Sonic Boom's Revolution: Part Two

Click here

for part one

My '91 Wire

interview

with

Pete "Sonic

Boom"

Kember

continues.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Wire: How come Spaceman 3's version of Mud-

honey's "When Tomorrow Hits" never came out

as a Sub Pop single as was originally intended?

Sonic: Basically, because it was all talked about while I still

believed Mudhoney were doing their version of "Revolution"

[from Playing With Fire] as they had done it when they were

touring around Europe at the beginning of '89, but I didn't know

they were going to change the lyrics like that. See what they'd changed them to—which was basically a pisstake, a wordplay,

on some things I'd said in the UK press—I wasn't interested in doing a joint project when I realized what sort of fans they were.

However, we had recorded this version of "When Tomorrow Hits,"

not to do a single originally, but because it had stood out. I'd writ-

ten to them and said I'd enjoyed their version that they'd been

doing live of "Revolution." They sent a tape back of stuff they were

doing for their future album as it was then, and that song stood

out, so we did that. Then they brought out their version of "Rev-

olution" [a B-side on Glitterhouse]. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. Partly that, and partly because I found the guys at Sub Pop—one of them was very charming and one of them was a total dickhead. So, I didn't really want to get involved with them.

I didn't like it because

they'd re-written the lyr-

ics, yet still credited them

to Spacemen 3 when the credits should have been to them. I felt they should have credited themselves for that little piece of "songwriting."

I thought it would be a good idea for our version of their song to come out, because I felt it was more a pisstake of them than their version of "Revolution" was of us. In a totally different way, it was a far superior pisstake in that we made their version look like a demo. Whereas their version was like some kind of college brat hum-

or which I don't particularly like in rock bands. I mean—don't get me wrong—Animal House is one of my favorite films, but it's great as a film.

[Funny, Animal House is one of my favorite films, too...]

Wire: Do you have any idea what they think of your version?

Sonic: No, I don't. I don't really care. I mean, that wasn't the reason for doing it. It was just something I found I could do something with. They did say in an interview afterwards that they'd actually written the song originally to be like a "Spacemen 3/Wire" song. So, they'd written it to be like that anyway, I guess.

Click here for part three.

Endnote: Sonic Boom has been performing "When Tomorrow

Hits" as part of his current repertoire, which also includes a

sprinkling of Spacemen 3 numbers. Spectrum plays Neumos

on 5/2. Images from Rate Your Music (Mudhoney single) and

I Rock Cleveland (Sonic in the studio). Click the latter link to

sample "Take Your Time," a collaborative effort between Sonic

and Captain Memphis, AKA legendary producer Jim Dickinson.