1990 had been a very good year for James.
The LP Goldmother had received very favourable reviews as had a performance at that summer’s Glastonbury festival. The band was gaining a very formidable reputation as a live act, and it was no surprise that they were being asked to play as special guests at outdoor gigs as they did with both David Bowie and The Cure (the former being at Maine Road, the then home of Manchester City FC where James stole the show from the headliner).
It was decided that a new single should be released just prior to Christmas and with a mini-tour taking in Glasgow, Newcastle and Manchester to help with its promotion. The popularity of the band in their home town could be seen from the fact that they sold out two consecutive nights at the 10,000 capacity G-Mex and could probably have done the same again if the time had been available. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get a ticket for the Glasgow Barrowlands gig, but I am reliably informed by someone who was there that it was amongst the best ever at the famous old venue.
The new single was a belter as well. Maybe it was the time of the year when the band thought fans might be a bit skint, but the multi-formatting approach was abandoned. It still came out on 7″, 12″, cassette and CD but you didn’t have to buy all versions to get all the songs:-
mp3 : James – Lose Control (7″ version)
mp3 : James – Lose Control (extended version)
mp3 : James – Sunday Morning
mp3 : James – Out To Get You
The extended version is two and a bit minutes longer than the 7″ . The b-side common to all formats is a tremendous cover in which the lyrics are amended with the addition of all sorts of song titles and lines from other Velvet Underground songs, The bonus b-side is such a great bit of music that it was later resurrected and re-recorded some two years later. If you’re only familiar with the version that appears on Laid, then I hope you appreciate this gentler sounding effort – I think it represents one of Tim’s loveliest and most tear-jerking vocal performances.
Enjoy
Totally agree the version of out to get you is better than the one on laid and one of the best things theyve done
not sure if the blog gets read as far back as when you wrote about sit down… anyway… this is a rather nice piece from yesterdays guardian… i think you and your readers might like it…
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/12/how-we-made-sit-down-james-tim-booth
Thanks for this James have had a long and illustrious career led by the slightly mad Tim Booth.