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Glasgow Hydro – 15th November 2014

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Setlist

Lose Control / Seven / Walk Like You / All Good Boys / Sound / Curse Curse / Laid / Hymn From A Village / All Im Saying / Quicken The Dead / Out To Get You / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Greenpeace / Stutter / Just Like Fred Astaire / Moving On / Gone Baby Gone / Come Home / Tomorrow / Born Of Frustration / Sometimes

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(Even The Stars)

Saturday night in Glasgow is no place for the faint-hearted and so James got (most of) their hits out for one of the biggest shows of the La Petite Mort tour.

The Hydro has garnered itself something of a bad reputation for sound since its opening last year, but there’s no real problems with the sound tonight where we’re stood is fine and the venue works in the sense that there’s a decent vantage point pretty much everywhere.

Tonight’s set is geared towards the Saturday night crowd. Whilst there’s still six songs from the new album and All Good Boys and Greenpeace retain their place, the rest of the set aims to generate a celebratory atmosphere rather than a listening crowd. This comes to a crux when Tim stops All I’m Saying because, despite requesting a few minutes silence so he can sing this song that’s very difficult for him because of the subject, the crowd don’t and he can’t carry on over the noise. It’s a shame that the crowd couldn’t respect that wish, but then it’s difficult to shut up eight thousand people for a few minutes when a large chunk of them have been on the lash all day.

The tone of the show is set by the opening Lose Control when Tim, Larry and Andy walk through the crowd. The venue layout doesn’t really lend itself to this working as the only seats that can access the route to the stage are not raised very high so most of the floor can’t see what’s going on. But they just take the song and make it their own almost drowning Tim out in the process. Seven has a sea of arms raised in unison and Walk Like You, with its many different sections and improvised outro keeps the atmosphere at fever pitch. All Good Boys surprisingly works in this environment, it feels made for these bigger stages, particularly as it builds to the five-voice crescendo at the end. It feels and sounds like a lost classic.

Sound has Tim musing on the fact that there’s something beautiful about men singing the “mah bah ooh” part of the song. Tonight it fills the hall, dark and rumbling, slightly menacing, lit up by stunning use of the backdrop and the big lighting rig. Curse Curse, which Tim later says he should have changed to “Maloney shoots and scores” in the presence of friend and Scotland manager Gordon Strachan, really turns the heat up, people losing themselves in a heady mix of the electronic vibes of the song, ferocious lighting and a hazy fog of alcohol. Tim goes crowd-surfing half way through the song as well yet still manages to hold everything together as he sings lying chest-down on a sea of arms. Laid has Tim down on the barrier again and helping a crowd surfer up on to the stage to dance with him. The reaction of the audience tells you why many bands see Glasgow crowds as one of the best to play to. Hymn From A Village hammers that point home as well.

Then things turn slightly sour with the All I’m Saying incident. Thinking about how often Tim went down into the crowd tonight, far more than he normally would, suggests that the distance and height from the crowd meant he was having trouble getting the connection he wanted. They play Quicken The Dead as an alternative and then it all gets forgotten as the venue is turned into a mass of waving arms as they go into Out To Get You, a song that’s been on quite a journey from its initial place on the Lose Control b-side to one of the band’s most loved songs and one that guarantees a fabulous reception whenever they play it. Getting Away With It, with Tim humming the intro section, has the whole place bouncing again and everything is forgotten.

Greenpeace looks and sounds stunning, but as Saul alluded to in the soundcheck, it does feel like it gets slightly lost in these big arenas. It’s not a song an audience can do a lot with given the contrast in pace and volume of the various sections except stand and stare at its sheer power. Stutter is a very different beast as it rumbles its way to its manic conclusion, bulldozing everything in its way.

Just Like Fred Astaire is simply jaw-droppingly beautiful, the song, more than any other, they’ve absolutely captured the essence of on this tour. Gorgeous swooping keyboard, vocals that enhance the expression of love apparent in the words. Moving On gets the warmest reception of all the new songs tonight, the sentiment touches most of the people in the room in some way and there must be a cathartic effect of thousands of people singing back to you something incredibly personal. Gone Baby Gone, once again, is the highlight of the new songs though and Tim helps another dancer up on stage for this one.

