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This show was recorded by Greenpeace using solar power. Ring The Bells featured on an X-Files episode and on a Greenpeace solar power compilation. The whole concert was later released on a double clear vinyl album in 2016 for Record Store Day, named The Greenpeace Palace Concert 1992.
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Not just a concert, more an event in itself – James at Alton Towers, the capital city of family fun, England’s own EuroDisney, only here blockaded by 30,000 pop pickers rather than a few hundred truckers. As bemused families made their way to the exits after a hard day’s queueing, in swarmed thousands of youngsters and not-so youngsters in James T-shirts. The rain came and ensured that Alton Towers own hooded plastic bin liners became almost as vital fashion accessory as the t-shirts, but this was always going to be an event that nothing could dampen. Not the rain, not Tim Booth’s croaky voice, nor even the fact the roof of the stage blew off at 4pm, threatening the whole concert, and causing the cancellation of Galliano’s support slot.
And so to James. As a band, they haven’t really changed over the years. Songs from the days of apathy, bad luck and near splits, such as “What’s The World”, “Johnny Yen” and “Hymn From A Village” fitted perfectly alongside the successful material of the last eighteen months, (“Sit Down”, “Come Home”, “How Was It For You”, “Sound”, “Born of Frustration” etc.) The only difference between James way back then and James today is that they are now the darlings of serious pop fans all over the country, and officially approved by fabulous Radio 1 FM. James have taken this rollercoaster ride to fame with ease, so it would seem, and a huge gig in a rollercoaster park has perhaps always been their destiny. The only dark cloud for me, other than the rain clouds above, was the premonition which came to me during their slower LP “filler” tracks. All of a sudden, James became dull open air concert troubadours on a Simple Minds scale. Absent songs such as “What For”, “Ya Ho” and “If Things Were Perfect” would have made the performance complete and caused non-stop rather than fragmented delirium for the crowd.
As the firework display ended it all. It was clear that this was an event about which people could say “I was there”. But so too was James at Scumbag College Union in nineteen eighty something when less than two hundred turned up. Let’s hope my premonition is mistaken and that James never change.
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America is a b-side of the James single Sometimes released in August 1993.
Originally played at Alton Towers and acoustically on the 1992 US and UK tours, America failed to make the final cut for the Laid album. A live version of the song, recorded using solar power for Greenpeace at a concert in Los Angeles, appeared as the b-side to Sometimes and on the Japanese version of the album.
An alternative version recorded by BBC Radio 1 in London on the band’s December 1992 acoustic tour was included on the live disc of The Gathering Sound boxset.
The song’s lyrics deal with “basically about giving America a blow job and we realised then that we’d be playing it to rednecks and they may not like it.”
| Song: | America |
| Released: | 30th August 1993 |
| Main Associated Album (or Single): | Sometimes (Lester Piggott) |
| First Heard Live: | Stockholm Moderna Museet – 27th June 1992 |