Setlist
Bubbles / Ring The Bells / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Tomorrow / I Wanna Go Home / Out To Get You / Stutter / Sit Down / Sound / Sometimes / LaidSupport
n/a - FestivalMore Information & Reviews
None.
Dream Thrum / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Fairground / Lookaway / Alaskan Pipeline / Upside / Just Like Fred Astaire / Bubbles / Of Monsters And Heroes And Men / Top Of The World / Sometimes / Say Something
n/a
An invitation only show at the end of a workshop with Joe Duddell and the Manchester Consort to try out arrangements for the orchestra project that would end up with the 2011 tour. The original plan had been to perform at Latitude Festival in July 2010 with a warm-up show at York Opera House, but the organisers of Latitude changed their traditional Sunday lunchtime slot that James would have performed at.
The Earth Theatre is, despite the location on the outskirts of the city with no signposts for the English traveller, pretty much a perfect place for a James gig. It holds around 5,000 in an amphitheatre carved out of the hillside. Stage right is a large vertical cliff, on the other sides large sloping banks with seats, which explained the bizarre concept of people selling sheets of polystyrene outside the venue with a standing area in the middle.
The support band were pretty dreadful. They were a local band and their own songs didn’t sound too bad but they insisted on absolutely murdering Fleetwood Mac’s Big Love and Bjork’s Violently Happy.
The band, minus Tim and Andy, come onto stage and there’s silence until Andy blasts out the intro to Lose Control on his trumpet. The crowd turned round to see them on the steps of the banked seating, although initially there’s some confusion as they can’t work out the route to take down to the stage. It works itself out though and the song is performed by just Tim, Larry and Andy which is an interesting and different take on prior versions. The crowd sing along to every word.
Oh My Heart is next and it’s good to see the crowd are generally familiar with Hey Ma. Greece has taken James to their heart quite late – Pleased To Meet You, Getting Away With It (Live) and Hey Ma were all big hits here, probably chart-wise far more so than in the UK.
Ring The Bells has the crowd jumping up and down and generally going wild. Tim comes to the front of the stage and starts dancing, whilst Andy’s trumpet takes the song off in a different direction. Whiteboy is played pretty straight but it is a great pop song nevertheless.
Tim introduces English Beefcake as a song that they’d learnt especially for Greece as they were the only ones that seemed to understand it. It’s a wonderful version too, improvised lyrics in parts and some superb guitar from Larry. One of the highlights of the set. And it links into a stunning version of Bubbles. The poignancy of the song seems to grow in the beautiful setting.
Senorita gets a massive reception. It hardly ever got played in the UK, in 2001 or later, but the fans here love it. It’s a great song and should have been a single, had Mercury bothered to promote the album at all. Born Of Frustration is huge too. The sound of the trumpet piercing through the warm night air. Tim comes down onto the barrier in a number of places to make a connection with the crowd.
For Gold Mother, he invites four fans up on to the stage on the condition they are good dancers. They are a bit more subdued than the UK stage dancers which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The song elongates itself into what is almost a free jam with Tim hollering into the megaphone.
Of Monsters and Heroes and Men is a surprise inclusion for an outdoor show, particularly as there is no Upside tonight, but works well without the use of the mirrorball which added so much to the visuals on the 2008 UK tours. The song builds to its climax and the crowd go mad. I Wanna Go Home is simply stunning. It’s the prime example of how the magic of a James live show is something that is very difficult to capture on a shiny disc. Tim prowls the stage, the desperation of the lyrics coming through in his vocals, the band just adding to it with their playing. Outside in the warm Thessaloniki air, it’s amazing.
Out To Get You has the crowd singing along and once again it ends in something resembling a free jam. The song must last eight or nine minutes as the band pair off to encourage each other and then end in a huddle around Dave’s drums. It seems to stop once and then start again.
Then something amazing happens. The opening bars of Getting Away With It start up and the crowd go absolutely wild. Mental. It’s absolutely crazy. A song that is one of the middle range recognised hits in the UK gets the best and wildest reception of the evening. The crowd start singing it before Tim gets chance and it’s difficult to hear him throughout the whole song.
Sometimes ends with the crowd singing the chorus back at the band. For those experienced in James 2008, it might seem a bit corny and put on now, but there’s real emotion in the way the crowd just pick up on Larry and Andy and take it away. As tradition goes, it kicks into Laid which has an extended outro with Andy blasting trumpet out over Dave’s frenetic drum beat. And then they’re gone.
