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Setlist

Sit Down / Sometimes / Destiny Calling / She's A Star / Come Home / Out To Get You / Surprise / Laid / Tomorrow / Sound

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n/a - Festival

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Chelmsford, however, made up for it in spades. Faced with a torrential downpour, James took the momentum provided by the rather excellent Stereophonics and bombarded the crowd with an opening medley of Sit Down, Destiny, She’s A Star, Sometimes and Come Home creating a moshpit going back beyond the sound desk. Tim’s dancing seemed even more frenetic than usual and Saul took every opportunity to encourage the now drenched audience. Out To Get You was played to slow things down and seemed oddly inappropriate in the setting and was followed by another excellent version of Surprise.

This audience (myself included) really just wanted to hear the hits in the rain and so Laid and Tomorrow were dispatched as conditions got worse before the opening bars of Sound signalled the show was nearing its end. Tim took the opportunity to tell the crowd that “when you read in the papers how shit we were, remember what you witnessed with your own eyes”. Tim’s megaphone failed and he smashed it in annoyance, so we were treated to Tim hollering without it which made for an interesting take on the song, the sheer awesomeness of the improvised ending not being lost despite the rain and the size of crowd. This was James at their very best and a complete contrast to the day before and the tedious Space and Texas who were to follow later. They were the band of the weekend – but we knew that already.

Video

The Best Of / Unhinged, a 1998 Compilation Album by James.

Summary

With fourteen hit singles to date, a Best Of compilation was inevitable. The release, from 26 years ago, also included a limited edition with a second live disc, titled Unhinged.

Track List

Come Home (Flood mix) / Sit Down / She’s A Star / Laid / Waltzing Along (single version) / Say Something / Born of Frustration / Tomorrow / Destiny Calling / Out to Get You / Runaground / Lose Control / Sometimes / How Was It for You? / Seven / Sound / Ring The Bells / Hymn From A Village

Unhinged (second bonus live disc) included:

Runaground / Ring the Bells / Out To Get You / Johnny Yen / Lose Control / Laid / Sound

Details

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Release Name:	The Best Of / Unhinged
Artist Name:	James
Release Date:	23rd March 1998
Format:	Compilation Album
Catalogue:	CAS – 536 898-4, CD 536 898-2, 2CD 558 173-2

With fourteen hit singles under their belts, a Best Of compilation was inevitable – a guaranteed hit album, minimum outlay and the chance for the band to pay off some of their debt to Mercury and secure the funds to make the next album. The band made all the noises about being surprised at the number of hit singles they’d had and given that, a Best of seemed the right thing to do, when there was no reason at all for them to justify it.

To go alongside the fourteen hits, James recorded two new tracks Destiny Calling and Runaground to be released as singles and added live favourite Out To Get You from the Laid LP and Hymn From A Village from the 1985 James II EP, which had been remastered for the Palatine Factory Records retrospective. Given the acrimonious end to the relationship between the band and Sire Records, there were no tracks from either the Stutter or Strip Mine albums.

As a bonus for early purchasers of the album, James played a secret industry-only acoustic show at London’s Whitfield Street Studios in January 1998, which was recorded for inclusion on a second “Unhinged” CD.

Destiny Calling was released a week before the Best Of in March and went to number 17 in the charts. The album release a week later saw a full-on promotional blitz by James – radio sessions for GLR, Virgin FM, XFM and Radio 1, an instore gig at London’s Virgin Megastore and a show for Manchester’s Key 103 on a barge in the Castlefields complex.

The promotional barrage worked – the album went straight to number 1, even beating the Titanic soundtrack in Oscar week. It dropped to number 2 the following week, selling only a few hundred copies less than Pulp’s new album. It remained in the Top 10 for over ten weeks and spent exactly a year in the Top 75.

Press coverage of the Best Of was almost universally favourable. Q and most of the broadsheet newspapers ran features and articles on the band recognising the longevity, quality and consistency of the band. There was the odd dissenting voice, primarily embittered hacks at Melody Maker, but they could not dampen the feeling that James were finally getting the recognition and the appreciation that they deserved.

A six-date mini-tour followed the album release, which was primarily a Greatest Hits set and a celebration of the band’s success both for them and the fans. A headline slot at the Fleadh and high placings on the bill at Glastonbury and the V98 festivals followed in the summer.

Runaground was released as a single at the end of May. Promotional activities were restricted as Tim was in the middle of his stint acting in Saved at the Bolton Octagon. The band’s high expectations for the single proved ill-founded as it struggled to number 29 in its first week and fell sharply.

To push Best Of sales further in the period leading up to Christmas, James announced an arena tour for December including venues such as Manchester Nynex, Wembley Arena, Birmingham NEC and Glasgow SECC – 10,000+ capacity venues filled by many of those to whom the Best Of had converted or reintroduced to the band. A remix of Sit Down by Apollo 440 was released to coincide with the tour and reached number 7, the band’s highest placed single since the same song hit number 2 in 1991.

The Best Of achieved exactly what it had set out to do, taking James back to a large audience, reminding them of how many great singles the band had produced over the years and introducing a new audience to the band.

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