Category: James

In March 1998, all concerned thought it would be a good idea to compile and release The Best of James. It brought together fourteen hit singles from the Mercury/Fontana years together with Hymn From A Village from the Factory Records era plus two brand new songs, both of which were due for release as singles as part of the promotion of the ‘new’ LP.

Destiny Calling was made avilable a couple of weeks before the album and was issued, as had become the norm, in a 3xCD package. It’s a single that’s among the best James released in the mid-late 90s. The tune is more than decent while the lyric pokes fun at how the music industry was beginning to pan out in the run up to the turn of the century with its ever-increasing emphasis on manufacturing and controlling the entire sound, look and feel of musicians. Who really in their right mind would set out to be a famous pop star in these times?

The first of the CDs featured what was claimed to be three exclusive rare tracks all of which however had been available as b-sides to previously released hit singles and therefore probably already owned by most fans.  The second CD went for live material from what had been, to all intents and purposes, a more than decent show at the Reading Festival the previous August, and having come in for justified criticism over the choices made on previous live songs as b-sides it was good that two of them were from Wah Wah and this rather different in the live setting that than the studio.  Just a pity the other track was a lumpen and wearisome number that too often sounded like u2 by numbers.  CD3, which I don’t have, provided a  multimedia section containing the video of She’s A Star together with snippets of videos of other songs you could find on ‘Best Of’.

Interestingly, the artwork for the single harked back to the baggy era with the use of the daisy logo that had adorned so many t-shirts.

The single entered the charts at #17 and dropped down the week after just as the album began its ascent to the #1 spot.

James were now arguably,  more popular and better-known in the UK than at any other point in their career, thanks to this compilation drawing attention to the consistency and quality of the singles.  Those of us who has been looking on for over a decade could only sigh and think of all the great tracks that would have made it a genuine ‘Best Of’ rather than a chart-fodder effort.

The tracks on CD 1 (Assassin, Goalie’s Ball and The Lake) have all featured earlier in this series so here’s the tracks from CD2:-

mp3 : James – Destiny Calling
mp3 : James – Jam J (live)
mp3 : James – Honest Joe (live)
mp3 : James – Sound (live)

Enjoy

The first James single that I didn’t set out to buy at the time.

Waltzing Along was one the tracks from Whiplash that  I liked most, helped by the fact that it is driven along by some lovely work on the slide guitar which gives the song a country feel akin to some work a decade or so earlier by R.E.M.

mp3 : James – Waltzing Along (LP Version)

A lovely bit of slide guitar that was replaced by a horrible bit of standard guitar work.  Indeed, all the lovely subtle sounds which made this such an enjoyable LP track were butchered away and in their place came a more commercial and jarring sound.

The single was released in June 1997. Again, it involved 3 x CDs.

The first of them had three live renditions of songs lifted from a London gig a few months earlier, and for the second single release in a row Greenpeace featured as did  Homeboy (another track on Whiplash) together with an old favourite:-

CD1

Waltzing Along (single version)
Homeboy (live)
How Was It For You (live)
Greenpeace (live)

The Second CD was where you’d find the three new songs:-

CD2

Your Story
Where You Gonna Run?
Long To Be Right

And finally, yup, you guessed it, CD3 for the diehards who wanted all the remixes:-

CD3

Waltzing Along (Disco Socks Mix)
Waltzing Along (Flytronox Mix)

Once again it was all three for £5 if you wanted or £1.99 each. Fans bought enough copies to have it enter the charts at #23 before it plummeted like a stone.

There was a rather savage review of the single in NME but it was hard to argue with it:-

Time was when these merry Mancunian misfits could lay claim to being one of the most forward-looking groups in this country, with their weird take on rock music and an ascetic outlook that stuck out a while in times of much frippery. These days, James are more like Simple Minds than the Scottish stadium rockers themselves, if the hackneyed and plodding backing track here is to be taken seriously. Which is a pity as Tim Booth still sings like he’s got something of importance to impart – in the case a prayer for the dying. Oh well, there’s always the solo career.

The really annoying thing is that having subjected myself to so many sub-standard b-sides with the Whiplash singles I missed out for 17 years on one of the more interesting efforts from the band. CD2 was well worth £1.99….

Your Story is a song about being obsessed with sex and rather unusually has the odd expletive thrown in during its five-minute duration.  The tune is a bit more rock orientated than most James songs but it is different enough to merit attention.

It’s a total contrast to the instrumental track which follows – you could have given me 100 guesses and I don’t think I’d have stumped up James as the band who composed and recorded what is the rather haunting and occasionally beautiful Where You Gonna Run?  It sound like the sort of music that comes over the credits of a movie that just had the saddest and most moving of endings.