Come Home and Tomorrow finish the main set and see Tim back down in the crowd surfing, although some people get a bit too close and personal prompting him to ask if “the person who stole my penis can give it back”, a change from when someone stole his shoe at the Barrowlands in 1990. Come Home gets stretched out as Tim can’t sing because of the attention he’s getting so it loses its way a little as they scrabble to keep the song going, but they manage to rescue it.

Born Of Frustration sees them all stay on stage tonight and allows us to focus on the sheer power of the song without being distracted by people in different corners of the arena. It’s a song that drifts in and out of the setlist, but really was the calling card for the Seven album, especially when the crowd can participate in the hollering Indian call of the intro of the song.

They finish with Sometimes which almost descends into farce, they play the song with an interesting opening where Tim sings the first line without the band having started the song, the audience stops, are called back into action by Tim stomping his feet, prompting a sing-along section, but before the band can come back in the crowd stop singing and it doesn’t get carried into the mass celebratory communion it’s been on other nights. It’s one of the great things about having Sometimes at the end of the set, although the structure of it might be well-known to people, it’s never the same because of the crowd and how they take it.

All in all, a gig very much geared to the audience and the night of the week, but still enough in there that goes beyond what the casual fan of the band might know and expect from them. With concerns about the venue and Tim’s voice, which sounded in fine fettle despite issues with his throat over the past few days, it was the right set for the evening and the place, but hopefully we’ll see some changes this week.

Liverpool Echo Arena – 14th November 2014

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Setlist

Lose Control / Seven / Walk Like You / All Good Boys / Sound / Curse Curse / Laid / Hymn From A Village / All I’m Saying / Five-O / Quicken The Dead / She’s A Star / Greenpeace / Stutter / Just Like Fred Astaire / Moving On / Gone Baby Gone / Come Home / Born Of Frustration / Interrogation / Sometimes

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Review

(Even The Stars)

As James’ La Petite Mort tour reaches its first weekend, the size of venues grows as they enter arena territory starting at Liverpool’s Echo Arena. We watched them walk the tightrope between crowd pleasing hits and their desire to challenge their audience with curveballs and unusual song choices.

The Echo Arena is one of those cavernous, potentially soulless places so often frowned upon by music fans when their favourite band gets to the point where they have to play to audiences of this size. What transforms it though into something more intimate where there’s a connection between band and audience that so few can manage. What doesn’t help is the proliferation of people who you have to wonder why they forked out £40 to get off their tits on poppers all night and stand with their back to the band. But that’s James lot in these arenas and there’s moments tonight where you could have been in the smallest toilet venue in the country, such is the intimacy that some of the songs generate, helped by one of the most impressive sound set-ups we’ve heard in a venue of this size and decent sight lines throughout.

They start amongst their fans with Larry, Andy and Tim appearing at the back of the arena for a walkthrough the Level 1 seats for an acoustic version of Lose Control. Whilst it’s one of their most recognisible songs, it also sets the audience on edge a little, takes away their expectations of a bombardment of greatest hits played straight like so many that will have trodden this floor. Rather than head for the stage, Tim heads for the barrier as Seven strikes up, a beautiful rough extended opening section due to the time it takes to get back through the crowd. Thousands of arms are raised skywards as they reach the punchline of “love can mean anything”.

Walk Like You is again one of the highlights, that out section allowing the band to take the song off in a different direction yet again, brimming with so many ideas, as many in one song as many bands can fit on an album. They take the typical Jamesian route at this point of throwing in All Good Boys as a curveball. The song itself fills the hall, the fraility in parts of the original replaced by a building sense of forcing itself into your face and letting you know it’s around and had it got the release treatment it deserved at the time, maybe more would have known it.

Sound, Curse Curse and Laid are rapturously received. It still feels a bit strange when they play Sound mid-set because it naturally restricts some of their improvisational tendencies as it isn’t stretched to twelve minutes, but, having been out of the set for a while, they’ve worked on the arrangements and reinvigorated it. Curse Curse is an absolute blast and has the whole place dancing, singing and generally losing themselves in the fun and abandon of the song. This continues into its older brother Laid, the opening bars of Saul’s acoustic sending the whole place into delirium and Larry prowls the stage. Although less familiar to the now heaving mass, Hymn From A Village bears its fists and gets feisty, the scrappy upstart of its youth being replaced by something more likely to bulldoze your front door down and make itself at home.

