to make things worse, who my friend Mick jomes knew but I didn't...anyway eventually Penelope leant over to Alan and said -"do you like sigue sigue sputnik by any chance?" Alan roared "we fookin love them! and Bobby grinned in agreement! "well " said penelope " this is Tony James....." pointing at me!
Well that was it.. it turned out Generation X had been Alans and Bobbys favourite band and theyd gone to see us as kids at school when I'd played scotland with Gen X, and they loved SSS too...we were off, more red wine, Bobby standing on the table while we swapped more and more rock stories of mutual admiration..I always loved the primals too, went and bought all their records...it was a mad nite..(actually Bobby had sneaked to a recent SSS gig too and bought a CD of us...funny how these things come around isn't it - I really think he is great)
Anyway, a month later I was in Alans office and he said we should go see the Primals in the studio as they were recording around the corner ..
When we got there they played this backing track they had recorded called "miss lucifer", althought there wasn't much singing on it..i was blown away, damn, it rocked and was really suicide like at 220 bpm too..i went home with the riff buzzing in my head -really jealous! but it was soo inspiring that later that nite the riff for "mickey mouse is going to hell" (a title I'd lifted from the book 'no logo' the previous summer) came into my head.... I'd phoned my answerphone and dddaddd'd it down the line so i wouldn't forget it, and worse, praying I hadnt directly nicked the primals track wholesale!!! phew, I hadnt!!! - it was a killer riff and set the tone for the new album, we were going to rock again
thanks Bobby - the favour returned then...
Degville came up with a tune immediatly and X blissed away on guitar..
we had a new box of synth sounds from the korg that were so inspiring too and more songs started to flow, back on that beat again..
In fact I was down in somerset when x phoned from degvilles with this great backing trak idea but they had no lyrics..hang on I said , ive got this idea called "everybody wants what sputnik wants"..oh yes perfect said x, fits perfect, i emailed thenm my rough lyrics and we were away.."original freekster " was Dirty Degs title of course..."family X" was one I'd had for a while..over the next month it just flowed...
This time we decided to only do rough demos and play the songs live first before we went to record to play them in..which turned out to be a good policy, not that Degville could ever remember the words ever!(even now)
so many days I was walking back down the Tottenham Court road scribbling lyrics onto a pad in the cold - I find when I'm driving or walking I always see things clearly and easily complete the lyrics like that, most actually while I drive back to somerset through the night, with a white pad on my lap at 100mph, listening to trance music at deafening volume..in fact Im still doing it, maybe its the hi sppeed or the fact that trance has no lyrics, but I always get inspired, from judge jules and fergie playing tunes.-I record their shows onto minidisc every week!......its exciting!
we went to Japan, and i got so many ideas - I love it there, the shows were great- Japan IS sputnik, especially Osaka, it iS Blade Runner meets the Matrix.. when we came back I had lots more stuff, but we knew we had to take a break while X had his baby (a boy "Jack") and I was moving London flats to be more popstar central in Marylebone, so we lost a couple of months......
then it was back to our favourite studio in Soho, on the 5th floor, above the hookers...yes it sounds like a 60s cliche but its a place so sordid to enter.. there was a sign over the door with "MODELS INSIDE" and you pressed the bell just below the one that said "young stern model"..everyday I used to think, 'oh no, someone will see me going here all the time and think, shit, Tony James is going to hookers!..and worse they won't say any thing and talk in the Groucho club(in the next street) behind my back.."poor penelope, if only she knew'... i think the final straw was when i was leaving the studio one evening and met a man coming up the stairs - he winked at me and asked "how was she..." knowingly... I work here i blustered self righteously, realising that sounded worse... ah well, its all very sputnik
...thanks X, great studio choice...but you know, we somehow work great there, .....and degville fits right in.....
Well degville was singing better than he ever did in his career and we kept everything really simple - there was outings to Los Angeles, spain and Macedonia along the way and of course it was a nightmare rush to get it finished in time for christmas, but it rocks great, back to the music we love, that simple space bass beat...
and no body does it like sputnik, still..theres no band in the world that sounds like this.. now thats something so hard to do, people forget that sputnik truley was innovative, original..it doesn't matter whether the whole world knows or not, everyday I get emails from Peru to japan, Paris to Edinburgh saying sputnik was the one for them....
someday!
watch this universe......