Just a pity that the final new song, Long To Be Right, is a self-indulgent, noodling waste of three and a bit minutes of your life.

mp3 : James – Waltzing Along (single version)
mp3 : James – Your Story
mp3 : James – Where You Gonna Run?
mp3 : James – Long To Be Right

Tune in next time to see how James got the critics and record buying public to like them again!

The Top 10 success of She’s A Star was followed up with the issuing of an old song.

Tomorrow had originally appeared on the Wah Wah LP in 1994 but had subsequently been re-recorded as the opening track of the follow-up LP Whiplash, released in February 1997. Now the decision was taken to release it as a single and again completists would need to fork out for three separate CDs. At which point this fan decided enough was enough.

I’d been very disappointed for the most part with the content of the new songs, live versions and remixes which had accompanied the previous single (see Part 20 for more details) and I drew the line at Tomorrow. I wasn’t even remotely tempted by the fact that in some stores you could get all three together for £5. As a result there’s a gaping hole in the collection, one that would in fact grow in the years to come as I finally got bored with James (although that situation would change again many years later).

What I have done however, knowing I was trying to get this series sorted out as best I could, is go on-line and look to track down second-hand copies for as cheap a price as I can find. Which is why I can now at least bring you these from CD1:-

mp3 : James – Tomorrow
mp3 : James – Gone Too Far
mp3 : James – Honest Pleasure
mp3 : James – All One To Me

(all of them being previously unreleased songs)

and from CD2:-

mp3 : James – Lost A Friend (live)
mp3 : James – Come Home (live)
mp3 : James – Greenpeace (live)

All recorded for the Marc Radcliffe show on BBC Radio 1 in January 1997.

Tomorrow, helped by the multi-formatting, entered the charts at #12 but dropped down dramatically in the next two weeks…it was now becoming apparent that singles success was almost entirely down to long-standing fans…which would be further exploited by the record label in the months to come.

It’s a single which is a big improvement on She’s A Star but I feel it is very reminiscent of Ring The Bells which, as I mentioned in an earlier part of the series is one I’m not that fond of.

Turning to the new stuff on CD1.

Gone Too Far is a frantic and unusual sounding song (for James) and one that, on the first few listens in recent weeks, I will give the thumbs-up to.

Honest Pleasure is an out-and-out rock song driven along for the most part  a ‘classic’ riff that you’ll find on compilation CDs made for driving along highways – it is bloody awful.

But not as awful as All One To Me which sound not much more than a demo…

CD2?

Well, the live version of Lost A Friend is a fairly faithful representation of one of the better tracks on Whiplash.

And while I know the world could exist happily enough without James releasing yet another version of Come Home, this live version does at least try to blend the sound of the original release with the sort of electronic noodling the band were growing increasingly fond of….and it’s also unusual in having such an understated vocal delivery from Tim – he almost sounds bored.

As for Greenpeace – again it’s a faithful representation of a Whiplash tune – one which starts off sounding as if it could be a real tear-jerker but drifts into something unlistenable.

I am sorry to sya that I”m beginning to lose interest in this series…..but I will keep ploughing on.

With apologies for the past two weeks of repeat postings.

There are occasions when pressures of work and other commitments mean I can’t devote all that much time to the blog. I always try to have at least a week’s worth of postings ready in advance to cover eventualities but I had just about emptied the well quite recently and as I can load up about 5 old posts in the time it takes me to compose a single new post I bought myself a bit of breathing space.

So here I am back with the series on singles from James.

It had been three years since James had last unleashed any new material on the public.

The band had come very close to breaking up at the tail end of 1995 thanks to a combination of tensions among members exacerbated by a very unexpected and very large tax bill covering a period when they had first tasted success.

There were was a degree of profile as Tim Booth had worked with composer Angelo Badalementi, and with contributions from Bernard Butler, an LP entitled Booth and The Bad Angel had surfaced in 1996 including a hit single in I Believe.

The following year the band, but without Tim, began to re-visit some material previously recorded with Brian Eno as well as start work on new songs in a studio in Wales.  It wasn’t an easy or seemingly an enjoyable experience, certainly in the initial stages, but very slowly the semblance of a new LP began to be knitted together with Tim sending vocal contributions from New York.

When Tim returned back to the UK the band and record label decided it would be an idea to finish things off by bringing in uber-producer Stephen Hague to deliver a commercial radio-friendly finish.  The first material anyone got to here was this single in February 1997:-

mp3 : James – She’s A Star

It became a Top 10 hit in the UK, helped by the fact that the band were willing to go out on the telly/chat-show circuit to give it maximum possible publicity.  It also came with a stylish and expensive video.