They slow things down with a trio of All I’m Saying, Five-O and Quicken The Dead and the wide expanse of the venue doesn’t mean that the feeling and meaning of these songs are lost as Saul’s violin pierces the expectant atmosphere during Five-O as he, Jim and Larry congregate in a huddle and Tim laments the loss of his mentor and friend Gabrielle on All I’m Saying. The crowd’s reaction is, as you’d expect, mixed. The majority want to listen and take in this more poignant, beautiful side of James’ work, but there’s a few, that find themselves ridiculous, who want the big songs and nothing else.

She’s A Star serves to bring those dissenters back in line, before James take a step to the left field and unleash a quarter of an hour of white noise onto their unsuspecting audience. Greenpeace is nailed, that wild contrast between the two parts of the song and its final descent into chaos, illuminated by another wild light show. The crowd are a bit bemused around us, not sure what to make of it, not aware of this side of their work which blossomed around the Whiplash album. It goes beyond connection at an emotional level with this song, it’s a brutal violent assault on the senses. And then they follow it up with the killer blow which is Stutter. There’s probably not a song in the annals of music with a history like this one, thirty years old, never committed to a commercial release in studio form, but a song that can never die.

We then enter the home strait with a beautiful rendition of Just Like Fred Astaire, one of those James songs that was born at the wrong time for them commercially. It’s both unequivocally James, but also not like any other song they’ve done. The reaction Moving On gets is testament to how well La Petite Mort has been received, and Gone Baby Gone presses home the question of how has it not been chosen as a single so far. It’s not as polished live as the studio version, but it has all those traits of a James classic, punchy, sing-along and ripe for improvisation. They finish with Come Home and the whole place, including the now much worse for wear popper poppers, are joined as one.

The encore starts with Born Of Frustration, Andy appearing on the balcony playing trumpet next to a girl who looks around in vain for him before finally releasing with shock that he’s actually stood next to her. Tim appears the other side. These moments bring those people up in the gods into the show by taking it to them, but you don’t know where to look as Tim makes his way through the rows, Andy dances with random people and the rest of the band take the song and deliver new twists on it. Interrogation is a brave encore choice given the songs that have preceded it, but it’s a song that challenges its audience head-on, particular in the breakdown, where Larry improvises yet another different take on it.

Sometimes brings things to their inevitable conclusion. Tim goes out crowdsurfing into the standing area until he runs out of arms and is forced to turn back. It finishes with a chaotic singalong, in parts accapella, Tim’s reaction half-open mouthed in awe, half dancing. Larry tries some ill-advised vocal improvisation of “Liverpool’s soul” that no one else picks up on. They want to stay on and play another song, but are greeted by a chorus of boos when Tim tells us that they can’t because of the curfew, a rather flat way to end the evening and a bit harsh on the band to boo them.

These gigs are a bit of a conundrum for James, a balance between pleasing the masses that just want certain songs they heard on the radio against their natural will to play whatever takes their fancy and which another element of their fanbase would love to hear. They walk a fine line tonight, but on balance manage the rather clever trick of pleasing everyone, including the busker outside who unwittingly leads the exiting mass in a rendition of that song and filling his hat in the process.

Bristol Colston Hall – 12th November 2014

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Setlist

All Good Boys / Walk Like You / She's A Star / Seven / Curse Curse / Laid / Quicken the Dead / All I'm Saying / Five-O / Greenpeace / Stutter / Just Like Fred Astaire / Moving On / Come Home / Gone Baby Gone / Born of Frustration / Interrogation / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Sometimes

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Cambridge Corn Exchange – 11th November 2014

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Setlist

Oh My Heart / Walk Like You / Shes A Star / Quicken The Dead / Seven / Curse Curse / Laid / PS / All Im Saying / Say Something / All Good Boys / Greenpeace / Stutter / Just Like Fred Astaire / Moving On / Gone Baby Gone / Come Home / Interrogation / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Sometimes

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(Even The Stars)

Cambridge Corn Exchange is the setting for the first sold-out night of James’ La Petite Mort tour. Armed with a full sound and lighting set up, a new album that stands up to anything they’ve done before, they once again demonstrated why they’re the most formidable live act in the land.

After a well-received opening set by Starsailor, James came on fashionably late to Tim declaring “let’s have some fun” to the sold-out Corn Exchange. In typical James fashion, there are seven changes to the set from the night before, impressive considering there’s six songs from the new album in common with the previous night and the order is mixed up too as they strive to find the right balance and perfect set pace so they can tear it up again.