Mark comes out first for the encore and starts to play the extended intro to Sit Down as the rest of the band make their way back to the stage. The crowd holler back every word. Sound goes off in a number of different tangents, stopping, starting, stopping again, going quiet, getting loud. Yet every time they do it, it sounds different to how they’ve done it before. It’s simply wonderful stuff.
That’s meant to be it, but as the band take their bows, the crowd start singing Say Something. Really loud. There’s no way they can leave without playing it so they do. Tim fluffs the words at one point which almost has Saul bent double as the crowd look on confused. It finishes with an improvised outro and Tim back out on the barrier. The applause is deafening and the band stand there for a good few minutes taking in the applause.
An excellent show in a stunning setting.
So, two big gigs in the hometown to finish off the tour. I was apprehensive when it was announced the gigs would be at G-Mex (I’m sure TMA would pull me if I said “to give it it’s proper name”) as previous experiences there hadn’t been positive. I didn’t make it to the 1990 show because of snow, which Tim very kindly reminded me of later and the 1993 show resulted in a number of eye and leg injuries in the moshpit which seemed to envelop half the venue (how you can mosh to PS is anyone’s guess) and the gigs there since have been spoilt by poor sound, stupidly located toilets, sub-standard burgers and disinterested punters.
Lose Control opens again after some hilarious new snippets of the “what would you do to make the world a better place?” question. I won’t spoil them but it’s clear that christmas spirits have been downed by a few people before agreeing to be filmed. Tim and Larry start the song on the raised disabled area towards the back of the arena and then make their way down the right hand side of the crowd. Just as well, they didn’t go down the left, they’d have been stuck in the queue for the bogs until half way through the set. They make the stage for Tim to finish the song as the rest of the band crank up the opening to She’s A Star, which sees Manchester raise its arms in communion. The sound is surprisingly good for the venue and the lighting steps up a notch again as the curved roof of the former Central Station forms a perfect backdrop. The song has mysterious lost it’s “it’s a long road, it’s a good section” at the end which makes it seem as if it finishes too soon, but never mind, it’s still a great opener for what’s to come.
Tim comes out onto the lip and hollers “hello” at the crowd who respond. Unimpressed by the volume, Tim then yells it and gets a much louder response. Oh My Heart again doesn’t feel out of place sandwiched between two of the better known hits. There should be an act of Parliament to make neglect of Hey Ma a criminal offence, but the good people of Manchester seem to love it so there’s hope yet.
Ring The Bells comes back to the front end of the set and confirms its position as possibly the best song on the tour. They’ve totalled nailed it this time round, it never sounds quite the same two nights running, the end section spiralling out as Andy makes full use of the stage, Saul prowls like a man possessed. Stunning stuff.
Bubbles spits and sparkles as it builds through the song, gaining momentum, taking new twists and turns before exploding into a wonderful cacophony of sound and Tim takes centre stage firing out passionately about the birth of his youngest son. I Know What I’m Here For seems like it’s never been out of the set. Live, it was always the Millionaires song, with the possible exception of the magnificent Vervaceous, that worked the best. It’s not the greatest lyric Tim’s ever written and it came out of a pretty dark time for the band, but it’s picked up by the crowd and it’s made into a celebration rather than the farewell that the lyrics point to.
Gold Mother sounds better tonight than it has on the rest of the tour so far. Shorn of the stage invaders, it had lost some of his impact, but in the bigger arenas, the sheer volume of the sound and the lighting make it a celebration. The song does actually sound like musical contractions in parts.
Stutter gets introduced as a very old song for very old people. It doesn’t sound old, it sounds like nothing else anyone is doing at the moment. It just sounds like the most indescribable wall of sound, looks like a wall of light and strobes. People who had been talking around us stop and are transfixed by what’s coming from the stage. It’s come a long way from the Hacienda footage filmed around the corner way back in 1982, yet it’s basically still the same song with the same lyrics.
Born Of Frustration follows and Andy comes to the front of the stage to lead the song with the trumpet. Six thousand people do their best Indian impersonations. The song’s been extended out at the end and sounds better for it. Whilst being a big hit machine in the Seven era, it wasn’t at the cost of the musical experimentation and power that the band had developed over the years and the outro, along with the mesmerising experience that is Sound, are the prime examples of this. Tim goes down onto the barrier and almost gets dragged into the crowd, losing a line or two of the song in the process.
