Jimone EP

JIMONE was conceived as a means of getting the band more gigs. Despite local support slots for Orange Juice, The Fall and New Order, James had struggled to get shows outside of Manchester without a record to their name.

Mike Pickering of Factory Records, and later M People, had picked up on the band’s demo tape and after having promoted several James shows at Factory’s Hacienda club, agreed to release the band’s debut single.

Factory wanted James to release Withdrawn and Hymn From A Village as the single, but the band, wary of going into the studio, wanted to record what they saw as three of their worst tracks so they wouldn’t blow their best songs through inexperience in the studio.

The single was recorded with Chris Nagle at Strawberry Studios in Stockport

The single’s distinctive artwork came about by mistake. Unable to decide upon a cover, Jim picked up a red pen and scrawled JIMONE on a green card.  With just hours to go until the printer’s deadline, the band chose this childlike scrawl as the cover.  The title was also a skit on Factory’s insistence on cataloguing their releases in chronological order, JIMONE being FAC78.

The single succeeded in bringing James to the attention of the national music press who were picking up on fellow Mancunians The Smiths and New Order.  It was voted single of the week in all three major weekly music papers – NME, Melody Maker and Sounds.

The Smiths became champions of James, Morrissey describing them as “the best band in the world” and paying the band the ultimate compliment of covering What’s The World on their 1985 Scottish tour and releasing it on the I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish cassette single.

Reviews

Sounds

The Smiths and now a group called James – who’d have figured Manchester as the centre of a post-industrial semi-acoustic renaissance? This has more to do with the romantic side of Genesis P-Orridge than Dexy’s Po-Faced Runners and going by “Folklore” it might be as much tongue-in-chic as finger-in-ear. What might have been a perverse stab at being different, however, is already developing into an odd idiosyncratic vision on “What’s The World”.

• Fire So Close :1983
• Folklore :1983
• What’s The World :1983

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