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Laid / Wah Wah Super Deluxe Edition

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Laid / Wah Wah Super Deluxe Edition, a 2015 Compilation Box Set by James.

Summary

This re-issue of Laid and Wah Wah combined both albums as originally intended by the band, and was released 9 years ago. The boxset includes two extra CDs of rehearsals, demos, B-sides and radio sessions. The boxset also include a booklet, prints and badges.

Track List

Disc 1 – Laid:

Out To Get You / Sometimes (Lester Piggott) / Dream Thrum / One Of The Three / Say Something / Five-O / P.S. / Everybody Knows / Knuckle Too Far / Low Low Low / Laid / Lullaby / Skindiving

Disc 2 – Wah Wah:
Hammer Strings / Pressure’s On / Jam J / Frequency Dip / Lay The Law Down / Burn The Cat / Maria / Low Clouds / Building A Fire / Gospel Oak / DVV / Say Say Something / Rhythmic Dreams / Dead Man / Rain Whistling / Basic Brian / Low Clouds / Bottom Of The Well / Honest Joe / Arabic Agony / Tomorrow / Laughter / Sayonara

Disc 3 – Rehearsals, Demos & Jams:
Carousel / Unknown Track 8 / Dream Thrum / Chicken Goth / Jam J / You Were Born / Bruce Jam 1 (Mix 1) / Jam D Rhythmic Dreams / Jam E / Jam 11 / Jam 12B / Jam P / Jam P2 / Jam Q / Jam R / Who Is Gospel Oak? / Falsetto / Jam 13

Disc 4 – B-Sides, Radio Sessions & Live:
America / Building A Charge / Wah Wah Kits / The Lake / Seconds Away / Say Something / Assassin / Laid / Low Low Low / Sometimes / Tomorrow / Five – O / Jam J (Arena Dub) / Jam J (Sabresonic Tremelo Dub)

Details

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Release Name: Laid / Wah Wah Super Deluxe Edition
Artist Name: James
Release Date: 23rd March 2015
Format: Compilation Box Set
Catalogue: ASIN B00RYGDNQ6

According to Tim Booth, Laid and Wah Wah are “the culmination of playing four or five hours a day four or five days a week in Manchester and the new band adapting to that. It is about the transition of becoming more of a band but with Brian at the helm.” Booth remembers jamming “hundreds of songs that never saw the light of day” and guitarist Larry Gott suggests it might have been “as many as 340 tracks.” The simultaneous, coupled reissues are particularly notable, however, due to the fact that producer Brian Eno and the band had originally favoured releasing the records as a double package.

Recorded concurrently in 1993 during a frenetic six week period at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Complex, the albums were always intended as companion pieces – Laid being referred to as the “song” album whilst Wah Wah was known as the “experimental” or “jamming” album – but the record company’s decision to release them months apart put paid to this conception: Laid, released in the UK in October 1993, reached the No.3 spot in the UK and became the band’s biggest album to date in the US, selling 600,000 copies and breaking the band in the USA in the process but the subsequent follow-up Wah Wah effectively sunk the band over there and – according to Booth – “put paid to us breaking America at all!”.More pertinently perhaps, by the time Wah Wah came out, U2 (and Eno) had released Zooropa and “everyone thought we were copying off them instead of the other way round!”The 4CD 12’x 12’ Super Deluxe box set features 20 previously unreleased recordings.

Songs related to this release:

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Knuckle Too Far / Bruce Jam

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Knuckle Too Far is track nine on the 1993 James album Laid. An early version called Bruce Jam appeared on the Deluxe and Super Deluxe Laid and Wah Wah releases in 2015 and was also called Bruise Jam on the very earliest promos of the album. Bruce Jam was named so as it was a demo version of Knuckle Too Far recorded with Bruce Mitchell of Durutti Column.

Knuckle Too Far is a song about life on the road, Tim claims to have had enough lyrics and observations to have written this track several times over.

Larry told Radio 1 about the song in September 1993 : “This song’s history is kind of the, it’s been a wallflower in its early days. It was a jam we did and recorded in a practice and we never played it again and it kind of got lost for about nine months and then one day it just surfaced again on a practice tape and someone heard it and thought that it sounded perfect as it was and it was going to go on the album as that and we found it very difficult to capture the original essence of it. One night in the studio, we decided to have another go at it and I couldn’t hear Tim and Tim couldn’t hear me in the monitors and we tried to do this rendition when we were playing off each other and as a result of not been able to hear each other, we ended up with this curious kind of miscommunication.”

“We tried to get it right on subsequent takes but when we got it right, it sounded worse than the first take so we decided to leave it how it was. I think the version that is on the album is about the second time we ever played it.”

Details

LyricsListenReleaseAvailable OnGigsGuitar Tabs
Slow down, my brother, your life is passing fast
Will you remember all these scenes that you've passed
So long, so long

Speeding past sunset, blurring from town to town
Faces I forget, hotels all look the same
Worn down the knuckle too far
Worn down the knuckle too far
So long, so long

Lost all your colours, now life's in black and white
Stills from a movie, this life's a trick of the light
Worn down the knuckle too far
Worn down the knuckle too far
Too far

City of strangers, you seem so tired to me
Don't think I'll stay here, you don't seem friendly
I'll keep on moving, searching for peace of mind
Rivers unwinding maybe I'll find it this time
So long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long

Live from my suitcase, my life's within my hands
Sleep in a strange bed, hometown's a foreign land
Worn, down, the knuckle, too far

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Bruce Jam

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Song:Knuckle Too Far
Released:27th September 1993
Main Associated Album (or Single):Laid
First Heard Live:Glasgow Barrowlands – 1st December 1993
Played at:
Unavailable