Sounds From The Junkshop #77 - Jim's Super Stereoworld

"So bury me now/Safely and sound/There's a place in the ground for the insecure" - Jim's Super Stereoworld - The Happiest Man Alive

Those with long memories may recall that when we did our first ever Sounds From The Junkshop way back in August 2020, the band featured were your correspondent's teenage favourites Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine and it's safe to say that although the band split in 1998, the story of my following Jim Bob and Fruitbat wasn't done with by a long shot. As the millennium drew to a close, both would resurface, Fruity in Abdoujaparov and Jim in Jim's Super Stereoworld with latter day Carter bassist and former S*M*A*S*H* man Salv also coming along for the ride.

Jim's Super Stereoworld would see Jim Bob leaving the political slant of Carter behind for a more pop-oriented approach with a quirky sense of humour behind it and it worked pretty well. Unfortunately at this point, Carter were generally regarded as yesterday's thing at best and the embodiment of everything that was wrong with early '90s music at worst, a curse that wouldn't really start to shift for another decade or so until the power of the inky press like the NME started to wane and more sympathetic voices to the band started to come to the forefront.

The group would put out a brace of singles on Fierce Panda, the almost synth-march style Bonkers In The Nut (which ended up turning into a chorus of When The Saints Go Marching In) and the more disco-sounding Could U B The 1 I Waited 4?. Obviously given my love of Carter, I went to see them a fair few times including a couple of third stage slots at the Leeds Festival and a couple of gigs at the Roscoe and the Well in Leeds (the Roscoe gig being the infamous one where JSS shared a bill with Abdoujaparov and both bands encored together to do a one hour Carter set which was a truly awesome experience). Whenever I saw them live, they always seemed to have enough great tunes in the set to make me look forward to an album and Jim was forever claiming it was on the verge of being released but it never was...well, at least not in this country anyway. Weirdly it did surface for about five minutes on a minor label over in the States which is ironic given that Carter's attempts to break the US back in the early '90s never really went anywhere (as they laid bare on the excellent latter day song Elvis Lives And Carter Break America!)

It wouldn't be until about a decade later that I finally heard the first Jim's Super Stereoworld album courtesy of a friend who managed to pick up a copy at one of the band's live gigs back in the day (even to this day, it's one of the few bits of Jim Bob's back catalogue that he's been unable to re-release due to rights issues) and it's a real shame it didn't get a bit more attention at the time. While the two singles were the pop sound of the Stereoworld written large there was plenty more good stuff there as well - The Happiest Man Alive was Jim Bob at his most poignant with the happy title and chirpy rhythm disguising what has to be some of the most heartbreakingly sad lyrics I've heard. Elsewhere, the likes of Bad Day, Touchy Feely and Pear Shaped World showed Jim's lyrical skills certainly hadn't been dulled at all.

Jim's Super Stereoworld would stick around for a second album, 2003's In A Big Flash Car On A Saturday Night which actually did get a UK release and I duly picked up  the week it came out but I seem to remember not being as keen on it as I thought I should've been. It had the odd good moment like Young, Dumb and Full Of Fun but the stardust felt like it was missing a bit here. Arguably it's one I probably need to revisit as it's been nigh on two decades since I last gave it a spin and there's every chance the intervening years may have been a bit kinder to it. Either way though, it didn't do the numbers and JSS would disband soon afterwards with Jim Bob moving on to his solo career where he's remained since.

Of course, Jim's solo career has gone from strength to strength in the intervening two decades with albums like Angelstrike and School establishing him as a solo artist in his own right (well, I think it's safe to say most of us Carter fans never doubted the guy but see earlier comment about the band's social standing in the early noughties) and his two recent efforts Who Do We Hate Today? and the Nite Songs Album of the Year 2020 Pop Up Jim Bob proving he's still out there with a lot to say and seeing him regain the critical respect that was largely absent in the early noughties. In the words of one of his albums, he really is a national treasure. As I've mentioned, the first Jim's Super Stereoworld album is one of the few pieces of his back catalogue that's currently unavailable and I hope Jim and Marc manage to sort out getting the rights back for it some time soon as it's a great lost record which deserves a larger audience. Fingers crossed.