James tour the UK again supported by Radiohead. Andy Diagram makes a one-off reappearance at the Manchester show.
Tag Archives: 1993
York Barbican Centre – 16th December 1993
Rescheduled from December 2nd after Tim lost his voice.
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Newport Centre – 13th December 1993
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Norwich UEA – 12th December 1993
Portsmouth Guild Hall – 11th December 1993
London Brixton Academy – 9th December 1993
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Pressure's On / Born of Frustration / Sound / Laid / Knuckle Too Far / Honest Joe / Stutter / Chain Mail / Out To Get You / Ring The Bells / Sit Down / Low Low Low / Skindiving / PS / Five-O / Say Something / Lullaby / Johnny Yen / Come Home / Tomorrow / How Was It For You?Support
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This show was recorded by BBC Radio 1 and highlights broadcast and then released on a bootleg CD called Sounds And Moods. A slightly different selection of tracks was also aired on the Westwood One syndicate network in the US.
Gloucester Leisure Centre – 8th December 1993
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Derby Assembly Rooms – 7th December 1993
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Wolverhampton Civic Centre – 5th December 1993
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Manchester G-Mex – 4th December 1993
Setlist
Laid / Ring The Bells / Low Low Low / Johnny Yen / Heavens / Come Home / Honest Joe / Out To Get You / Chain Mail / Born of Frustration / PS / Five-O / Say Something / Sometimes / Lullaby / Skindiving / God Only Knows / Sit DownSupport
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Chris Sharratt, Manchester Evening News
It’s been a bumpy ride for James, Manchester’s oddest success story, from cult obscurity ten years ago to their present position as an internationally respected band. Their eccentric stance and willingness to swim against the pop tide has made them many friends. As if to prove their new position as grown-up contenders, their new LP Laid was produced by in-demand producer Brian Eno, who has worked extensively with U2. It has received glowing reviews. But good reviews and commerciality don’t always go together. James are not as popular as they were a couple of years ago when Sit Down was gracing the Top Five and their fourth LP Gold Mother, was wooing the nation. The last time they played G-Mex their distinctive T-shirts could be seen on all the right people at all the right places. The gig was a sell-out. Saturday’s show was busy but not full.
Playing songs that spanned a decade – from oldie Johnny Yen to unreleased tracks off their forthcoming double LP – they were nevertheless on top form. Singer Tim Booth has the most passionate and perfect male voice to come out of the city, the crisp sound quality making sure it’s full depth could be heard. And he was glad to be back on home territory: “There’s so many good memories here,” he told the audience.
With the acoustic strum of recent single Sometimes and the stadium rock bombast of Born of Frustration – with ex-trumpet player Andy Diagram making a guest appearance – James showed they are an outstanding live band. The impressive light show and projections added to the sense of occasion. They may not sell as many of their cheeky Get Laid t-shirts as they have previous designs, but musically the band just get better.
John Robb, Melody Maker
So it’s back to G-Mex, the 12,000-capacity venue once treated as a regular local showcase by the long~one baggy powers that be. In the current climate, only cabaret bands like the Wets, Madness or Status Quo pack the place, the thought of Suede pulling it off is laughable, it’s in this context that James’ near-capacity gig has to be placed. The baggy generation has grown up and they are here to pay homage to some unlikely heroes.
The real strength of James’ astonishing pulling power (Fwooar! -Ed} is the way that they have always sat on the edge of fashion. Their whole trip has been long and lonely. More tolerated by the hip than truly dug, they have plied off-kilter pop for more than a decade, powered by the waifish charisma of Tim Booth; one part sixth-form guru, one part primary school headmaster and one part loose-limbed pop star with his own gentle yet determined charisma.
They hit the stage to the echo of one of the Brain Eno remix album tracks, all oddball rumblings and dark dangerous grooves, before crashing into “Sometimes” , the exquisite single off the recent “Laid” album. The song underlines the new James. Back in touch with their rural roots, this is a move away from the Simple Minded clod-hopping of recent years, that saw them almost disappear up flatulent veggie arses.
Eno, or someone, has twisted the songs with an almost doo-wop Fifties flavour, stripping them down to the requisite three minutes and encouraging Booth to let go in that high-pitched wail that is a curious mix between Frank Ifield and Klaus Naomi. It’s a great start, the years are peeled back as G-Mex becomes a seething mass once more.
The only drop in the set is the long acoustic middle section that follows the as-yet-unreleased “Honest Joe”, a bizarre stumble, but a monster song, that sees James come over like the Butthole Surfers, trading in lop-sided ruffian blues. The second Eno album from the “Laid” sessions sounds like a really interesting journey. Release it soon, please.
The acoustic stretch is a 20-minute communion between the band and their closest fans. The rest of us trawl the toilets, stare at the ceiling, talk about football and look for a better vantage point in the hall.
It’s 1993, and we have no time for such sensitivity , we want some noise and some stomping tunes! The encores are a triumph: “Lullaby” , a spooked song about child abuse – a bizarre and typically risky move in front of the hungry thousands – and then switch to “Sit Down” , the band now “getting in touch with their feminine side” decked out in cotton dresses, the puffs.
