I've Got The Bends From Pressure

I was digging through a pile of 12" singles last night to rip to I-Tunes and came across a my James singles and decided to stick a couple on. I had forgotten how much I liked James.

A friend introduced me to them via the Stutter album in about 1987 and I must have played Johnny Yen over and over again. I followed the band from then on buying the following 2 albums but it wasn't until Sit Down that I started buying the singles. I suppose the highlight for me was the Weatherall mix of Come Home, where Weatherall made an already great song into a strung out 8 and a half minute masterpiece.

The band were always on the ball with their re-mixers all of whom seemed to add a little something to already good tracks making them that little bit different from the remix by numbers going on in the baggy scene (for want of a better term) at the time.

The remix posted, is another mix of Come Home, remixed by Youth, bass player with Killing Joke, Butterfly records owner and much sought after producer and re-mixer during the early 90s. Check out his collaboration as the Fireman with Paul McCartney, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest (Fuck me, just checked on Discogs and it's up there for 160 quid, may need to sell my copy as it isn't that good). The Youth Pressure Dub mix was on the b-side of the Sound 12" which I remember buying from Tower records in Glasgow one drunken night when it used to be open til midnight, dangerous stuff.

James also had some classic T-shirts, everybody used to bang on about Inspiral Carpets shirts but the James ones were far superior. I must have had about half a dozen different ones, none of which would remotely fit me these days if I had kept them.

James - Come Home (Youth Pressure dub)

Deep Down and Dirty

I was having a conversation last night about my spotty youth and when I had a passion for scooters.

In the scootering world there were 2 camps, you had your Mods, all 3 button suits, parkas and scooters with tons of mirrors, to this day I don't understand what the fuck that was all about and whip aerials. They were into the Who, the Jam, the Kinks, basically any band that wore suits and had The at the start of their name.

Then you had the Scooter Boys, who wore MA1 flight jackets, combats and docs and drove cut down, chopped or sometimes even straight Lambrettas or Vespas. They were into mainly Northern Soul, Punk/post punk, psychobilly and later on the stuff coming out of Manchester in the late 80s although the scootering world was about a year behind some of the rest of us.

Being a rather scruffy type, already having docs (as my mother thought that they were "hard wearing, sensible shoes") and being into punk and soul I was firmly in the scooter boy camp, when I got my first scooter a Vespa PK 50 with a 110 conversion, quickly sold for a 1965 Vespa GS.

Anyway (focus Drew), back to the point of the post. At the time the merits of psychobilly were lost to me. King Kurt's Destination Zulu Land was funny and worth having as the 12" played from the label out making it almost unplayable on most music centres. The Meteors were, well the Meteors and I believed that The Cramps were a joke. However a few years ago I reacquainted myself with the Cramps, due to the fact that my next door neighbour was a devotee and regularly passed me their cd's over the back wall. I have had to re asses this band and what I thought was stupid music is actually clever and highly entertaining. However I still feel that I need to have a bath after listening to them as they are probably the sleaziest band in existence.

The Cramps - Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?
The Cramps - Goo Goo Muck