First up is Oh My Heart, a welcome return of the Hey Ma album to the set for the first time in this series of dates, Tim, as is his wont, twists the lyrics round, evolving the song as he does so, even more impressive given his in-ear pack gives out half way through the song. A quick battery change later and they dive into La Petite Mort opener Walk Like You which again descends into an improvised frenzy as it reaches its conclusion, trumpets and violin everywhere. It’s the album’s brash, bold strident calling card.

She’s A Star makes a return to the set and this time it’s given a boost with extra keyboards by Ron Yeadon. It’s a song that survives in the set down to its popularity with the crowd and also their ability to twist it and reinvigorate what is, when you take it back to its genesis, one of their most straight-forward pop songs. Quicken The Dead was a song that I hadn’t been completely convinced about live to now, but in this hall with a sound set up capable of highlights the nuances in the melody and the vocals it grows into something exquisitely beautiful.

Seven has grown a new heavy intro to the point most people don’t recognise it until Tim’s vocals kick in and Andy’s trumpet call floats across the hall. Curse Curse and Laid, two songs which showcase the playful side of Tim’s lyrics and which have a propensity to get people dancing, are cleverly put together, firstly because of the reaction they get and second it creates a comparison between the two, which Tim alludes (and I’m paraphrasing here) to later when he talks about Sit Down having got to number 98 (77) the first time round even though they knew it was a hit, but the walls of radio and press were up and weren’t letting James in and that they know these new songs like Curse Curse are hits in the same way Laid was, but those walls have gone back up.

PS is simply beautiful, the band lit in a fiery shade of red as Saul takes the limelight perched on his riser towards the back with a jaw-dropping violin solo that even has his bandmates turning round and watching awe-struck. The audience is incredibly respectful, almost listening in silence, apart from a few mouthing the words at the opening to All I’m Saying after Tim explains its significance, breaking into clapping as the song builds. What appeared originally as an unusual single choice actually makes perfect sense as it’s one of those songs that builds in intensity before dropping down to its punchline.

Say Something sort of sits at the centre of the set between the two introspective songs that precede it and the journey into the darker less familiar roads of James’ canon. It’s one of the songs that can sometimes become a little predictable, but Larry’s guitar work in the breakdown gives it a new interesting angle.

All Good Boys has become quite a revelation. Where it was slightly scrappy at Saturday’s warm-up, they’ve completely nailed it with Saul’s opening acoustic and the vocal interplay between him and Tim early in the song and the communal coming together of five voices at the end. Greenpeace sees no technical issues tonight and therefore the contrast between the indifferent onlooker and the evil industrialist of Tim’s two microphone set up and the subdued instrumentation of the verse and the chaotic maelstrom when the guitars and everything else kick in against a backdrop of strobes and other lighting effects is something uniquely James.

And then there’s Stutter. One of the band’s oldest songs, written after listening to too much Nick Cave and Birthday Party at an early age and Tim’s suggestion for a goth wedding, is just simply staggering. To call it a song is actually doing it a dis-service, it’s an assault on the aural senses. Every time they play it they do something different with it and it’s not surprising they’ve never committed it to record as how could you ever come up with a definitive version of something so feral and uncompromising.

Into the home straight and Just Like Fred Astaire confirms that James aren’t just all about improvised noise and that they can show their softer side and contain their improvisational instincts. It’s a song that needs to be played relatively straight (or acoustic) and from the ascending keyboard intro to the multi-voice refrain about waters rising that’s what they do. With different subject matter, Moving On is similar in that respect. It’s reassuring to turn around and see so many people singing along and dancing and that La Petite Mort shows no sign of diminishing that ability to connect with an audience that James have perfected over the years.

Gone Baby Gone is a revelation. The one song off the album that hadn’t been played live before the tour, you now have to wonder how it’s not been chosen as one of the four focus tracks (aka singles) so far. The rigid polished production of the album version is sanded down and it resembles a loose fragmented jam, always on the edge of breakdown, but which thrives on that threat of dissolution. They finish the main set with Come Home, as spindly and edgy as it’s ever been. Like many of those singing along to every word, connecting with the sentiments of the song, it has every intent of growing old disgracefully, a little all over the place but ever more loveable for it.

