I can’t remember where it was that I picked up this record. It’s a promo-only 33 1/3 rpm single that marks the point at which Sonic Boom began using the Spectrum name for his music. Whilst the labels state Sonic Boom as the writer of the two tracks here, it’s difficult to miss out on that whacking great Spectrum that’s emblazoned across the front cover. According to the back cover, ‘A colour sleeve for this limited freebie is available as part of the “Outer Limits” fanzine – the magazine covering Spacemen 3 related topics’. Now, I never had a copy of that fanzine, I never even saw one, so I certainly didn’t get the record from that or anything to do with that. Why, if I had have done, my collector instinct would have almost definitely kicked in to see me securing a copy of that colour sleeve. So, Watson, it seems that I must have acquired this record some time after it was released – at least, long enough afterwards for me to think that “Outer Limits” would no longer be active.
A quick Sonic Boom anecdote: once, the man himself stayed at my house at the same time as The Telescopes, after they’d both performed at a show I was helping to run. We watched part of what I think was that Scorsese documentary about the blues, and I was dumbfounded by the amount of knowledge that Sonic seemed to have about this stuff at his fingertips. Pretty amazing. This was counteracted, however, by realizing that he’d been snuck off and been through the kitchen cupboards, snaffling some mixed nuts to eat. Now that’s fine, but did he offer them around? No. Tchuh!