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Category Archives: One Of The Three Feature

B-Sides Ultra – Where Did They Come From?

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Which singles did the tracks on on the B-Sides Ultra originally appear on?

TRACK RELEASED ON YEAR
Gone Too Far Tomorrow 1997
Honest Pleasure Tomorrow 1997
Sunday Morning Lose Control 1990
China Girl Sit Down 98 1998
Still Alive Seven EP 1992
The Lake Laid / Destiny Calling 1993 / 1998
I Defeat Just Like Fred Astaire 1999
Goalies Ball Seven EP / Destiny Calling 1992 / 1998
Chunney Pops She’s A Star 1997
Tonight Sit Down (1991) 1991
Dreaming Up Tomorrow Come Home (1990) 1990
William Burroughs Seven EP 1992
Assassin Say Something / Destiny Calling 1994 / 1998
Stolen Horse I Know What I’m Here For 1999
Undertaker How Was It For You? 1990
Egoiste Runaground 1998
Van Gogh’s Dog She’s A Star 1997
Where You Gonna Run? Waltzing Along 1997

Cover Story for James’ Pleased To Meet You album

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Who is the guy on the front over of the album?

His name’s James and, bizarrely, he’s a composite of the band of the same name.

“This is about finding a way to represent our collective spirit,” says James frontman Tim Booth, discussing the band’s curious new figurehead. “It deals with the old, Are you James questions, which, yeah, you still get – I still get called James. I suppose people in Travis get called Travis too.”

Pleased-to-meet-you-faces

In order to solve these public image problems, James have cooked up an entirely new public face. Last month, each of the seven members posed for separate portraits, which were subsequently morphed together, with the aid of noted fashion photographer Phil Poynter, design company Blue Source and a good deal of computerised jiggery-pokery, in order to create an entirely new person. He’s been christened James, obviously, and will appear on the sleeve of the forthcoming album, Pleased To Meet You. Although he doesn’t play any instruments, he’s so life-like that there’s already speculation about his “personality”.

“I think he looks like he might have a knife in his back pocket.” exclaims Booth. “He has a good edge to him. He’s not idealised.”

As for intra-band arguments over whose bits were used where – did they take place?

“Of course,” acknowledges Booth. “He’s got my knob, and it’s fantastic, obviously.”

The Whiplash Sessions

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During the 1994 US tour, James started to jam new material in preparation for the follow-up to the hugely-successful Laid album.  No-one was to know at that time that it was going to be three long years before that follow-up was to be finally released and that release would be without long-term guitarist and key member Larry Gott.

Following an outstanding performance at Woodstock 2 in August 1994, James set about the task of writing their new album. However, fate, in the form of Larry’s decision to quit, Tim’s desire to go off and work with Angelo Badalamenti and a massive tax bill, meant that the recording of what became the Whiplash album was to be spread out over almost 2 1/2 years.

Early sessions at the Windings at Wrexham and Westside Studios in London had seen the band lose none of the creative energy that has fuelled its songwriting from the very early days in a South Manchester scout hut to the more luxurious studios the band can afford to use today.

By the time the album came to be released after James had overcome the trials and tribulations that almost finished the band off, many of the songs written in that initial period following Woodstock were lost on studio DAT tapes or discarded by the band as new ideas and new songs took their place.

Over the history of James, so many songs have been lost to the binbags of cassettes and DATs that Jim Glennie claims to have littering up his house.  These songs never see the light of day despite continual badgering and the singles being littered with unsatisfactory mixes and live tracks.

Wah Wah was an insight into the unique working methods of the band, but it was merely a scratch on the surface. Below that one suspects there lies a wealth of improvised, off-the-cuff and truly inspirational music that we will never have the pleasure to hear as the band have deemed it unfit for our ears or it has simply got lost on tapes never to resurface. One only has to listen to the unreleased tracks that appear on bootlegs over the years – Somebody Help Me, Gregory’s Town and Pitiful as three examples, but the list is much longer – to realise this. Maybe one day James will be honoured with a boxset which reveals this previously unheard side to their music. We can live in hope.

