I am sitting around in my office on a warm Friday in September, thinking....good lord I am going to be 27 next week. It was exactly 6 years ago I spent consecutive nights at the Scala watching the stereophonics and the manics as the twin towers came down and the world changed for ever more. That seems like donkeys years ago but in other ways I cannot believe where the years have gone by. Anyhow, Nik, my sister, bells me to keep the Monday free for a birthday treat- I'm thinking the kind young lady may dine me to delicacies of maccie d's or KFC. The treat instead took a smile off the happy meal's smug grin...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Then…news of a secret James gig comes through on the email. I'm on the blower to Nik again...her little surprise has been blown! The email suggests that they are doing a gig in hoxton bar and kitchen - where we saw them on their return from the wilderness back in March.
Hoxton's band room is tiny. I saw my mate's impressive outfit the distance there some time back. It apparently holds up to 200, tho it just feels like a kind of front room.
That gig…back in March was an honour to be at…the secret comeback gig of a band I've grown to adore (typically after they 'split'), but in all honesty they didn't sound fantastic that night – the songs were scratchy the band weren't tight (as you'd expect from a band that hadn't played to an audience since xmas 2001). They got that tightness for the bigger-staged Easter tour – we saw them in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />London, Birmingham and Manchester.
New songs at gigs…I never used to particularly like it when half the songs are new – one or two great – but a whole load – I think a crowd enjoys hear a band play songs that have made them buy a ticket in the first place. I'm not sure I feel that any more; I enjoy getting a glimpse of where a band is going as much as where they've been.
Setlist sheet for the Monday night
That gig had been a mesh of old stuff largely, and treated to a couple of rare live album tracks ( "play dead" from Whiplash comes to mind played beautifully on violin). But this time new songs only, and we knew that from the outset.
Monday was truly mind-blowing, the best gig I have ever seen. Music has never blown me away in, touched me in so many ways, and brought out so many emotions. These lot…my favourite band….but I didn't want to hear any of the songs that made them my favourite band….the new ones were that good. So many bands get worse with time. They live in a perpetual attempt to relive past glories – Oasis come to mind – rather than looking inwards, to experience, to shedding old habits and creating new ones, like this one.
Ooops I nicked Saul's crib notes!
The use of the violin, slide guitar and trumpet gave the music dimension, lacking in the post-Whiplash days. To me the star was Andy Diagram, the trumpeter from way back. It was truly beautiful. If laid was a great album, and I think it was, it missed one thing and that was Andy. Andy plays the trumpet in a slightly more classical manner than most modern brass players, who tend to use more jazz styles. There's something about the way that Andy and Tim's "lead"s contrast that worked really well that night. Whilst the band, with Mike and Adrian in it – produced some fine songs – there's chemistry with these "Seven". Few bands can really write music so varied musically. Some of the songs are melancholic, drawn from depression; But many are immensely uplifting, drawn from all the beauty that life has to offer, without being cheesy or clichéd in their lyrical content – something I don't believe is particularly easy to achieve.
Me and the wonderful Andy Diagram
Me, Nik and Dave (the drummer)
For some reason the need was felt for me to have a photo taken pretending to bottle Mark, the keyboard player. I think it was somet he said. Or me possibly!
To meet the band chat to them afterwards on both nights {and go off on some sort of bender with them, much of which I can't remember now due to alcohol excesses!} was an enormous privilege on top of the music. They are marvellously normal folk. The only one I didn't chat too was Tim, which was rather a shame. He's a bit scarier to approach than the others. And was a pleasure to meet the folk off the forum too.
Tuesday nights setlist sheets - we got two this time. One to rate songs out of ten to give to the band and one to keep as souvenir (cos on monday the band didnt get many back!)
There's the question of expectations. A great gig is often as much about your mood as the band. Tuesday – eating Thai curry in a pub on Old Street and watching SA vs WI. Chris Gayle hit a massive 117 in a 20-20 game, making him the first 20-20 centurion. There…expectations were running. I was expecting to see another "greatest gig of my life". It's a hard expectation to live up to – the music still took me away – but that element of surprise went, so probably didn't enjoy it as much.
I am so looking forward to the new album. James' albums tend to suffer from overproduction. "Seven" was a classical example of this, the live album is far rawer, intense, and does the songs much more justice than the polished studio album. Another problem with their studio albums is often not a lot of thinking goes into making an album from start to finish as an entity. It feels sometimes the songs get plonked together in any old order – neither "out to get you" or later "tomorrow" – beautiful as they are - are to my ears the sort of tracks you want to open an album with. The same can be said of the chop-and-stick process of including "Sit down" and "Loose control" in their re-release of Gold Mother. The first glimpse that they had started to master the art of album-making was Millionaires – but the last two tracks, are only a pale shadow of what they sound like on the live "getting away with it". Can they get them both right for the next LP? I hope so but I'd release the Monday night show as it was!
There's some piccies – including the setlist sheets from both nights, soul's musical notes from the second night, what I nicked off stage, and some photos with the band themselves.