“In case we’re getting too professional”, as Tim announces it, Porcupine is next. You’ve probably read my thoughts on this so far. They’ve not changed. It doesn’t sound at all out of place in the set. It’s a great song. Saul reappears in white with a pair of angel wings attached to his jacket at the back of the stage.
I Wanna Go Home and Of Monsters And Heroes And Men slow the pace of the set down but certainly there is no drop in the quality. Both fill the arena – I Wanna Go Home induces mass clapping at the start and then stares of awe as the band provide us with an aural attack distant from the relative sombreity of the recorded version. Of Monsters And Heroes And Men sees the mirrorball come down and the corners of the arena enveloped in the lights reflecting off it. Rather than chatter, the crowd around us stand and watch and take in the songs.
The opening bars of Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) strike up and there are cheers of familiarity and people start to dance again. The song is a staple set-filler, it’s a great song in the tradition of James singles, but it’s never going to be THE song at a gig that blows everyone away. Still sounds great though.
Upside, I’ve said enough about already, but it feels more heartfelt, Saul’s guitar more like a heart breaking, every night.
Tomorrow sees the band joined by a guy who performs the song in sign language on the raised part of the stage at the back. It’s as powerful and fast as ever, and gets the crowd moshpit going back further than so far in the show.
Tim introduces Sit Down as a song that was written in Ancoats in 20 minutes and they had to stop playing it because they were laughing so much. The whole venue is then joined in a celebration in the venue where the video was filmed eighteen years ago that helped make the song what it has become. A song of union, a song of good over bad, sticking in there and getting through to the other side. It’s not drawn out, elongated, sung back in a way that was threatening to make it overwhelm the rest of the set in the way it was in the past. They just play it relatively straight. It sounds superb. It is superb.
Sound is probably the longest version we’ve heard so far on the tour. As ever, it goes off in new directions, improvised, the lighting is stunning, simple but just adding to the song as it grows and grows, then stops then starts, stops again and then takes one final bow.
They come back and Tim chides the audience for the volume of their encore call. He then announces that they’re going to play a song they wrote at the Boardwalk in Manchester. Excitement ensues for about 10 seconds as this would suggest an older number, Burned, What For or something along those lines. It’s a little disappointing when it turns out to be Say Something (I actually had no idea that the place was still open in 1992). Tim jumps down in the crowd and onto the barrier for the song.
Sometimes kicks in and the now customary crowd singalong is the loudest and one of the most prolonged so far. Laid prompts members of the crowd to be dragged out and up on to stage, Tim having gone down in the pit to select them. It seems to take him an age to come back up which makes it very surreal that you can’t see him singing. As it has been every night of the tour, Laid sounds invigorated and fresh in a way it hadn’t for quite a while.
They go off but are called back for what Saul describes as a new song. It would be a bloody minded thing to do (and would probably have needed another song after it), but we Out To Get You. The second encore song choices have been quieter songs at the two gigs that they’ve been done at. It still sounds beautifully executed, the song reaches a climax with Saul, Jim and Larry in a huddle, Mark down off his keyboard stand. And then it’s finished. Dave wanders out to the front of the podium in front of the others and the band respond to the applause by applauding the audience.
A great gig, certainly the best I’ve seen at the G-Mex. The setlist has a little bit for everyone, from the older songs (although not as many as expected from Tim’s interview with Clint Boon earlier in the day which promised lots of old songs), the newer material and the less familiar songs. Sound and lighting was excellent too.
Off to do it all again.
As my good friend Mr Nuttall has explained already, Monday was something special. You wonder what James were going to come up with him to match it. There’s always one night that’s better than the other in two night stints at a venue and although Tuesday was an excellent gig, Monday probably just shaded it. Tuesday’s gig though built and built from a slow start. Lose Control saw Tim come through the audience again with Larry on guitar in tow. As on Monday, they then go straight into She’s A Star, which works well as an opener to the full band part of the set. Waltzing Along is thrown back in to follow, and you wonder if tonight is going to be a hits night rather than some of the less familiar choices of the previous night. Andy adds guitar to the song, looking very fetching in his red dress and shades, and fortunately tonight without the bobble hat.
Oh My Heart is the first of the Hey Ma tracks and feels like an old friend at the start of the set. It, like all the others, doesn’t feel out of place amongst more well-known company. There’s still a mosh-pit in the centre, arms waved in the air and people singing along. Quite right too. But there doesn’t feel like there’s that spark there tonight on stage or coming from the crowd at this point which made last night so special. Moving Ring The Bells back in the set doesn’t help at this stage as it has been probably the best of the older songs and Monday’s version was one of the best they’ve ever done.
