Take Good Care Of It Babe

On Saturday 18th July 1998, I saw Spiritualized play the headline slot at the annual Ashton Court Festival, or Bristol Community Festival to give it's proper name.

When I say 'saw', what I really mean is that I was there in body, but not mind, and I barely remember a thing about it. 

That was pretty much par for the course: there was the epic walk to get to Ashton Court in the first place; typically, this would be up Park Street, left at Durdham Downs and over the Suspension Bridge, having made several stops beforehand, for refreshment, supplies and generally meeting and picking up friends along the way.

This year was different, for a couple of reasons. By 1998, I'd moved across the river into south Bristol, so this would have been the first or second year that I walked to Ashton Court via Bristol City Football Club's home ground, and into the estate from 'the bottom' end, past the deer enclosure and the mansion itself. Whichever way you approached, once you got in, it was still a bloody long walk to the festival site.

This year was also different in that I was in a steady if not always stable relationship with the jangly music-loving girlfriend that I've mentioned a few times previously. So, we would have gone together, most likely meeting others once we got there, rather than en route.

This year was also different in that the substance of choice in 1998 would most likely have been red wine. Lots of it. And, being mindful of the practicalities of lugging stuff around Ashton Court, then it will almost certainly have been one or two of those boxes with tap, so we're talking between 3 and 4 litres of supermarket finest rioja. I may even have extracted the interior bags from the cardboard boxes, to lighten the load. Yep, I was the definition of classy, then as now.

I don't drink wine these days, but I was a lightweight back then, a couple of glasses usually sufficient to make me a bit squiffy. It would take no great leap of the imagination to assert that, a litre or more in with little more than an overpriced portion of chips or noodles from a food stall to soak up the alcohol, plus baking sun with little in the way of shade, and I was 100% off my shed by the time Spiritualized took to the stage.

I wondered if anyone else who was there and compos mentis had written about their experience of the Spiritualized gig and had a trawl online. I found two opposing views, which kind of sums up how Spiritualized's music generally split opinion with my friends. You either love 'em or hate 'em, it seems. 

In a 2006 thread, JTG commented that they "saw them headline Ashton Court same year as Portishead - 1998 I think. Possibly the worst spent two hours of my life, it was fucking appalling."

Sunpots was quick to reply, "Yep, it was the same year. The only bad part about it was that my girlfriend's sister insisted we had to leave halfway through Spiritualized's set. I kick myself to this day that I didn't tell her to hang on for another half hour. I was not happy."

I guess I fell somewhere between the two. I was there, but not there. I didn't leave halfway through the set, but I have very little recollection of what the hell was going on. Even looking at the setlist online didn't provide the usual memory jog. 

A pretty good set, as far as the song choices are concerned. Unsurpisingly, a fair few from still-current album, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, one from their 1992 debut, a suitably gospel-fuelled cover version, and one of Jason's songs from his previous life with Spacemen 3.

In recreating the setlist for today's selection, I've topped and tailed with live versions from the Royal Albert Hall album, from a gig in October 1997 and released a year later, months after the Ashton Court Festival. 

Closer Cop Shoot Cop is not the only sixteen-and-a-half minute epic, as I've also spliced together parts 1 and 2 of Electric Mainline from the CD single to make a single piece of roughly the same length.

By contrast, the singles - Electricity, Come Together and I Think I'm In Love - are positively brisk, all coming in at four minutes or less.

I toyed with the idea of including the original version of Lord Can You Hear Me (with question mark) by Spacemen 3 from 1989. After all, Jason Pierce wrote and sang it, so it would fit in. However, I went for the Spiritualized recording in the end, which appeared a few years later on Let It Come Down.

And, ot mash up JTG and Sunspots' comments above, if I'd not been nursing the mother of all hangovers on Sunday 19th July, and we had made to the final day of the festival, we would have seen Portishead headline. I kick myself to this day.

1) Oh Happy Day (Live @ the Royal Albert Hall, London) (Cover of Edwin Hawkins' Singers) (1997)

2) Electric Mainline (Parts 1 & 2) (1993)

3) Electricity (Album Version) (1997)

4) Take Your Time (Album Version) (1992)

5) Lord Can You Hear Me (Cover of Spacemen 3) (2001)

6) Come Together (Single Version) (1998)

7) I Think I'm In Love (Radio Edit) (1998)

8) Cop Shoot Cop (Live @ the Royal Albert Hall, London) (1997)

1992: Lazer Guided Melodies: 4

1993: Electric Mainline EP: 2

1997: Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space: 3

1998: I Think I'm In Love EP: 7

1998: Royal Albert Hall October 10, 1997 Live: 1, 8

1998: The Abbey Road EP: 6

2001: Let It Come Down: 5

Take Good Care Of It Babe (1:01:21) (GD) (M)