JAMES TOUR PROGRAMME BIO 12.01

"Show me the movie of who you are and where you're from......"

Born of Frustration 1992

Ask anyone about the James live experience and the same word keeps cropping up : "celebration". A James gig - any James gig - is more than simply a bunch of lads on a stage... even with a repertoire as good as theirs, even with a live act honed through nearly 20 years of performing. No, when the lights go down and the curtain goes up and the first thumping chords cut through the air, something extraordinary happens.

Maybe it's the travelling army of James fans, some still decked out in their Sit Down t-shirts and singing along with every note; maybe it's Tim Booth's voice, made for soaring across club, arena, stadium or muddy festival field; maybe it's Tim's dancing, a flailing whirl of arms and legs and hair; or maybe it is the songs after all. Whatever. A James gig means a celebration. Always.

And perhaps never more so than on this tour. After 18 years as the voice of James, Tim Booth has announced that this is to be the last big hurrah. It's been a long road since Jim Glennie spotted him to front his band - without hearing him sing a note. A long road indeed, and a hell of a ride - from the warm dingy clubs of North-West England to the clear wide plains of America, from Ritan Park Beijing to the sodden mires of Glastonbury.. there and back again.

It's taken in chart success - to Number Two in the singles charts and Number One in the album chart - it's taken in accolades from figures as diverse as Brian Eno and Morrissey; it's produced a zillion long-sleeved T-shirts and a bizarre paean to Lester Piggott; and with Sit Down it's spawned the most stupid dance craze of the modern age, namely sitting down. There's been highs, there's been lows. But most of all there's been celebrations, hundreds of them, and in some far out places.

March 1989, Manchester's Free Trade Hall - their first really big show, standing on the edge of Madchester, looking down, James were almost a North-West secret then ... a secret that became a successful phenomenon over the course of the next couple of years. The August 90 shows at the Empress Ballroom, Blackpool have become iconic "were you there?" moments and the December gig at G-mex Manchester nothing less than a glorious homecoming for a band Mancunians still regard fiercely as their own.

The following year saw James headlining the Reading Festival, and the year after that lighting up Union Square, San Francisco. Although that was their first American show, it was soon followed by shows in Phoenix, Arizona and LA, supporting Neil Young., where acoustic versions of Top of the World and Sound brought a hush to even the most grizzled old Crazy Horse fans.

There's something in the American sensibility that takes to James. Maybe it's the honesty, the lack of pretension; maybe it's simply that they've always been suckers for a big chorus. Either way, after the phenomenal US success of Laid in 93, the band were to spend four years slogging it back and forth across the continent - most memorably with the 97 Lollapalooza tour. Back in this country July 1992 saw a one-off affair at Alton Towers set the place on fire, and the following year a fifth appearance at Glastonbury - this time headlining.

Adter the madness and joy of life on the road in America, in 1998 James came home. And if live shows had been celebratory affairs beforehand, the UK arena tour of that year came with a Best of James CD sitting pretty on top of the charts. Every date on that circuit felt at once fresh and wholly familiar... unabashed, unapologetic, unselfconscious, pure celebration. And now? Now it's three years and a couple of new albums down the line, and Tim's off after the show. So how was it for me? I'll tell you when it's done.