I Know What I’m Here For does start to bring it back though. Whilst maybe not the strongest song in James’ canon, it’s fun and gets the crowd going, and, that keyboard line isn’t so prominent again. Whiteboy is an absolute blast, lots of finger wagging going on in the crowd, mimicking Tim on stage. Tim tells the crowd the song is from the “stupendously fantastic album Hey Ma” which “only half of you bought so the other half are left out”. The electric drum thing comes back out so it can only mean one thing – Bubbles is back in the set and it sounds absolutely stunning again, brooding, building, exploding, magnificent, James.
Stutter dismisses the hits only tonight theory. Introduced by Tim as a song from 1985 (1982 actually) and the best song they had in those days, it’s huge, awkward, stumbling and mesmerising. The lights and the three drum attack of Mark, Dave and Saul combined with Larry and Jim’s backing vocals have the crowd standing back in awe. It’s still one of the best songs they have. Or anyone else for that matter.
Tomorrow makes its first mid-set appearance of the tour and has the crowd back into moshpit mode. The sound in the Academy is excellent, allowing the power of the music to fill the corners of it, whilst not dampening Tim’s vocals. Not even him making his customary excursion into the crowd and onto the barrier can dull that tonight.
Porcupine is introduced as having been re-written at 4am. There’s a new final verse including the line “you’re a skunk and I’m a porcupine”. Although new, it’s one of those immediate James tracks you find yourself singing along to after about the third time. It bodes well for the next album, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.
I Wanna Go Home is delayed as Jim’s bass needs tuning. Tim quips that he’s clever because he knows it needs to be in tune for this song. The crowd start clapping along with the song, in stark contrast to the quiet introspective subject of the song. Out To Get You evokes a similar response and the set has started to really kick in and take off by this point after the quiet start. Dream Thrum is a mellower track, but sounds beautiful with simple backing video and blue and purple lighting.
Upside is as drop dead gorgeous and beautiful as ever. The intro does sound like a heart breaking and Tim’s vocals send a chill down the spine. It moves from the pain of separation to the euphoria of love from verse to chorus and back again. Tim holds the last chorus for what seems like an eternity and then the song goes off into the night as Tim dances, Andy hammers the trumpet and the world feels a better place to be.
Ring The Bells has been moved back in the set, replacing Born of Frustration in the trilogy to complete the set. Whoever chose Sound as the first single off Seven needs their head feeling. This was the obvious obvious song to follow Sit Down. It contains everything great about James in just under five minutes. Tonight, in the live arena, it shows off a band at the peak of its powers.
As for Sit Down, there’s nothing more you really want to say about this song. It starts with the gorgeous piano intro, Tim is nearly drowned out by the crowd singing it back. It has its detractors, it’s the one song most casual observers know, it’s been played to death. It’s fucking brilliant. Brixton goes mental. Rightly so.
Sound closes the main set, seemingly longer by the night, twisting and turning, controlled by Dave and Jim with Saul and Larry adding vibrancy and colour, Andy trumpeting over the top and Tim prowling the stage. As they leave, I question whether I’ve seen the band this good over a sustained tour. I think the answer is probably no.
The encore dispatches the traditional slow first song for Born of Frustration and it works beautifully as it keeps the crowd at fever pitch. Tim again comes out to the crowd where there’s a surge towards him as he perches on the barrier, not missing a note. Sometimes starts off slow tonight, the first verse close to acapella, but the rest of the band kick in and it drives along before the communal singalong that has become tradition.
Then it’s into Laid, and I find myself being pulled into the pit to get up on stage. I jump around for three minutes like a lunatic probably making a bit of a tit of myself, but who cares? It’s ridiculously hot up there but you just lose yourself in the music. The sight of three thousand beaming faces as the song closes is pretty special. You don’t really ever get to see it how the band do, but the joy and delight on the faces in the crowd was something I’ll never forget. James take you places no other band can.
Opening night of the tour and the Dome isn’t quite full as this show was announced a lot later than the other shows, but still a respectable turnout in a frankly superb concert arena. Downstairs, you have the choice of sitting or standing and the shape of the building lends itself to you not being too far away from the action wherever you sit or stand. The introduction starts with fans filmed earlier in the foyer describing the best moment of their lives. Mine appeared to be the only one edited out, but we’re treated to someone recalling when Neil Redfearn (aka Suggs not Morrissey) scored a penalty to put Oldham Athletic into the top flight and stories of childbirth and surfing waves in Australia. In comparison, mine was a bit shit, so probably just as well.