The encore opens with Interrogation, the real show-stopper of the new songs, full of self-analysis set to a tune that echoes the menace in Tim’s vocals and boasting a breakdown which allows Larry to jam a jagged raw guitar line that draws Tim to him. Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) is sung so loud that at one point in the first verse Tim lets the audience sing a line. It’s a very symbolic song for James, combining their uncanny ability to write a classic pop song whilst still allowing the seven of them room to breathe and take over as they see fit and a lyric that could be the band’s epitaph.

Lastly we get Sometimes. It feels like the band have been trying to extricate this from the end of the set recently, but that’s virtually impossible when it gets this reaction. Tim comes to the barrier and sensing that he’s not going to get ripped apart crowd-surfs to the back of the hall on a sea of raised hands whilst managing not to miss a note. By the time he’s made it back, the crowd have taken the song on, accompanied only by a whispered bass drum kick and Tim loses himself in dance as the band gradually come back in to what’s almost a free-form jam around the song’s basic structure.

Worth noting is also that the light show is nothing short of spectacular and gets combined on some songs with video graphics on the white sections of the backdrop. As Stutter rampages to its savage conclusion with four sets of drums and Tim on keyboards, the building is lit in white, yellow and purple flashes. At other times, circular lights are used to imperious effect, flashing, rotating in red and blue light and huge banks of bulbs bathe the band in colourful shades. James have always been a band renowned for stunning lighting, often improvised as the music, and even by those standards this was something special.

Oxford O2 Academy – 10th November 2014

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This show was rescheduled from 10th July when it was originally planned as a warm-up for the Castlefield Bowl headline slot. It then became the opening night of the La Petite Mort tour. Support came from up-and-coming Stockport act Blossoms.

Setlist

Walk Like You / Quicken The Dead / Seven / All Good Boys / Interrogation / Hymn From A Village / Curse Curse / Laid / Vervaceous / Greenpeace / Ring The Bells / Gone Baby Gone / Come Home / Sometimes / Moving On / Out To Get You / Born Of Frustration / Just Like Fred Astaire

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(Even The Stars)
James opened their La Petite Mort tour with a sold out show at Oxford’s O2 Academy – an intimate venue compared to some of the arenas on the tour, but they still thrilled with songs from their latest album as well as a mix of greatest hits and a few rarities plucked from their enormous catalogue of songs. This Oxford date has been tagged onto the front of the tour as it was initially a warm-up for July’s Castlefield show that got cancelled because of Tim having a throat infection. As a result, it’s by far the smallest venue on the tour and that applies to the stage. As a result Saul is moved to the back to the stage to accommodate everyone whilst allowing Tim to dance and this becomes a running joke throughout the set, Tim quipping that he’s heading for the exit and hoping it’s not a sign at one point. They open with two songs from La Petite Mort – Walk Like You and Quicken The Dead – and what’s immediate, as it has been throughout the series of summer dates, is that these songs don’t need to make excuses for themselves of being new to justify their place in their set. There’s few songs like Walk Like You in James’ canon – you have to think Johnny Yen and Sound – that give them free reign to improvise so much without the song falling apart or sounding unnatural. It’s nine minutes long yet never feels like it outstays its welcome. Quicken The Dead is three minutes of beautiful triple-time quasi-waltz, not the most immediate live song on the record, but one that takes off its glasses, lets its hair down and turns into something quintessentially beautiful. It’s a theme that runs through the set that the new material never needs to shirk in the exalted company of its more successful and popular brethren. Interrogation, as Saul points out in the programme, is a song that makes your hairs stand up on the back of your neck, no more so when they go for the extended version of it as it appears on the record. Gone Baby Gone, once they get past a false start, has been turned into a joyful, playful romp-stomp with Tim swooping from the “love love love” to the “blah blah blah” middle eight section with the most wicked mischievous grin on his face. The two singles Curse Curse and Moving On have really captured the imagination of the James fan-base in the way that songs like Crazy and Look Away from the mini-albums and Whiteboy and Waterfall from Hey Ma, great songs that they are – never really did. We don’t even get the next single All I’m Saying, out next Monday, but then that’s just typical James isn’t it? For the die-hards, there’s three special moments where James delve into the darkest nooks and crannies of their back catalogue. Millionaires-era b-side All Good Boys is transformed spectacularly and ends in a crescendo of five voices in unison, the music dropped, singing “the river, the river runs through, from father to son to tender the bruise” Saul describes it as “fucking brilliant” and that it doesn’t matter that it’s a b-side. You do wonder what thought process made it one rather than some of the tracks off the second half of that album though. Vervaceous swoops, soars, drops and soars – it’s almost not a song rather a piece of music crafted from a jam, a piece of art rather than the more traditional song structures of their better known work. Greenpeace is marred by Tim’s second microphone not working, but it hardly matters as it turns into a cacophony of noise, flashing lights and menace. It’s not all about the new album and obscurities from the back catalogue though. Even though Tim tells a persistent heckler that this is the “No Sit Down tour because it needs a rest” there’s more than enough for those only acquainted with the Greatest Hits. Laid, set free in the first half of the set, is as rampantly daft and almost frivolous as ever, a whole bundle of fun as is Sometimes as Tim marvels at the crowd singing along with Andy. There’s no stopping the music to prompt the crowd, just everyone carried away in the emotion of the song. Tim exits the stage and walks on the bars and merch desk at the side of the venue for most of Come Home before swan-diving into the crowd as the band take the song off down improvised roads to its conclusion. Hymn From A Village sounds like a reborn song – the energy, taut chaos belying its thirty-two years. Out To Get You, with an elongated beautiful violin opening that has Tim holding back from starting the song to marvel at Saul’s work, does nothing to dampen the celebratory mood. Born Of Frustration threatens to blow the building apart such is its ferociousness whilst we’re sent home floating on the sea of love and joy that is Just Like Fred Astaire. What comes across more than anything tonight is just how well the band are connecting on stage, a telepathic feeling of understanding that allows them to bounce off each other, feed each other and it drives them off to squeeze new leases of life out of songs they’ve played hundreds of times before as well as reinvent songs they’ve just written. And this is just the start of the tour.