There was one really annoying thing though for band completists, namely that the single came in 3 x CD versions, although there was no vinyl issue.  The first CD featured live versions of two very old James songs as recorded the Alton Towers gig back in 1992, the second CD offered three new songs and CD 3 had two remixes of She’s A Star, plus – and I’m certain this was done by the record label out of spite to piss off fans who had moaned about remixes – the Weatherall mix of Come Home which was its third(!!!) appearance as James b-side.

mp3 : James – Stutter (live)
mp3 : James – Johnny Yen (live)
mp3 : James – Chunney Chops
mp3 : James – Fishknives
mp3 : James – Van Gogh’s Dog
mp3 : James – She’s A Star (Dave Angel’s PAT Mix)
mp3 : James – She’s A Star (Andrea’s Biosphere Dub)

The big problem for me is that She’s A Star is a really disappointing 45 particularly compared to the pre-fame and fortune  material.  While I hadn’t liked the stadium-rock material of the Sound era I could understand in some ways what the band were setting out to do and they had made a great comeback with Laid.  But for the first time ever, I found myself using the word boring to describe a James single.  And I haven’t changed my mind all these years later,

Turning to the other tracks.

The two live songs are fine but both are drawn out to almost 7 minutes in length and while I’m sure this it must have been a real treat for fans  who went to Alton Towers  they don’t match the intensity of the live versions released many year previously on One Man Clapping. (It was also the second time Stutter had been released as a live b-side having done so on Come Home a number of years earlier)

The new songs contain some of the worst bits of music the band have ever released and in days of yore would surely have been consigned to the bin.

The first minute and a half or of Chunney Chops is really instrumental bland synth-pop that just gets on my nerves.  It is the sort of music that Genesis began to make when Phil Collins talked them out of being a prog band and into the pop charts in the mid 80s.  Yup… that bad.  And and while the remaining three and a half minutes do feature what sounds like a half decent Tim vocal it is mixed low behind an awful bit of annoying music.

The third track – Van Gogh’s Dog actually opens with a great deal of promise.  A slow number with a bit of noodly synth music in the background…something a bit different appears to be coming our way.  And then, just a minute or so into the song it becomes almost a lazy pastiche of With Or Without You by U2…made worse by Tim doing a bit of falsetto singing that would get him booed off most stages if he was a support act.

Which makes it such a shock that the middle track of the new songs – Fishknives – is so bloody brilliant.  Yup it is more electronic than James fans were used to but it has a soundtrack quality to it that brings to mind some of the work of David Holmes.

The remixes?   Well it’s 12 minutes of music that is supposed to resemble She’s A Star.  The Dave Angel mix for the most part doesn’t as so that’s a blessing.  But it is , like the Jam J stuff, an acquired taste.

The other mix, which was produced by Norewagian electronics wizard Geir Jenssen, turns out to be the release’s true saving grace.  All the bombast of the single is replace by wonderful keyboard noises backing a most gorgeous and understated sounding vocal from Tim…..it’s only when you listen closely that you realise it is the same vocal as the single but here it seems to find its rightful place.

Totally unexpected and so out of place on what really is a sub-standard release.

March 1994. The record label, as usual, want to promote an album through lifting a further single from it. The band, conscious of the backlash from fans when this had happened before, are against the idea. But where in the past there would have been an irreparable clash between label and band, this time round a compromise was reached.

It was by now an open secret that during the recording sessions for Laid that much more material had been recorded. Indeed, James had hoped that the fruits of those labours, which were for the most part were well-produced recordings of demos and works-in-progress, would have been released alongside Laid in a limited edition form. In the end, it would be in September 1994, a full year after Laid had been released, that the LP Wah Wah was released.

The March 1994 single provided a taster for Wah Wah as one of its two lead tracks was culled from that material along with a track from Laid:-

mp3 : James – Jam J
mp3 : James – Say Something

Unsurprisingly, the radio stations stuck to the tried and tested and it was Say Something which was given all the prominence.  Jam J didn’t at the time, nor today, strike anyone as an obvious single release……

The single was released as a CD and in cassette form with the CD single having two further bits of music:-

mp3 : James – Assassin
mp3 : James – Say Something (new version)

The former was a more than half-decent new track (albeit one which clocked in at under two minutes and whose storyline would no doubt be greeted with horror by the UK tabloids nowadays leading to an immediate ban across the airwaves) while the latter was exactly as it said on the tin and came in at over a minute longer than the version made available for radio play. At least it wasn’t a crazy dance remix….that came via a second CD and a 12″ single.

I never did get round to buying the second CD of Jam J. It was two remixes of the track by Andy Weatherall in his Sabres of Paradise guise, each clocking in at around 17 minutes in length. I have absolutely no doubt that it is top quality material but I balked at the idea of owning a James song clocking in at that length. Nor was I sold on it when reviews indicated that the remix was ambient music with Tim’s vocals more or less removed altogether. Very much an acquired taste.

The single reached #24 in the UK charts. Little did any of us know that it would be three more years before the next James single.

The change of tone and emphasis begun by Sometimes was maintained with the release of the LP Laid in September 1993.  This was a James that we hadn’t heard or enjoyed for a long time…songs that were largely stripped right back and which were a long way removed production wise from the over-wrought and painful stuff which had afflicted much of Seven.