Anyway, I digress. A selection of tracks in their early stages of development recorded during the post-Woodstock sessions has bubbled to the surface, featuring a total of twenty six tracks in total including fourteen songs that were not released on the Whiplash album or the singles that accompanied it. Dumb Jam and Make It Alright have since surfaced years later in a re-recorded format and Hedex featured in a different version on the studio disc of The Gathering Sound boxset, but there remain 11 songs, previously hidden somewhere away from the ears of the James faithful, a whole album of material that we were denied in place of the She’s A Star Dave Angel PAT Mix or the Tomorrow Droppin’ Cake Mix.

How these songs have surfaced is somewhat of a mystery. Why other songs from other sessions have not done so is equally mysterious. However, their existence must be addressed and documented as they are as much a part of the musical legacy James will leave as the commercially released material.

Brian Eno quite rightly identified in his first visit to a James rehearsal that the jams, the seedlings of James songs, are as much a part of the music James produce as the slick polished record that ends up in the shops.

These songs exist somewhere in the territory between the pure jams of Wah Wah and the finished product of Whiplash. There are pure pop moments as well as experimentation, both instrumentally and in vocal treatments. These are some truly fascinating pieces of music.

Many of the unreleased songs are documented in Brian Eno’s diary A Year With Swollen Appendices along with a number of other tracks which have yet to surface.

The Whiplash Sessions songs are:

  • Homeboy Or Girl
  • Hedex – Porn Organ, Synth Bass
  • Without You
  • Honest Pleasure
  • Make You Alright
  • Dumb Jam
  • Your Story
  • Exma
  • Maybe Jane – Stephen Hawkins
  • Help Yourself
  • Muscle
  • Hand On My Rocket
  • Last Orders
  • Maybe Jane – Normal
  • Whiplash (Play Dead)
  • Angel (Watering Hole)
  • What Time Is It?
  • Waltzing (Along)
  • Avalanche
  • Orson
  • Hedex – Spector Pastiche
  • Gone Too Far
  • Fishknives – Vocals
  • Star
  • Fishknives – Instrumental / Strings
  • Fire

Find out more about the songs:

Songs that have been released in some form:

Still unreleased songs:

From Venereal And The Diseases To James – What’s In A Name?

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Before James became known as James in 1982, they had a number of what can only be described as “interesting” names.

Venereal and The Diseases

Quite what the obsession with the sexually transmitted ailment was is not clear, but this was the name under which Paul and Jim played their first gig together at Eccles British Legion. The name lasted one gig.

Volume Distortion

Keeping the initials VD and with Gavan now on board, this name change was probably more to do with the quest for gigs and the problems the old name might cause.  Or maybe it was Paul’s insistence on regular changes to the name.

Model Team International

Paul’s girlfriend worked for a model agency in Manchester called Model Team International and they had t-shirts which the band took and named the band after.  A swift change ensued when the manager of the agency threatened legal action.  At this point, Tim had joined the band as dancer / backing vocalist.

Model Team

A shortening of the name to appease the model agency boss. Didn’t last long as the band felt the name didn’t have the same ring to it .. and they couldn’t get free t-shirts anymore.

Tribal Outlook

Only in use for a short period of time as Paul decided the band needed a single simple name and quite frankly, it’s not a very good name is it?.

James

There are various stories about the James name:

  1. Paul decided the band needed a simple name and decided it should be named after one of the band.  Out of modesty and not wanting to make it sound like it has his band, Tim declined to use his name.  Paul didn’t want to use his name.  Gavan sounded like a heavy metal band. So James it was, after Jim
  2. Tim had a passion for the writings of James Joyce and insisted on James as a tribute to the writer.
  3. Jim : “It was named after me because I was the most talented and good-looking” (Come Home video 1990)
  4. Paul was obsessed with Orange Juice, who had taken the fledgling Model Team International out on tour with them, and in particular guitarist James Kirk and the band was named after him. The band reasserted this was the reason for the name during TV promotion for the Girl At The End Of The World tour.

The official biography suggests that the reason was somewhere between explanations 1 and 4.