Stirling Albert Halls – 8th November 2014

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Setlist

Say Something / Seven / Walk Like You / All I'm Saying / All Good Boys / Quicken The Dead / Curse Curse / Laid / Greenpeace / Vervaceous / PS / Just Like Fred Astaire / Gone Baby Gone / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Moving On / Come Home / Interrogation / Born Of Frustration

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(Even The Stars)

James warmed up for their two-week UK tour with an intimate 600 capacity show at Stirling Albert Halls with a set mixing classic hits, tracks from their new album La Petite Mort and a number of older tracks resurrected from their vast back catalogue.

These types of James gigs are always a bit of a curate’s egg. The start of a tour is when they try out all the songs they’ve been working on in rehearsals, some of which end up in the set throughout the tour, some never to be heard again, but you’re always guaranteed to hear songs you never thought you’d hear again, or in some cases, you’re actually hearing them live for the first time as they were never played at time of release.

Tonight’s set follows that trend. There’s something for everyone in the set, even though that means there isn’t the traditional build through the set you expect from a James gig, the more fragmented nature of the setlist doesn’t detract from the experience. As the music drops and five of them sing the refrain to Millionaires-era b-side All Good Boys, you know this is something that most bands would never dream of doing. Greenpeace, from 1997’s Whiplash, is also brought back to life and even some issues with Tim’s second microphone can’t spoil the impact of a song that’s always been downright weird, stop-start, up-down, but which with a more comprehensive light set-up in an arena will be a show-stopper. Millionaires closer Vervaceous is also resurrected, complete with distortion on Tim’s voice and it swoops and soars. Whether pairing these two together mid-set in bigger venues than this work remains to be seen, but it doesn’t particularly dampen the celebratory atmosphere tonight.

It’s not just about revisiting rarities of course though. In La Petite Mort, James have produced one of the strongest bodies of work to date and tonight they play seven songs from it, proving beyond doubt that the songs are fit to stand alongside anything they’ve ever done previously. With Frozen Britain and Bitter Virtue not being played tonight but having been fairly regular in the sets over the summer, we could be pretty close to hearing the whole album across this tour. Gone Baby Gone gets played for the first time ever live and works brilliantly, it’s a fun song and the version we hear is playful with multiple vocalists and piercing shrieks of trumpet. What’s also noticeable against previous post-reformation tracks is the amount of people who know every word of the “focus tracks” Moving On, Curse Curse and All I’m Saying, testament to the fact that James are finally getting some breaks from radio. Walk Like You is the highlight of them all though, a song that allows them to let go, improvise and take the song down different roads to the recorded version in ways only James can.