“Sit Down” still provides an opportunity to build on the band’s special rapport with its fans, the venue feels tiny, intimate and it’s at moments like this that James do seem to have something very special going for them. Triumphant shows like this can only bode well for their upcoming 1994 Stateside stadium tour supporting Duran Duran (ha!).
Born in a different age, their stance seems alien and yet somehow fiercely contemporary. Some people hate Tim Booth, hearing that I’ m reviewing they urge me to give him a good kicking, citing his smugness, but he seems as confused as the rest of us, skilfully articulating this in pop terms. James are now back to the land, stadium rock has been well and truly binned.
Dele Fadele, NME
James have weathered many a career storm and come up laughing, redefining themselves in leaps and bounds but still keeping that initial spark alight.
They’re old hands at this big arena lark – and it shows in the attention to detail and meticulous presentation, the neat but never cloying feeling of intimacy and the willingness to throw the occassional curveball as a nod to their roots. Tim Booth feeds off the massive hometown crowd’s energy and proceeds to lose himself, to strip away layers of repression as if shedding skins. He might wrestle with the concept of religion, but he doesn’t take the standard option of playing Rock Messiah.
There’s no reason for James to play a role when they can drown you, bathe you and make you (almost) whole again with music.
And what startling music it is; working with Brian Eno has brought a sense of experimentation within tight structures and their sometimes mournful Mancunian melodies have come to the fore again. The overhauled old songs turned the crowd into a heaving, pulsating mass, and singalongs are conducted – although not by James prompting, that would be too showbizzy – where possible.
The six-piece, helped on occasion by Andy Diagram on trumpet and Martine McDonagh on vocals, turn “Johnny Yen” into a campfire tale, “Come Home” into a rousing plea and the final, truncated “Sit Down” into a modern morality tale. Conversely, the newer songs show why James survive and will continue to do so, by bridging the gap between performer and audience. There’s a closeness to the near-unplugged section of the show that should be lost in the arena and yet isn’t : “Out To Get You” mixes a touch of paranoia with acute loneliness; “Chain Mail” spews out a torrent of words; “Sound” is anything but bombastic, taken at a delightfully measured pace.
After this, electric energy returns, but, sadly, “Gold Mother” hasn’t aged well and provides a moment of weirdness even the two experimental ambient songs avoid. But then rescue comes swiftly to hand with a crushing “Born of Frustration” and a very evocative “Sometimes”, wherein a natural disaster – monsoon – is described as the music swells and epiphany is gained. And that’s James all over; triumph over adversity and a release after endless rain.
Glasgow Barrowlands – 1st December 1993
City Life Tim Interview
Sitting backstage at the Labatt’s Apollo, Ardwick Green, where James are rehearsing for their European tour, Tim Booth is softly and assuredly explaining the unexplainable: the contradictory nature of James.
“One of the things that has always made us different is that we accept the contradictions and we actually like them,” offers the affable and relaxed singer, his polite and patient manner in sharp contrast to the intense singer you see on stage. “We like it in the music, and that’s part of why it’s so difficult to do interviews, to rationalise what we do. You just can’t. It’s very instinctive, very accidental.”
The core of James -Tim Booth, bass player Jim Glennie and guitarist Larry Gott – have been together for 11 years. In that time they’ve released six albums and worked with four different record labels – including their own for the self-financed live LP, One Man Clapping. Life in James has been anything but a smooth ride.
“We struggled for seven to eight years to make ends meet,” recalls Booth, “to keep out of bankruptcy, and that was always hard. After about three years together, we went on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, even though it was supposed to be for new businesses.” The thought of this makes him laugh. “Well, we were so well-known we could pretend we were new and easily fool them.”
That James have survived the rigours of record company machinations, music press indifference and near financial bankruptcy is a triumph of spirit over circumstance. That they finally broke through into the mainstream with ‘Come Home’, at a time when Manchester raved on and laddish bravado ruled, compounds the twisted nature of their long and winding success story.
James were a product of a different era of Manchester music, the era of The Smiths, when Morrissey was redefining what it meant to be a tough modem man. “It takes guts to be gentle and kind,” he sang, and James epitomise this ‘new man’ philosophy. By ’88, when Manchester’s clubs were buzzing with a new wave of acidic house beats, Tim Booth and the band were more likely to be at home meditating.
James have never immersed themselves in the rock lifestyle. They may have struggled their way through the ups and downs of music business intricacies, but their relation- ship with it has always been one of distrust. Since the very early days, they have recoiled from the jaws of commerce, fearful of being sucked into the corporate malaise.
“The first song I wrote was called ‘What’s The World’, which was about selling your soul to some kind of business man,” explains Booth. “That was a commonly held fear by all of us. We didn’t trust record companies. And unfortunately we applied that to Factory (who released their first two singles), who were actually trustworthy. And then by the time we’d worked that out and gone and took the risk with Sire, we realised Sire were the ones we should have been careful with. So we really fucked it up.”