As the lights go down, you hear the opening guitar of the gorgeous acoustic version of Lose Control, but the stage is empty and then a light appears at the back of the arena. Tim and Larry make their way through the crowd, not dropping a note, despite the attention of the fans around them, shocked and surprised at getting this close to their heroes early on in the set. They weave their way through to the front where they are joined on stage by the rest of the band, who then go into the opening notes of Dream Thrum. It’s languid and laidback and sets the tone for the evening perfectly. The backdrop is bathed in purple with ripples of waves which compliments the song perfectly. The sound is crystal clear and there don’t appear to be the technical problems that beset the show on Sunday in Camden.
Oh My Heart comes next and makes clear that James aren’t going to neglect Hey Ma in favour of the hits. And there’s absolutely no reason why they should. It’s a fucking great record, on a par with anything they’ve done and the songs we get tonight, and the sadly absent Waterfall and Whiteboy, deserve to be listened to and loved in the same way as the more familiar tracks from the back catalogue.
Ring The Bells, still with it’s pseudo What’s The World intro (please just do that one night instead), gets the crowd going a bit more, but it’s a very subdued atmosphere throughout most of the show. Given the show wasn’t sold out, we took a position towards the side so we could have a dance and were amazed at the number of people stood arms folded not moving an inch other than to applaud between songs, even when the more familiar tracks were being played.
Tim introduced I Know What I’m Here For as a song that was played during the football in the UK and it’s accompanied by shots of fans “dancing” in the foyer before the show projected onto the screen at the back of the stage. It’s a little cheesy, but then again the song is one of James’ poppiest moments so it works quite well. Tim doesn’t dance in the manner we’ve become accustomed to, the jetlag from the trip from the US appears to still be troubling him.
Hey Ma is wonderful, the song grows more every time it’s played, it builds until the chorus crashes in and there’s pockets of arms raised around the venue as people join in with the chorus. The lighting backdrop, as through most of the show, is simple, but quite stunning in its effect and how it adds to the songs being played.
The highlight of the set is Bubbles. Lee talks in the itunes commentary about it being a smorgasbord of James, and he just about hit the nail on the head. It starts slowly and steadily gets faster and then explodes as Tim starts to dance whilst belting out the words. The song’s about the birth of his second child and the euphoria just pours out of the music and the lyrics.
Someone’s Got It In For Me keeps the pace quite subdued, but James’ power and beauty isn’t just in the full on nature and the cacophonies of sound of some of the hits that follow. The mastery of the more subtle moments, of which this is a prime example, sometimes gets lost by the sheer weight of numbers and quality of the hits, but it shouldn’t. Even accounting for the massive gap left by Kulas not being around to provide the backing vocals, it sets the hairs on the back of the neck up on edge.
For Say Something, Tim takes matters in his own hands and starts a tour round the stalls on the edge of the wall between the seated and standing areas of the downstairs stalls. I’ve got to admit this is the one of the “hits” I’d be happy to see disappear from the set to keep it fresh for a while, but you can’t play down the look on the faces of the crowd, startled as Tim dances in the way only he can on a five feet ledge in front of them. Two ladies are drawn to touch Tum’s toes and then run off like excited schoolgirls.
Next up is a new song, Porcupine, which was debuted in Camden on Sunday. On second listen, and without Tim’s vocals being drowned out by the failings of the system, it makes much more sense. It’s one of those yearning songs, as I think Brian Eno described Waltzing Along, that James do so well. Despite the rather odd titlle,the chorus talks about surrendering control. It bodes extremely well for 2009 that new songs are being thrown out into what is basically a celebration tour.
The expected onslaught of hits to end the set doesn’t happen just yet. I Wanna Go Home and Of Monsters and Heroes and Men provide more compelling evidence that playing more than half of Hey Ma in no way detracts from the live James experience. Give me I Wanna Go Home over Johnny Yen any day and surprise me with the latter from time to time. It twists and turns and spits at you. Monsters sees a mirror ball drop down from the roof and hang over Tim’s head as the lights bounce off, adding to the effect of the song.
Let’s be honest about the next song. Upside should have been a single. The fucked up nature of the record industry now means singles are for novelty acts, X Factor shit, the megabands that regularly strut the arenas and up and coming bands trying to get someone to give them an album deal. In a parallel universe with proper singles and b-sides, Upside is a number one single. As the songs drops and then rises back up into the extended instrumental ending, that parallel universe is in Brighton. It’s simply wonderful.