There is also a smattering of the bigger hits, opening with Say Something and Seven, Laid being pulled early into the set, but no less rapturously received and a welcome return of Just Like Fred Astaire into the set which sees Tim mounting the speaker stack considering whether to climb up onto the balcony. Come Home has the whole place dancing and singing, twenty five years on from it having the same effect at the university up the road. The encore has a sadly curtailed version of Interrogation due to over-running and they finish with a wild Born Of Frustration.

The sound mix was intriguing too. Andy’s trumpet is turned up in the mix and his involvement in the songs feels much greater, particularly in the new songs and more obviously in Greenpeace and Vervaceous where he adds to songs that he didn’t appear on the recorded versions. Vocals are also augmented on large parts of the set by Ron Yeadon, adding more lift to the choruses of songs like Curse Curse. One minor quibble is that the venue’s sound system couldn’t handle the volume and variety of sound at parts so there was a bit of distortion and buzzing ears at the end of the night.

These warm-up gigs are always a unique experience, a pointer as to what you might expect on the tour, the band rehearsing publicly, yet still they manage to create a celebratory atmosphere that has the audience wanting more and eagerly anticipating the bigger shows on the tour.

B-Sides (CDR promo)

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B-Sides (CDR promo), a 2001 promo by James.

Summary

In-house Mercury CDR featuring unreleased versions of Maria’s Party and Gregory’s Town

Track List

Maria’s Party / Stolen Horse / Mary / DVV / Gregory’s Town / China Girl / All Good Boys / Imagine Ourselves / I Defeat / Long To See / Out To Get You (original)

Details

ReleaseAboutSongsGallery
Release Name: B-Sides (CDR promo)
Artist Name:
Release Date: 1st September 2001
Format: Promo Album
Catalogue: n/a

Only one version of this known to exist and it was featured in Record Collector. The version of Maria’s Party has Tim singing (Larry sings on Wah Wah) and both that and the version of Gregory’s Town have never been released.

Songs related to this release:

I Know What I’m Here For (Germany)

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I Know What I'm Here For (Germany), a 1999 Single by James.

Summary

Four-track German single featuring three of the four UK b-sides that featured on two CDs here on one CD

Track List

I Know What I’m Here For / All Good Boys / Imagine Ourselves / Downstairs

Details

ReleaseAboutSongsGallery
Release Name: I Know What I'm Here For (Germany)
Artist Name:
Release Date: 19th July 1999
Format: Studio Single
Catalogue: 562 261-2

Four-track German single featuring three of the four UK b-sides that featured on two CDs here on one CD

Songs related to this release:

All Good Boys

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All Good Boys is a b-side from the James single I Know What I’m Here For released in July 1999. It was never played live at the time of release, but was introduced into the set for the 2014 La Petite Mort tour where it went down a storm with UK and Portuguese audiences.

Details

LyricsListenReleaseAvailable OnGigsGuitar Tabs
It's a boy,
Man child,
A question of genes,
Body hair,
Deep voice,
A handful of dreams,

We don't get any older,
We're still stuck in school,
Never felt much love,
Until you came through,
Until you came through,

All good boys,
They follow the father in you,
All good boys (they fought for you)
All good boys (they fought for you)

We can't live with one another,
Brother killed his long lost brother,
We can't live with one another,
Brother killed his long lost brother,

Little boys in charge,
Don't know what to do,
What a waste,
So close,
But sharing's taboo,

We don't get any older,
We're still stuck in school,
We don't get any wiser,
I'm still the same old mule,
The same old mule

All good boys,
They follow the father in you,
All good boys (they fought for you)
All good boys (they fought for you)

The river,
The river,
The river runs through,
From father,
To son,
To tender the brood
(repeat to end)

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Song:All Good Boys
Released:19th July 1999
Main Associated Album (or Single):I Know What I'm Here For
First Heard Live:Stirling Albert Halls – 8th November 2014
Played at:
James - All Good Boys

Taken from the single I Know What I'm Here For

Written and performed by James

Backing Line:

Em D C D
e-------3------3-----------2------2-----------0------0-----------2------3-2----
B---------5------5-----------3------3-----------1------1-----------3--------3--
G----4-------4-----4----2-------2-----2----0-------0-----0----2-------2--------
D--2------------------0------------------2------------------0------------------
A------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Riff 1:

e-------------------------- e----------------------------
B-------------------------- B----------------------------
G--7/9-9-9-7--7-7-7-7/9/12- x 3 G--9/12-12-12-9-7------------
D-------------------------- D----------------------------
A-------------------------- A----------------------------
E-------------------------- E----------------------------