It was difficult however, to imagine where the next single was going to come from as there were no real obvious candidates from the LP other than perhaps the title track. But it suffered from having the line ‘she only comes when she’s on top’ which ruled it out of play as far as getting it past the censors….

The solution was to re-record the offending line and change one word. ‘Comes’ was replaced by ‘Sings’. Problem solved despite the fact that anyone listening to the opening few lines was still able to smile about hearing daytime radio blast out a song that was quite clearly about orgasmic sex….

The thing is….when you went out and bought the single, you found yourself owning the uncensored LP version!!

mp3 : James – Laid

It came (ahem) in 2 x CDS as well as 7″ vinyl. Here’s the b-sides to CD1 and the vinyl, all of which would have seemed impossible to imagine if you had only picked up on the band during Seven and owned no other songs from any other era. Indeed there are some fans who think that The Lake was criminally thrown away as a b-side and would have made a lovely ballad-type single for James.

mp3 : James – Wah Wah Kits
mp3 : James – Seconds Away
mp3 : James – The Lake

This single wasn’t universally praised. Too many journalists were still happy enough to mock the band as a pretentious stadium-rock act with a front man who was game for abuse just because he was charismatic and offered opinions. Here’s the review from Melody Maker:-

Not much proof here of the much-heralded creatively-revamped James.

“Laid” is smalltown folk music. Driven by a wheezy old Hammond organ, a drumbeat that sounds like the bloke upstairs nailing down his floorboards and a guitar that might as well be a banjo for all the expression it brings. “Laid” is 1990 naff. It’s not even spuriously uplifting. Tim Booth’s cryptic Indian type whoops aren’t a call to arms or joyous chant but more a sort of cryptic holler, as if he’s Geronimo trying to invoke Chief Sitting Bull in a seance.

There are tracks here, however, such as “Wah Wah Kits” that do indicate a newer, freshly adorned James, perhaps abetted by Brian Eno.

So maybe pigs are flying and they have turned half-decent.

Nor did daytime radio give it too much play. A two and half minute single without an obvious sing-a-long chorus is still a refined taste and in the end it only limped to #25 in the charts.

A criminal state of affairs if you want my opinion.

CD2 was made up of four tracks recorded for a BBC Radio 1 session. I never bought it at the time and still don’t own a copy….so I’m unable to offer you the chance to listen to those versions of Laid,  Say Something, Five-O and Sometimes.

Enjoy.

I can’t remember where I first read of heard that James had chosen to work with Brian Eno. All the accusations of selling out and embracing stadium rock were being denied by everyone associated with the band but here they were having a producer who had helped turn U2 into the biggest and most popular contemporary rock band on the planet by forging a sound which was radio-friendly, anthemic and extremely appealing to the masses. I feared the worst….

………which is why I still find it hard to properly put into the words the sheer joy I felt the first time I heard the first new song since those that had been slipped out as part of the Sound EP some fourteen months previous. This remains my favourite James single of all time:-

mp3 : James – Sometimes

It’s a helluva comeback and not at all the sort of sounds I was imagining would be the fruit of their labours with Eno. Indeed, the producer himself has stated that hearing the band’s first playing of this song in the studio was one of the highlights of his entire career….and let’s face it, he’s had plenty to choose from.

It was released into the shops in August 1993 but by then had become quite familiar to radio listeners having been put on heavy rotation some three or four weeks prior. Rather surprisingly and disappointingly, it only entered the charts at #18 which was still good enough to enable a Top of the Pops appearance which, due to touring commitments, had to be filmed and beamed in from Pittsburgh. It was a memorable performance and I’m happy enough to break my self-imposed rule of nothing from you tube so that I can share it with you:-

Despite this, the song dropped down the charts the following week which must have been a bit of a concern to the band. After all, tradition has it that you put out your strongest and most catchy song as the lead single, but little did any of us know that the band and producer had an ace hidden up their collective sleeves….

The single was released on 7″, 12″, cassette and CD single with just two new songs made available across the different formats so there was no need to shell out loads to complete any collections. The b-sides were also of a very decent quality:-

mp3 : James – America
mp3 : James – Building A Charge

It’s worth noting that America was recorded live using solar power as the band sought to promote the activities of Greenpeace.

The fact that Ring The Bells had been a flop didn’t strop the record label wanting to extract every last possible drop out of James as they continued their merry way across the festivals of Europe playing the songs off Seven alongside the better received older material. Whatever else could be said about the band, they were still continuing to improve as a live act and take things to some quite substantial heights backed by huge crowds willing to sing and dance along.

Their biggest ever show was scheduled for July 1992 at the Alton Towers theme park in England with 30,000 fans making the pilgrimage…a hugely impressive achievement given the band were also high up on the bill of Glastonbury just a few weeks prior.

