The other day Tom Beard and I went to Jamie T’s house in Wimbledon to take photos because Jamie has a new album out.
Tom and Jamie are old friends, Tom shot his first album cover, which is essentially a picture of Jamie with all his stuff, so we thought the most interesting thing to do would be look at his things, and see what he’s a fan of. It’s always nice to hear what people have to say about their influences. Plus it’s a fitting follow-on from the original cover Tom shot.
When we got there Jamie was drinking a ‘Bena and dealing with a hangover, and we soon discovered that his best posessions were all either in a tour bus or trapped in storage. So all we could really talk about was the equipment in his studio - a shed out the back of his house that used to be a sculptor’s studio. All he had in there was equipment I didn’t understand and guitars he didn’t like, and a vinyl collection.
Jamie’s vinyl collection isn’t one of those record collections where there’s a bunch of noise 7inches, and some rare Japanese prog, it’s a solid bunch of albums by groups that write great songs, which is what we should all have really. We had a look through them and he picked out his favourites.
So, here follows - like in that book and that film of that book, High Fidelity - Jamie T with his Top 5 albums, off the top of his head.
(PHOTOS BY TOM BEARD)
“This is a 2 Tone comp called Dance Craze. It’s got everything you want on it. I used to have a DVD of this that my brother bought me -which is quite rare- of all these bands playing together, they used to all go on the road together, it’s fucking amazing. You realize they were all together being crazy. I picked it up in Ladbroke Grove in Toxica, that was a good shop.”
The Specials - Man at C&A (NOT the version on Jamie’s LP, I couldn’t find it anywhere online, sorry)
“Gang Of Four’s Peel Sessions. It’s angry, it’s angular- Gang Of Four, they’re amazing. They messed my head up a bit. They’re angular, but they’re not mathematical angular, they didn’t take it too far.”
Gang Of Four - Return The Gift
“This is Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys. It’s one of the best records ever made, it’s amazing. It’s the last record anyone got away with sampling on and didn’t get fucked by everyone. After this record everyone started going, ‘hold on a minute, that’s our song’. I had a conversation the other day with my manager, and he said ‘you’ve got to have a discussion with Ben (who I write with) about your song split. After all the samples you’ve got a certain amount of the song left each.’ I asked him how much and it was 2 percent.”
Beastie Boys - Shake Your Rump
“This Nebraska, it’s my favourite acoustic record. These were demos that he was going to record with the E Street band but they were good as they were so he just released it. Atlantic City is my favourite song ever, I’ve never been to Atlantic City but I hear it’s a shithole. It’s just full of old women and casinos.”
Bruce Springsteen - Atlantic City
“This is a compilation called New York Thrash. It has all the early New York hardcore bands on it and gives you an idea of what was going on at the time. It has a song by Fiends on it called Asian White, which is sick.”
Fiends - Asian White
CLICK THROUGH FOR A FEW MORE SHOTS OF JAMIE’S STUDIO