And so is Stutter. The slight disappointment with the reunion so far, is the exclusion of too much from the Stutter and Strip-Mine tracks. Stutter never made either, despite being the title for one and appearing on the unmixed unreleased original version of the latter. Live, even back as far as the Hacienda footage from 1983, it’s a killer track and it doesn’t disappoint tonight, from Larry’s almost staccato intro through the stunning lighting as it builds to a climax. Magical.
Born Of Frustration then starts a trio of big hit singles to close to set. The crowd suddenly come to life except for standing still arms folded man who decided it was a good idea to plant himself and his missus in the middle of a group of people dancing. Well done mate. Not wanting to denigrate his replacement, but Larry makes these songs his own. It seems like the band have no idea how to start Sit Down, Dave has a go and then everyone stops to allow Mark to play the spine-tingling piano-effect driven intro. I don’t care what anyone says about it being overplayed, it’s a brilliant song and there’s no shame in having something that can unite a crowd in a way that, being realistic about it, no other James song, however great they are, can quite manage. Get over it and sing along.
Sound, as ever, is a vehicle to show off the brilliance of the musicians in the band. It never sounds the same two nights running and it never fails to provide something new, starting endless debates about the best version of it ever and last night was no different. Again, the lighting adds to the overall effect without stealing the show. And then they’re gone.
Coming back for an encore that is sadly shorn of Lullaby because of curfew restrictions, it starts with Sometimes. The crowd does take quite a lot of encouragement to start singing the chorus back at the end, almost on the point of it being forced and unnatural. If the crowd don’t take on the call when Larry starts singing, it’d be nice to drop straight into Laid and use the three or four minutes of crowd singing to give us another song. I guess this depends on the crowd, when it’s natural it’s breathtaking, witness Edinburgh last year, but sometimes it just doesn’t quite happen, and last night was one of those nights.
Laid sends the crowd home happy and induces a moshpit for the first time in the evening. I blow hot and cold with this being in the set. I’m erring on the hot side at the moment when it’s at the end of a set with so much of the other side of James on show as tonight had demonstrated.
Writing this on the way up to Manchester, I’ve read some of the comments about the set being light on hits. Nine singles out of nineteen songs isn’t a huge ratio admittedly, but James are not a turn up and get your hits out band and never really have been. I don’t think it’s too much to expect for someone to have listened to the latest album of a band you’ve just paid the best part of forty quid to go and see or for the band to want to play songs from a record that stands, in their (and my) view, alongside the best of their work. A nod to some of the less well-known aspects of their back catalogue is not unreasonable either. When you go and see James, you don’t get the same set with the same between song banter, the same twists and turns in songs. James are much more than that, you’ll get songs you’ve not heard for years, the odd curveball as well as the hits you know and love. That’s why they’re unique. If you a band to play you hit after hit after hit with no passion or emotion, James are not the band for you. If you’re dithering on whether to go and see them this tour, do it or regret it.
Great gig and they’re building. This tour is going to be something special.
A limited production live album on available at tour venues that was released 16 years ago.
Oh My Heart / Born of Frustration / Upside / Tomorrow / Bubbles / Hey Ma / Senorita / Waterfall / Boom Boom / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Whiteboy / Sometimes / Laid / Lullaby
Release Name: | Live In 2008 |
Artist Name: | James |
Release Date: | 7 December 2008 |
Format: | Live Album |
Catalogue: | |
Related Release(s): |
This live album was produced by the band and mixed by Lee ‘Muddy’ Baker, taken from recordings of the shows on the April 2008 UK tour. The album is limited to 5,000 copies and only available at the merchandise desk on the UK December 2008 tour.
Not found on Spotify.
Lose Control / Dream Thrum / Oh My Heart / Waterfall / Seven / Ring The Bells / Bubbles / Hey Ma / She’s A Star / Play Dead / I Wanna Go Home / Out To Get You / Upside / Say Something / Tomorrow / Sit Down / Sound / Just Like Fred Astaire / Sometimes / Laid / Top Of The World / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Born Of Frustration
Unkle Bob
n/a
None.
None.
Onto the House of Blues in San Diego. The venue is surprisingly compact and intimate for what is in effect part of a chain of venues. The walls are adorned and practically covered in all sorts of strange artforms, but it’s a setting that works. The venue’s sound set-up is superb, it’s extremely crisp and vibrant and ideal for a band with the amount going on musically that James have.