The Alton Towers show was also scheduled to broadcast live by BBC Radio 1 and the record label was keen to exploit the exposure offered by the broadcast with a fourth single from the LP. The band weren’t happy, especially on the back of the backlash about the poor value offered to fans by the previous single (see Part 15 of this series), but realising they weren’t in much of a bargaining position decided that they would re-record the title track of the LP along with three brand new songs.

mp3 : James – Seven (remix)
mp3 : James – Goalies Ball
mp3 : James – William Burroughs
mp3 : James – Still Alive

The remix is so blatantly stadium rock….it’s almost like a U2 cast-off…Tim Booth sounding uncannily like Bono at times. I just can’t bring myself to listen to this track….

However……….it’s a release very much saved by the b-sides.

Goalies Ball, despite the title, is not a song about football, but a commentary on human evolution set against the backdrop of a strangely melodic and haunting tune.

William Burroughs is a manic few minutes which provided a great reminder of the band at their critical peak a few years earlier when they were lucky to sell out venues with a capacity of 30 never mind 30,000. The record company must have hated it…

Still Alive is a real oddity given the rest of the material the band had been recording at the time. It’s a vocal-led track with the minimal of accompaniment in the background. It certainly sounded like nothing James had recorded before and it is one of the few tracks from the era which has dated well.

This release was made available on 7″, 12″ and CD single but for once, all four tracks were available on each format. This meant completists only had to shell out once and this was probably a contributory factor in it stalling at #46. As I said above, it’s a dreadful single and so deserved such a lousy chart performance, but long-term fans could be pleased and intrigued by what they heard on the b-sides. Were the band already preparing a move away from the stadium rock nonsense??

This is where the band just about hit rock bottom.

The LP Seven been released and had sold well enough to reach #2 in the charts despite the lashing it took at the hands of the music critics and many long-term fans. Tim Booth however, was nonplussed suggesting that no matter what the band had did post-Goldmother and Sit Down there was bound to be a backlash.

There was a feeling that time away from the UK might help and so the first ever tour of North America was organised (11 major cities) followed by three weeks in Europe. The record label however wanted to keep up a profile at home and so decided that a third single from the LP would be released.

Ring The Bells was no different at all from the LP version. It entered the charts at #38 and then sunk without trace. It wasn’t helped by the band not being around to promote it and that the accompanying video was deadly dull being a live performance from a fan only gig a few months earlier.

It was released on 7″, 12″ cassette and CD. An anti-war song, Fight, was given the dance treatment and put on all formats. The CD single had another two (!!!) remixes of Come Home.  Which was bad enough except that one of them – the Skunk Weed Skank Mix – had already been released as the Weatherall Mix on one of the 12″ re-releases of Come Home a couple of year earlier!

Oh and to rub salt into the wound for the completists,  they had to shell out for the 12″ to get one previously unavailable song in Once A Friend which turned out to be a dud as it was a rejected track from the LP and was over and done with in a little over two minutes.  All in all, it was a very unsatisfactory state of affairs:-

mp3 : James – Ring The Bells
mp3 : James – Fight
mp3 : James – Come Home (Skunk Weed Skank Mix)
mp3 : James – Come Home (Hugo Live Dub Challenge)
mp3 : James – Once A Friend

There was a prophetic review in Melody Maker:-

I don’t begrudge James their success. There have probably been two occasions (If Things Were Perfect and Come Home) in their career (and doesn’t that seem like the right word?) when I found them more than mildly loveable. I don’t particularly mind that their last two singles really did sound like Simple Minds as everyone kept saying. What does bother me is that musically Ring The Bells sounds so small, so village fete. The only function the instruments have at all seems analogous to a dinner-suited announcer at a high-class ball – “Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting Mr Timothy Booth! (cue fanfare)” – before the entrance of the man with an ego the size of East Anglia. They can do better. And maybe, when they’ve sold enough shirts and filled enough stadia, they will.

But there was one more low point to come before that prophesy came true.

James spent years in obscurity watching lesser talents become world-wide superstars but at least they could hold their collective heads high that they made music that was, in general. a class apart. Even when they did crack the charts and some fame and fortune landed at their feet, the band were doing so through songs which could be traced back to their indie and idiosyncratic roots. And then, in January 1992, they released this abomination of a single:-

mp3 : James – Born of Frustration

I hadn’t been all that fond of previous single Sound but this was positively the first single by the band that I took an instant dislike to. The demand for tickets for the live shows had taken the band into arenas and it was looking as if outdoor stadia were next….but did they really have to write and record singles that ticked every one of the boxes in the book of stadium rock cliches.

There’s just no denying it…..Born of Frustration is a lazy re-hash of the equally despised Don’t You Forget About Me which turned folk against Simple Minds some six or seven years previously….right down to the la-la-la-la singalong. If I was being kind I would describe it as epic. But I can’t do that…other than the opening 20 seconds which features a nice wee bit of acoustic guitar, it’s shit.

