JAMES : THE WHIPLASH TAPES
Wah Wah was an insight into the unique working methods of the band, but it was merely a scratch on the surface. Below that one suspects there lies a wealth of improvised, off-the-cuff and truly inspirational music that we will never have the pleasure to hear as the band have deemed it unfit for our ears or it has simply got lost on tapes never to resurface. One only has to listen to the unreleased tracks that appear on bootlegs over the years - Somebody Help Me, Gregory's Town and Pitiful as three examples, but the list is much longer - to realise this. Maybe one day James will be honoured with a boxset which reveals this previously unheard side to their music. We can live in hope.
Anyway, I digress. A selection of tracks in their early stages of development recorded during the post-Woodstock sessions has bubbled to the surface, featuring a total of twenty six tracks in total including fourteen songs that were not released on the Whiplash album or the singles that accompanied it. Dumb Jam and Make It Alright have since surfaced years later in a re-recorded format, but there remain 12 songs, previously hidden somewhere away from the ears of the James faithful, a whole album of material that we were denied in place of the She's A Star Dave Angel PAT Mix or the Tomorrow Droppin' Cake Mix.
How these songs have surfaced is somewhat of a mystery. Why other songs from other sessions have not done so is equally mysterious. However, their existence must be addressed and documented as they are as much a part of the musical legacy James will leave as the commercially released material.
Brian Eno quite rightly identified in his first visit to a James rehearsal that the jams, the seedlings of James songs, are as much a part of the music James produce as the slick polished record that ends up in the shops.