The start of the set is a little odd. Andy walks on and performs a solo piece which Tim refers to as a dare when the rest of the band join him a few minutes later. Dream Thrum opens the set and is well received. As in LA, the live version crackles and sparkles in a way the studio version never did and it’s great to see that despite having a great set of new material that James aren’t afraid to delve into their past and resurrect a song like this.
Oh My Heart is one of the band’s favourite new songs and live, it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, despite the subject matter of the song. The crowd appear to be very responsive to the new songs, a little more lively than the previous two nights. Ring The Bells benefits from the sound in the hall, building and building to a stunning climax. Waterfall sits well next to it in the set despite not being too dissimilar in the way it builds and then explodes into an extended instrumental outro.
She’s A Star feels a little out of place in the set. It’s a pretty straight rendition of a crowd favourite and whilst there’s nothing wrong with the performance, it would have been nice to have heard something like Play Dead, PS, Five-O or Honest Joe in its place (which have all been played earlier in the tour and knowing my luck will appear in Anaheim when I’m sat on a plane home).
Hey Ma is introduced as being about Blair and Bush’s mistakes in Iraq which generates a cheer from the crowd. The delivery of the song gets fiercer with every play and it never ceases to amuse me when Larry almost winds the song up with his hand before the last chorus. Bubbles is again a highlight of the set. Lee hit the nail on the head in the Itunes commentary when he calls it a smorgasbord of what James are about. The song has everything in six minutes.
Seven and Getting Away With It slow the momentum down a little, before another astonishing version of I Wanna Go Home. In this and Out To Get You, which follows, the improvisational elements of James live show come to the fore. The casual James fan would stand agog at the quality of the musicianship, the multi-show fans marvel at the way the songs sound different night to night.
Tim halts Upside before the last chorus to get silence in the venue. It takes a while as some people seem to take this as their opportunity to make themselves heard, proving that wherever you go in the world there are some people who are just the wrong side of stupid.
Whiteboy is fun all the way through. It might appear a little throwaway, but it’s more joyful and upbeat than a million Kaiser C**ts songs rolled into one. Born Of Frustration starts with Larry and Andy’s guitar and trumpet calls and gets more of the crowd dancing than previously in the evening. Sit Down, with a slowed down first verse, steals the show though again. Sound is surprisingly truncated tonight, a slight disappointment given the heights it was taken to in the previous two shows. It matters not to the crowd though. There’s a lot of people here who have waited a long time to see the band and they’re not let down.
Lullaby starts off the encore and the crowd are much more respectful as the haunting melody fills the hall. The set concludes with the two songs that characterise James most in the US. At the end of Sometimes, the crowd need no encouragement to sing the refrain back to the band before Larry and Dave signal the start of Laid. There’s none of the pandemonium of a stage invasion as in LA, but noone’s complaining.
That’s the end of my US trip on this tour. I’m disappointed to be leaving now rather than finishing off in Anaheim, but it’s been a great experience and one I hope to repeat next Spring. Thanks to the guys as ever, Juliet, Mark, Julie, Cory, Mel, Lori, Andy, Daisies, Lila and everyone else I met – it was a blast.
It’s nights like this that bring home the stark fact that James have no peers in the music business today – a show so full of life and vitality and energy and twists and turns that you cannot fail to be captivated and drawn into a maelstrom. Los Angeles didn’t know what had hit it. British audiences have been treated to James for years and years and have maybe taken the quality of the shows for granted. James hadn’t been to Los Angeles to play a full-on headline show (I’m excluding Spaceland in June here) since 1994. Live, they were either a hazy wistful memory or one of those bands that just never came here.
Openers Uncle Bob were excellent and the crowd responded well to them, building a sense of anticipation for James, as the red curtain closed across the stage so that the crowd couldn’t see the preparations for the show going on behind it.
Just after 10, the lights went down and the opening bars of Dream Thrum struck up as the curtain moved back to reveal the band, Tim in a hat that was too big (by design I think) which was later almost to resemble a turban. The sound was a vast improvement on the previous night in San Francisco and the crowd immediately more responsive. It’s strange to have an album track get such a response, and particular one so fragile as Dream Thrum, but the history here is different to that of the UK crowds.