B-sides aren’t much better:-

mp3 : James – Be My Prayer
mp3 : James – Sound (Diceman Mix)

The single entered the charts at #13 which got the band an appearance on Top of The Pops. It fell down the charts the following week….not the greatest of signs for the parent LP which was imminent.

That it has been almost a full month since the previous entry in this series will perhaps give you an idea of how difficult it has been to do this post.

James had finally captured the hearts and minds of music fans in the UK and indeed across much of Europe. All those years of blood, sweat and toil and what had been Manchester’s greatest secret was out there in the open. All that was needed now was a poptastic sing-a-long single at the end of 1991 to provide a perfect preview for the new hugely anticipated LP that was due out in the early months of 92.

But if you’ve been following this series, you’ll know that with James, it’s usually always a tale of the totally unexpected with a twist nobody anticipated. The release of Sound in November 1991 was certainly that.

Listening to it now still fills me with horror. Yup, releasing a six-minute single with no discernible chorus can be seen as brave….but it only works if the music can hold the listener’s attention which sadly in this case it did not. There are some who thought it was evidence of an inevitable drift into stadium rock thanks to the size of arenas that the band could now sell out in a matter of minutes but quite frankly it is just not bombastic enough to fall into that category. It sounds to me like a band who were confused about what to do next and the results were a messy mix of a record having big contributions from everyone with no overall sense of control.

Released on 7″, 12″, cassette single and CD single. Sound did reach the Top 10 in the UK but only for one week before dropping like a stone. This was one bought by fans only and not, as with the re-released Sit Down, by casual listeners attracted by the vibrant pop blaring from their radios.

Thankfully, everyone concerned didn’t release all sorts of different b-sides on the different versions – buying either the 12″ or CD would get you everything:-

mp3 : James – Sound (7″ version)
mp3 : James – All My Sons
mp3 : James – Come Home (Youth Pressure Dub)
mp3 : James – Sound (full length)

All My Sons appears to have been included as the antidote to the single, clocking in at under two minutes. Dating back to the early 90s, it was really an outake from the Goldmother era….but worryingly boring. Oh and it was also disappointing to get yet another remix of Come Home……..

Enjoy

 

I mentioned last time round that a short pre-Xmas tour had been put together to support the release of Lose Control and how the band, despite very little chart success, had sold out two successive nights at the 10,000 capacity G-Mex in Manchester.

One of the gigs, on Saturday 8 December 1990, was being filmed for future release on VHS. The band were on top form, but so was the audience who turned the event into a giant celebratory party – one that recognised James for what they were but one that also symbolised the fact that Manchester had become, at that moment in time, THE happening place for rock music not just in the UK but right across the planet, although things would shift many thousands of miles west to Seattle in the coming months….

The footage of the performance of Sit Down remains a thing of wonder. The old-fashioned indie anthem was hijacked by the audience for a massive sing-a-long, way beyond the wildest dreams of the band. As one review at the time said, it was a gig which inspired the sort of messianic, almost religious devotion not seen since the days of The Smiths. The song went on and on and on and on for well in excess of ten minutes. It was no surprise afterwards that all concerned thought a re-release might just be the thing that finally cracked the charts.

Personally, I prefer the old Rough Trade version of the song, but there’s no denying that Gil Norton delivered a dynamic production that was tailor-made for daytime radio, especially the way the chorus now dominated the whole thing:-

mp3 : James – Sit Down (re-release)

The record label made sure they could shift 10,000 copies on the first day by putting this on the b-side:-

mp3 : James – Sit Down (live at G-Mex)

I have no doubt that the entire audience rushed out to but the single to relive that special night a few months earlier.

The 12″ and CD single had a previously unreleased (but largely unremarkable) song that had been recorded at the same time as Lose Control:-

mp3 : James – Tonight

At the end of March, the single charged into the charts at #7 and the band finally made a long-overdue appearance on Top of The Pops. It was on heavy rotation on radio as well as MTV, and the band were also able to promote it through prime time telly in the UK. It was surely destined for #1……

…..but nobody had reckoned without the poptastic hit that was The One and Only by Chesney Hawkes which kept Sit Down at #2 for three weeks!

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

Fontana Records wanted to maintain the momentum of finally getting James into the singles charts.  No sooner had How Was It For You? dropped out of the Top 75 then the next single was lined up for release.

But to long-term fans it all appeared a bit of a con as it was a re-release of Come Home which just seven months earlier had been issued by Rough Trade.

Doubly galling was the news that it would again be subject to all sorts of formatting with a 7″ having a pink sleeve with silver writing, a 12″ having a purple sleeve with silver writing, a 12″ live version having a green sleeve with gold writing, a CD that had a sleeve of orange with silver writing and a cassette which was purple/silver.

