James @ the Academy

I went to see James at the Carling Academy last night. I was there to review them for The Skinny, so I saved on the unbelievable 30 quid ticket price. As I mentioned in a post last week, I’ve been a fan of James since the late 80s, from round about the time the Strip Mine album came out.

I became less attached to them as the years went on and their popularity increased. However they would always come along every so often with a song I really liked. So when the chance came to see them for nothing I was happy to take it.

The Twang opened for them. Touted as the next big thing by the music press they recall the Madchester days of the Mondays and yes, Northside. Why do we need another Northside? We don’t really, eh? But they were actually quite good. They have two singers, one doing a Bez type act. I’m sure they’ll be about for some time to come. You can listen to their single ‘Wide Awake’ through the BBC site here.

The audience seemed to be full of people in their mid 30s to mid 50s and given that James are doing this tour to celebrate 25 years in the business that’s no great surprise. They kicked off with ‘Come Home’ and from then on most people in the audience treated the night like a World Cup win. A lot of folk seemed to find the need to watch the show with their arms aloft in some sort of messiah pose.

Many older guys did that jogging on the spot style of dancing throughout the night too. For me there always seemed that there was a hint of trouble in the air and midway through their set a fight broke out not a few feet from me.

Although there was a large steward presence close by, they seemed to take ages getting involved as two guys hammered blows at each other’s head. I was only disappointed that I didn’t get a good photo of it, only capturing the aftermath.

As for the show well James were really good. They dared to play only two new songs, since the crowd were pretty much here to hear songs that they knew.

They did mostly everything you would expect. I enjoyed hearing Johnny Yen again and a few others like Say Something, Laid and Destiny Calling I enjoyed too. You really couldn’t knock their performance, they’ve always been a great live band and they’ve lost none of their performance skills in the years they’ve been away.

There is a selection of photos on my Flickr page.