‘Folklore’, a song on the band’s first single for Factory, poured scorn on the notion of received wisdom, of learning the rules of life from jaded elders. It contained the pay-off line, ‘the only way I learn is put the fist in and get burnt’, a perspective which has informed the band’s thinking to the present day. Although words and deeds have not always tallied.
“At that point,” admits Booth, “we were probably bolder in words than in actions. That was what we wanted to do, but we were actually quite timid. We were frightened of the whole thing of becoming successful, which I think is partly why it took so long. So it was something we were trying to do, but not always succeeding.” Regrets? “Well, you look back and you think, ‘Jesus, what a wanker I was’, but that’s life isn’t it? If you never stick your neck out, you’re never really going to find out who you are anyway.”
A boarder at public school in Shrewsbury, expelled for being a bad influence, Booth came to Manchester to study acting at Manchester University. He ended up in the city’s most un rock-n-roll band, not because of his singing or his lyrical finesse, but by virtue of his ostentatious dancing.
“I happened to be dancing in a club one night, dancing very flamboyantly because I was upset due to my girlfriend leaving me, and they saw me and asked if I’d dance for the band. And they might not have asked me if they hadn’t been stealing my drink. So when I sat down I picked an argument with them and that’s when they asked me.”
“Now that,”says Booth, his voice hushed as if still shocked by the absurdity of it all, “is why I’m in this band.”
Accidents, chance meetings, ludicrous coincidences. The band’s path from a struggling folk-tinged indie guitar band to G-Mex packing, Neil Young supporting international pop eccentrics is littered with them. Planning, making strategies, rationalising, are all things they claim to avoid. Fate, believes Booth, not forward planning, is what guides them.
“To do interviews, to explain it all, you start to impose a mental structure on it, this idea that you did it on purpose, that you sat down, planned it and then created it. But when we create something we have no idea what it’s going to be like until it’s finished. And then we go; shit, look at this, this is interesting. That’s how it’s always been with us. The one frustration we have is when we try to consciously control something, because we never seem to be able to do it.”
Another case of the band’s contradictory nature, perhaps, but Booth’s explanation – or lack of one – appears at odds with the band’s music. It may be emotional, cathartic at times, but it rarely sounds unstructured, off the cuff. In fact their last but one LP, Seven, following on from 1990’s acclaimed Gold Mother, sounded contrived, self-conscious and self-important, as if the band had decided to make a concerted effort to break the US stadium circuit. They hadn’t, asserts Booth.
“It was a weird series of accidents,” he explains. “No one wanted to take the authoritarian role, and art does not work democratically..’ Producers came and went during the album’s recording, first Gil Norton, then Flood, followed by the band themselves. Finally, Youth took over, Seven was finished, the consensus being that James had decided to take the money and run. The record sold respectably, the critics recoiled.
“We didn’t hear it as stadium,” continues Booth, still a little bemused by the tag. “I love the record. Brian Eno worked with us on Laid because he liked Seven. Neil Young heard it and invited us to tour America with him.”
James, as Booth’s defence suggests, have been keeping good company of late. Their latest LP, Laid, is produced by Brian Eno, a man they had wanted to work with since their 1986 debut, Stutter. The fruits of this collaboration are something of a rebirth for the band, an album bursting with unfettered passion whilst avoiding the pompous pre- tensions of Seven. It is a sparse, acoustically derived collection of songs, harking back to the band’s earliest endeavours. An earthy, gutsy, guitar-pop masterpiece.
But where does it leave James? Are they still the T-shirt selling, alternative ‘teen band they used to be? Do their acoustic gigs with Neil Young suggest they are seeking the attention of more mature rock fans? And if in the early days, as Booth has expressed in the past, the shared, unspoken philosophy of the band was the idea of burning out, what is the shared philosophy now, 11 years down the line? Booth is unsure.
“This,” he says pensively, “is hard. We’re at a strange point at the moment, I feel that we’re at a strange crossroads. What I would have said two months ago – because at the moment I don’t know what to say – is simply to keep changing, keep being difficult, keep presenting music of a quality and a depth we believe in.”
If this is what drives James these days, then Laid is a record they can be very happy with. Recorded in just six weeks at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, Eno suggested they take the pressure off making it by simul- taneously working on another LP. The result was an additional, double LP derived from extracts of jamming sessions, an experimental collection of acoustic and heavier, technological tracks. It will hopefully be released in the first half of next year.
“The next record has a lot in common with say, Tom Waits,” explains Booth. “It’s rough, quite ugly, but there’s a hidden beauty. You have to find the beauty under the ugliness.” The original idea was to release it at the same time as Laid – a kind of underbelly of Laid experience. But the record company didn’t go for that. “It is such a weird LP,” says Booth. “We didn’t really know what to do with it”
All of this activity, working with Eno, touring with Neil Young, experimenting with acoustic performances, suggests a very definite wind of change in the James’ camp. Whether it is simply a case of being touched by the hand of Eno, or if something more fundamental is at work, is hard to fathom. Booth, ever the one for a spot of cryptic mysticism, is not about to give too much away. “There’s going to be a big change in James in the next year,” he suggests. Would he like to elaborate? “I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it. Inside us.”