The difference in this version of Come Home was that is was mixed with the dance floor in mind with uber-producer Flood brought into oversee things.  And for the real hardcore clubbers, the song was also given to Andrew Weatherall to have a go at……….

The results were a completely different sounding James than before and as far away from the Folklore-era Factory days as could be imagined.  But it worked….thanks in part to the quality of Come Home as a song but also the fact that the re-mixes were right out of the top drawer.

This is a single I have in all the vinyl formats, so here goes with the songs:-

mp3 : James – Come Home (Flood Mix)
mp3 : James – Dreaming Up Tomorrow
mp3 : James – Come Home (extended Flood Mix)
mp3 : James – Fire Away (extended mix)
mp3 : James – Stutter (live)
mp3 : James – Come Home (live)
mp3 : James – Gold Mother (remixed by Warp)*
mp3 : James – Come Home (remix by Weatherall)

The live version of Stutter is taken from the same show as provided the tracks for the b-sides of How Was It For You? The live version of Come Home is from a radio session recorded in April 1990. The two new b-sides are among my favourite James songs – indeed Fire Away has the distinction of being the very first song I ever posted over on the old blog back in September 2006.

The remixes? Everyone of them stunning….with a special mention to the Warp remix of the LP’s title track. Totally unexpected and a real joy.

Despite all this, the single only reached #32….but it was one of those ones that sold for weeks and months afterwards in reasonable numbers as those who frequented the clubs looked to pick up the mixes that DJs were playing up and down the country.

Enjoy

* the previous jumpy version of Goldmother has now been replaced with a fresh recording…..

In late 1989, James moved to Fontana Records which became their fourth home in just six years.

They took with them loads of newly recorded material that would fill an album and provide plenty of b-sides if the demand was there.  The timing was perfect as Madchester really was all the rage and all of the papers and magazines  covering the explosive growth of the movement were convinced James were worthy of attention.

Fontana sniffed money from the association with James but left the band in no doubt that things had to be done differently from the debacle at Sire a few years earlier.  How Was It For You? was identified as having the potential to be a huge hit but the label insisted on the caveat of a more commercial mix than had been brought over from the sessions originally recorded for Rough Trade and that it be released in as many formats as possible to help propel it up the charts.

All of this was done, probably through gritted teeth for most of the band, who over the years had done their best to provide great value for money to their loyal fan base.   Five formats were issued in April 1990 – a 7″ in a blue sleeve with gold writing, a 12″ in a red sleeve with green writing, a 12″ remix in a silver sleeve with blue writing, a CD  in a sandy colour with purple writing and a cassette version.  There was even a promotional box of condoms issued….

It all worked to an extent as the single did reach the Top 40, peaking at #32.  It could have been better if the label hadn’t committed the basic error of filming a promo that was deemed unsuitable for daytime audiences  – the incriminating footage was Tim singing underwater!

I’ve got the 7″ and both 12″ versions in the collection which means I can offer up all the tracks that came with this particular release:-

mp3 : James – How Was It For You? (7″ version)
mp3 : James – Whoops (live)
mp3 : James – How Was It For You? (12″ version)
mp3 : James – Hymn From A Village (live)
mp3 : James – Lazy
mp3 : James – How Was It For You? (band mix)
mp3 : James – Undertaker

The two live tracks are taken from a gig at the Manchester Apollo in December 1989 and were two of the most popular of the back catalogue at the time (still are IMHO). Lazy and Undertaker were part of the previous summer’s recordings, and the fact that neither were deemed good enough to make the cut for the forthcoming LP really raised expectations among fans.

Enjoy.

Brushing off the disappointment at the failure of Sit Down, the band were certain that the single to be released in November 1989 would provide the breakthrough.

A whole album of material had been recorded for Rough Trade and with ‘Madchester’ having gripped the nation, they were being tipped by many as the ‘next big thing’  some six years after forming.  The biggest tour to date was planned and then came the news that Come Home had not only made the Radio 1 daytime playlist but was going to be record of the week on one of the shows.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this is James we are talking about – a band for whom everything had seemingly gone wrong ever since their formation.  Rough Trade messed up spectacularly, failing to get enough copies into the hands of radio pluggers to take advantage of the Radio 1 situation, and more crucially, not getting enough copies out into the shops.  The single, on which so many hopes were pinned crawled in at #85.  The problems were exacerbated by the fact that the chart compilers at Music Week made an error in not even listing the single in the rundown……

It really was a crying shame for a track which was so brave and bold and which sounded perfect for the baggy generation while still providing so  much in the way of originality for long-time fans.  The b-sides were also, yet again, marvellous:-

mp3 : James – Come Home (extended)
mp3 : James – Promised Land
mp3 : James – Slow Right Down (demo)
mp3 : James – Come Home (7″ version)

Understandably angry and upset the band demanded and got a meeting with Geoff Travis. While there was some gratitude for the help he had provided in the mess the band had been in after the shambles with Sire, there was little option but to ask to be released from the contract and to buy the recorded album from the label in the hope of it being better promoted. It really was the last throw of the dice…..