Song Structure:

The song begins with a upstroke of an Em <022000> chord, after which a an acoustic guitar can be heard playing the Backing Line. Later another acoustic guitar comes in playing the chords Em D C D (which continue throughout), and a third guitar playing Riff 1.
You can see the Em part of the Backing Line is based on the chord i.e. a Dm chord moved up two frets. It is unclear whether the chord-strumming guitar plays this chord or an open Em chord <022000>.
When the drums kick in the guitars carry on playing the same bits as before. The third guitar plays a varyation on Riff 1 but hey, I'm too lazy to tab it.

Lyrics/Chords:

Em
It's a boy,

D
Man child,

C D
A question of genes,

Em
Body hair,

D
Deep voice,

C D
A handful of dreams,



We don't get any older,

We're still stuck in school,

Never felt much love,

Until you came through,

Until you came through,



All good boys,

They follow the father in you,

All good boys (they fought for you)

All good boys (they fought for you)



We can't live with one another,

Brother killed his long lost brother,

We can't live with one another,

Brother killed his long lost brother,



Little boys in charge,

Don't know what to do,

What a waste,

So close,

But sharing's taboo,



We don't get any older,

We're still stuck in school,

We don't get any wiser,

I'm still the same old mule,

The same old mule



All good boys,

They follow the father in you,

All good boys (they fought for you)

All good boys (they fought for you)



The river,

The river,

The river runs through,

From father,

To son,

To tender the brood




Transcribed by Alex Carter 2001.

alex@shandy3000.fsnet.co.uk

I Know What I’m Here For

Posted on
I Know What I'm Here For, a 1999 Single by James.

Summary

The first single from the Millionaires album. Reached 22 in the UK Singles Chart.

Track List

CAS JIMMC 22 – I Know What I’m Here For / All Good Boys

CD JIMCD 22 – I Know What I’m Here For / All Good Boys / Downstairs

CD JIMDD 22 – I Know What I’m Here For / Imagine Ourselves / Stolen Horse

Details

ReleaseAboutSongsListenVideosGallery
Release Name: I Know What I'm Here For
Artist Name:
Release Date: 19th July 1999
Format: Studio Single
Catalogue: JIMCD22 (562 227-2); JIMDD22 (562 228-2); JIMMC22

I Know What I’m Here For was chosen as the first single from the Millionaires album. Supported by a Radio 1 A-listing, a performance on Channel 4’s TFI Friday and a hi-tech MTV-friendly video, hopes for the single were high for both the band and record company.

Saul commented “I Know What I’m Here For was chosen as the first single because we felt it really didn’t sound like James – it’s up, quite joyous and, I thought, not very commercial. I’m surprised by the reaction to it from the media; this is the first time in a long time we’ve had MTV support so we’re quietly pleased.”

Wary that their fans had been unhappy at the quality of some of the b-sides from the Whiplash and Best Of singles, the band made a conscientious attempt to produce high quality b-sides. Four new tracks – All Good Boys, Downstairs, Imagine Ourselves and Stolen Horse – were a throwback to the early nineties in that the singles were like EPs rather than singles with b-sides as a seeming afterthought. The single’s artwork was designed by Subliminal.

The video featured Tim in a shiny silver suit and dancers in various coloured leathers. Electronic imagery was used to zoom in and out and alternate between 2D and 3D.

However, the traditional one-week delay on the original release date and Mercury’s insistence on a £2.99 price tag contributed to a relatively disappointing chart position of 22.

Reviews

Music Week (Single of the Week)

In their rollercoaster career James scaled new heights in 1998 thanks to their chart-topping double platinum Best Of album and biggest arena tour yet. Reunited here with producer Brian Eno, they sound like a band again for the first time since 1997s She’s A Star – one of the Nineties strongest comebacks. The chorus, reminiscent of 1990s Come Home, is big enough to reverberate around any stadium, but the subtle synthesised folk of the arrangement manages to avoid any sense of bombast. Airplay – which includes a B-listing at Radio One – is growing, and the forthcoming album could be one of the autumn’s biggest.

Daily Express

It’s up to old faithfuls James to redeem matters with I Know What I’m Here For. The confidence of the title carries over into the song, which is brash, bold and surprisingly funky.

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