The Currency Of Pop. Week 2. Ep 2.

James were a very important group to us. Not quite sure how we discovered them exactly, it may well have been due to Morrissey's stated admiration of them. And I'm sure Peel would have been partially responsible as well. Early on they were a funny little band. All dischordant guitars and wonky drums with Tim Booth's vocals describing some highly odd behaviour.

James II - Hymn From A Village/If Things Were Perfect (Factory - FAC119).

This entry is a bit of a cheat actually. I never had this specific record back then. Instead I had the 12" single called Village Fire that combined this and the first James single Jimone (see what they did there?). James II gets in due it being a recent result of my mid-life crisis "must-track-down-all-original-vinyl-I-never-got-round-to-buying-back-then" thing.

Oh and it is fucking great.

I used to play the first album Stutter at work on a dusty little cassette player. At first it was met with a "what the hell is this rubbish you are playing now?" sort of response. I used to play a lot of "rubbish" at work then. But gradually a couple of people started to come round to its oddball charms as it did to them what it did to me, in, as if often the case with music I like, creating it's own logic out of seemingly illogically diverse noises.

Oh and if we had had a son it would have been called James. Fact.
(there maybe a bad joke about Factory catalogue numbers here somewhere).