In the wake of the fiasco surrounding Strip-Mine, the band finally escaped from what had been a disastrous relationship with Sire Records in late 1988.  But they were completely skint although confident of making a success of things thanks to what they believed was really strong material that had been written in the 18 months they had been waiting for Strip-Mine to be released.

To get themselves back on their feet, they borrowed a substantial sum of money from a friendly bank manager which was used to fund the recording and release of a live album.  One Man Clapping was a huge success as far as the indie charts went and re-established James both commercially and critically and ultimately led to Geoff Travis signing them to Rough Trade in early 1989.

The first new single was called Sit Down, released in June 1989.

It was lauded by all, but the label didn’t promote it hard enough to get the critical crossover to mainstream and daytime radio.  That such a tremendous and catchy record had stalled at #77 was nothing short of a disgrace….but of course the situation would be rectified in the not too distant future (although nobody knew that at the time).

I’ve got the 12″ version of the single….and it extends all the way out to eight minutes ending with a bit of a strange reprise in which one of the sound engineers chants the name Lester Piggott over the outro…

mp3 : James – Sit Down (Rough Trade 12″ version)

Three tracks were on the b-side –  Sky Is Falling, a demo that the band had contributed to a compilation LP featuring bands from the Manchester area, live favourite  Goin Away, a two-minute track that was the usual opener to most concerts in 1989 and Sound Investment, a song that could well be taken as an attack on their old record label.  As ever with James, they were prepared to give fans value for money with the quality of songs seemingly tossed away on b-sides:-

mp3 : James – Goin Away
mp3 : James – Sound Investment
mp3 : James – Sky Is Falling

Enjoy!

Some of you might be confused by the fact that Ya Ho has a catalogue # of NEG 26 and yet is being featured as a later single than What For with its catalogue # of NEG 31.

The simple fact is that Ya Ho was intended for release in September 1987 as a precursor to the release of the Strip-Mine LP.  But as I mentioned in the last posting there were serious issues between band and label that led to the delay of the album and as part of the compromise solution the single What For was written, recorded and released in March 1988.

Strip-Mine was eventually released in September 1988 and as part of the promotional push (although that’s not an entirely accurate phrase given the label were not the least interested in the band) Ya Ho was dusted down from the shelf and shoved out on 7″ and 12″.

It’s a really decent song with a hugely catchy chorus that is an indication of what wasn’t too far away….

It’s also a different version than appears on the LP (the 7″ is about a minute shorter in length as well) but it’s the b-sides that many long-standing fans were taken by – there’s a touch  of country/americana that was very unfashionable at the time and something that James hadn’t really given a hint of previously (or since)

I’ve only got the 7″ in the collection:-

mp3 : James – Ya Ho
mp3 : James – Mosquito

This was released in a sleeve that had Ya HO +1 on the cover.  The sleeve illustrating this piece is from the 12″ which says Ya Ho +3 and here’s the b-sides from that bit of vinyl (courtesy of The Robster):-

mp3 : James – Left Out Of Her Will
mp3 : James – New Nature

Enjoy!!

One of my favourite early James singles and the least favourite of the sleeves.

The latter half of 86, all of 87 and early 88 was a strange time to be a  James fan.  It was also a frustrating time to be in the band and I’m assuming even more frustrating to be part of the label to which the band had signed.

James were uncompromising in how they wanted to sound while Sire Records had made it clear that if they didn’t release material that was more commercial or radio-friendly then nothing would ever see the light of day.  In early 1987, a new album was recorded but the label demanded a ‘better’ mix which just wasn’t forthcoming.  It really did look for a while as if we had seen the last of the band.

The boys eventually relented and in return the label agreed that they would back a new single which was released in March 1988, a full 18 months after the previous release. It turned out to be a stunning record. Joyous, anthemic and completely radio-friendly. It was surely destined for the Top 10. It even had whistling on it!!

Except……….the record label felt it was still too indie-sounding to be deserving of a promotional push and so again it was left to the late night DJs to try and champion it….but the problem being that the band had been away for too long and nobody was really all that interested.

A crime for which lots of folk should be put in the dock and found guilty.

A 12″ copy of this single sits in the cupboard so here we go:-

mp3 : James – What For (Climax Mix)
mp3 : James – Island Swing
mp3 : James – Not There

Once again, the b-sides are well worth your attention.   Island Swing perhaps suffers from having a wee bit too much in the way of harmonica and the second half of the song doesn’t match the opening minute or so which is quite tremendous but there can’t be many bands that have done something this jaunty as a dig at the British Empire and other forms of colonialism – while Not There is an alternative and better version of a song that would later appear on the LP Strip-Mine.