Oh My Heart is introduced as a song about breaking your heart so it can be transformed into something more beautiful, like a butterfly. None of the new material played tonight suffers in comparison to the more staple James favourites around them. It’s a mark of the high quality of the Hey Ma album that this is the case. The songs blossom further in the live arena. Waterfall stands tall next to Ring The Bells, a real highlight tonight. Andy is on top form, not just musically as his trumpet soars through most of the set including a rabid take on Come Home, but visually. He dances with Larry and, when not playing trumpet, stalks the stage tambourine in hand.
Hey Ma is introduced as a song about Bush and Blair’s actions in Iraq. There’s not much reaction until the song kicks in and the chorus builds and then the whole place seems to be singing it back. Very few people here at least seem to disagree with the sentiment of the song.
Bubbles, dedicated to Luca, is simply stunning, no other words to describe it. It builds and builds and builds and then explodes into a crescendo. Held together by Jim, Mark and Dave, it’s propelled by Saul, Larry and Andy with Tim dancing wildly and spitting out the lyrics as if he’s being exorcised. It’s magnificent stuff.
Seven gets its first airing for a while and maintains the energy of the set, before Say Something sees Tim make his foray off stage into the audience. It’s always a crowd favourite, but here in the US it’s one of the three most recognised tracks and is sung back by the whole place as Tim makes his way round the venue.
The pace drops slightly for an absolutely gorgeous version of Don’t Wait That Long. It hadn’t been done justice on the few outings in the UK last year, but there’s no such worries tonight. The backdrop turns red as Tim takes control of the song and shows off his vocal range. I Wanna Go Home is blistering. Like Bubbles it builds until the stage explodes in a sea of light and a cacophony of noise. It had been described earlier in the year as the new Johnny Yen. Musically it probably goes past that old friend.
Out To Get You has the crowd clapping and singing along in unison. The end section, including a jawdropping violin solo from Saul, again just demonstrates the uniqueness and unpredictability of this band.
Upside is marred by an incident where Jim ends up in the crowd. One of the guys next to me said something had been throwing stuff on stage for the past few songs. The song itself doesn’t quite catch fire in the way the rest of the set does, but that’s probably down to what had just happened.
Whiteboy is fast, frenetic and has the crowd back moving and leads into the chorus of recognition and Indian impersonations of Born of Frustration. The sound is huge, Andy’s trumpet piercing the air like a rallying cry to the crowd who need no encouragement.
Sit Down, freed from the chains of being “that song”, sounds fresh, vibrant and one of the most poignant and touching songs ever written. It’s group therapy, Tim holds his hand up at the “those who find themselves ridiculous” line.
Sound closes the main set and is the best version I’ve heard for a long time, if not ever. As it seems to be drawing to a close, it kicks back in even harder, held together by Jim’s bass whose beauty in its simplicity. But the real star of this song is Dave, who drives it along and dictates the pace and drive of the song. At the end, Tim stands and does a call and response to the audience on the “ma ba oooh” part. He looks visibly moved and, like the rest of us, drawn in to what has gone on and utterly captivated by it.
It feels like the applause is never going to stop as the band line up to take their bows. They’re clearly moved and taken aback by the ferocity of the response, but they deserve every little bit of it.
Finally, they come back for an encore with starts with Top Of The World, slightly spoilt by some knobs trying to sing Sometimes over the start of it. Without the distraction of Tim appearing in the crowd it’s far more eerie and the haunting bass hangs over the crowd as Tim half-sings, half-speaks the words.
The finale is madness. Sometimes starts up and the whole place erupts. There’s no need for any encouragement for anyone to start singing the chorus back at the band at the end, them taking over before the song is even taken down. It’s probably the loudest and most sustained I’ve heard it too, Tim dances along as the crowd get louder and louder until Larry breaks in with Laid and then all hell breaks loose. Tim invites a couple of people on stage and then everyone goes for it. The stage is so crowded that Tim jumps down to sing the end and to dance in the audience. As a celebration, as the end of a show, it’s one of those moments you only witness once in a very long while. I think Larry’s fond of the phrase “from chaos comes beauty”. It’s apt in this situation.
No-one really wants to leave at this point, but unfortunately that was the end. It’s a real privilege to watch something that special, that brings together so many people and includes them in what is going on up on the stage. Far from being a band that is back to milk their back catalogue, James are taking their legend and expanding on it, with a wonderful album and with a series of shows that, despite probably not being financially rewarding, are demonstrating that they have no peers in this arena and probably most importantly an exorcism of the bad vibes and disputes of the past. They looked like a band in love with itself and the music they are creating and experiencing the joy of sharing it with those around them. America has been treated.