Setlist
God Only Knows / Sit Down / Johnny Yen / Hymn From A Village / Whoops / Ring The Bells / Protect Me / How Was It For You / Come Home / StutterSupport
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A secret warm-up show in Paris starting with many new songs from the studio sessions of what would become the Seven album, including Pressure’s On which would resurface on Wah Wah and Somebody Help Me (a.k.a. Singer’s A Liar) that was never played again or released at the time.
James played an impromptu gig on the roof of Manchester’s Piccadilly Hotel last Wednesday January 30 [1991]. This was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Beatles last ever gig which was on the roof of the Apple Records building in London’s Saville Row.
Over 5,000 people blocked off the streets around the hotel to hear James play five songs: “Come Home”, “How Was It For You?”, “Sit Down” and new song “Ring The Bells”.
The band had to cut their set short because guitarist Larry’s fingers had frozen to the fretboard! They were without trumpet player Andy who is in hospital having an operation on his foot.
James singer Tim Booth said last week “The idea was to do something a little unexpected even though it had been done a few times before. It sounded like a fun idea to spring a surprise and we only announced it at 8 o’clock that morning.”
James supported Happy Mondays as part of Great British Music Weekend.
The backdrop is swathed in floating flowers and Mysteron hoops as James belt out “Come Home” and “How Was It For You?”, Tim Booth looking like the unlikeliest teen idol yet with his Ten Pole Tudor chic and odd fondness for showing off fingers of snot to the cameras. “We thought you’d only be into dance music,” says this disgusting but charming front-man, clearly amazed by the warm reception he’s getting.
“Sit Down” is rapturously received and, as James climax with a flurry of scything violins and furious rocking axe-work accompanied by a mad strobe-light frenzy, you can’t help feeling that very soon they’re going to be massive.
This gig was filmed for the legendary Come Home Live video.
James are a phenomenon. Selling out the massive G-Mex centre for two nights in succession is no mean feat, especially when you haven’t even had a hit single. James fans are however not drawn from the ranks of fickle teenage youth, but from those fans with taste for a more intense kind of pop experience.
The seven-piece band fall clearly within the pop lineage begun by The Smiths, inspiring the same kind of passionate, almost religious devotion.
They certainly heated up the chill of the huge ex-railway terminus with some of their classic cult singles like Come Home and What For, which seemed to transform them a year or two ago from a student-type band to one with a massive groundswell of support – anthems of solidarity for alienated misfit youth, though plenty of them were alienated further through being cut off through the atrocious weather.
Unlike many of the Manchester bands, James’ lyrics, courtesy of the charismatic singer Tim Booth are intelligent and complex. But they can have a singalonga quality as well and the massed hordes sang with fervour to numbers like Government Walls and God Only Knows. In fact, Booth grabbed the camera from the crew filming the band and turned it on the crowd. They, said the star of the show, were the real stars of the show.
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