Adam and James - Sexy Sheffield BEASTS!

I first heard about Adam and James through this thread on sheffieldforum, a local forum for local people. People were raving about their videos on YouTube so I checked them out and thought the vids were just about the best thing I’d seen for ages on the net. Here's a selection:

The Tesco video (about a local Sheffield Tesco)

The Roneys video (about Roneys, a local free range butchers and sandwich shop)

The Girders video (about building sites)

The qualification for being worth my while at the moment is anything of quality that is not up its own arse, which is a great way of sorting out the pearls from the dross. Adam and James are definitely worth my while, which is why I decided to meet up with them in our local pub, The Porter Brook, on Sheffield's Golden Mile, to do an interview.

Here’s how they introduce themselves on their trilogyofsexy MySpace page:

Do you like shopping at Tesco? How about eating pork sandwiches? Sitting around doing fuck all? Well so do we!

Welcome to the world of Adam & James!

Adam and James, good friends since 1996, formed their 'musical unit' in 2003 and have been pushing the boundaries of what most people term music in Adam's bedroom, butchers shops and even some local pubs ever since.

From the outset Adam and James have opted out of traditional 'clever clogs' subject matter in favour of a more lighthearted (but by no means less sincere) songwriting approach. We tackle the issues which matter to us like eating, dicking around, going to Tesco, world peace and building sites rather than love, death and other such tired topics.

Great! I love building sites and world peace! My kinda guys! Let’s go! :)

Jude - Did you see the thread about you on Sheffield forum?

James – No!

Jude – It’s great! Everyone loves your stuff!

James – I’ll have a look. I go on a building site forum…

Jude – I heard one of you works on a building site. Is that you, then?

Adam –He just made that up!

Jude (turning to James) – Oh did you? I was really impressed as well!

Adam – Neither of us works on a building site. We just have the gear.

Jude - (looks impressed)

Adam - He works for Caterpillar trucks. Building site related. I’m doing product design at college. But I did an internship for Lego over the summer.

Jude (jaw drops) How cool is that, designing for Lego! Anyway, I think you’re very talented and you’ll both go far if you want to.

Adam – We’re just two ex-school kids who sit around the living room, but a lot of people have said that we should do more stuff together.

James – We phoned Look North.

Adam – They weren’t interested. But we've said that if we were going to do anything, now’s the time to do it. There’s definitely a Sheffield thing going on at the moment.

James – Ultimately we’ve always had a laugh doing these videos. When we started making them it was to sell to our friends. We didn’t think they’d really sell but they did! Then we made more and sold them at gigs and after show parties, and then put them on MySpace and YouTube.

Jude– So how far do you want to take this?

Adam – As far as anyone will pay us (smirks).

James – We thought Tesco might be interested. That didn’t work. But we’ve got 3 CDs, a 3 track single and now we’re working on album number 4 “Sexy games with Adam and James”. Every album up till now has had the word “sexy” in it. At first we thought we were just going to make one album. We didn’t realise we were going to be doing 4 or 5.

We took the themes and made them a little more ridiculous. Between “Sexier Than Thou” and “The Joy of Sexy” we did “Christmas time with Adam and James” which I believe is still available to buy at Roneys because they didn’t sell any. It was an outrage. We sold 20 "SexierThan Thou"s in Roneys. People took a chance on that. And they never came back for the second one. Roneys customers are obviously more intelligent than your average punter.

Jude - So are you more interested in the music or the filmmaking? Who’s the filmmaker?

James - He’s the filmmaker.

Jude – Did you go to film school?

Adam – No. I was in Hong Kong and I thought, "That video camera looks cheap, I’ll buy that and make a video." I just thought it would be funny.

James – We didn’t make videos for the first 3 albums, but we’ve done some of old songs from previous albums.

Brian (my partner) – Are they all your songs then?

James – Yeah

Brian – Who’s the guitarist?

James – Both of us. Adam’s the pianist.

Adam – I almost stopped playing guitar. I did lessons from when I was about 10, but between about 12 and 15 I just went through that stage where you can’t be arsed to practice and it became like a chore so I kind of stopped. Then in the 6^th form me and James formed a band called “Paul Derby and the Three Wise Men”. School produced the CD.

Jude - In The Quest video at the beginning you’ve got all these close up shots of clicking gear into place…

Adam - Inspired by "Commando" with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Jude - I like the way it takes the piss out of that whole close up shots of gear thing.

Adam - (Drily) It's not taking the piss. It's more paying respect.

Jude – Did you edit it on iMac?

Adam – No, I did it on my ropey old PC.

James – All the music recording is done in Adam’s bedroom on a little electronic 4 track recorder.

Jude – Is it more about the music or the filming?

James – The music. The filming just gives it an added flavour.

Jude - So how many live gigs have you done?

Adam – We’ve done somewhere between 5 and 10 I suppose, but they’ve all been primarily for our friends, friends’ parties…

Jude – What do you think about doing bigger gigs?

James - I’m not sure if it’s anything more than a joke...

Jude – I think it is!

James– Well I’m an absolutely dreadful singer. Adam can’t play the keyboards. We’re not very good at guitar.

Jude – Yeah but it’s got chemistry.

Adam –I think half of the charm of that bedroom floor stuff is like we always get the words wrong, or I start laughing half way through a song, and if we went to rerecord it, it would all be lost. It has to have that sort of piss take feel about it.

James - If we were doing it properly we’d have to make sure the guitars were in tune.

Jude – I’m not necessarily saying that the area where you’ll find success is in songwriting or performing...

Adam – Children’s entertainers?

James – We could become clowns!

Adam – Like Andy the clown! (popular local children’s entertainer)

Jude – Andy the clown is one of Sheffield’s icons. I saw him in the queue at Netto once.

Adam – What, dressed up?

Jude – No. With normal clothes on.

James- Netto?! Have you not been listening to our music at all?!

Jude – Yes. I do use Tesco. But I usually shop at Morrisons and Netto.

James and Adam - Morrisons? Ooooooh (tutting sounds) Bloody hell fire!

Jude – I have paid my Tesco dues though. I went to the Berkeley precinct Tesco for 10 years. I knew all the staff.

James – It might spoil the myth but we’ve actually both turned against Tesco now. I go there because it’s cheap but it’s lost its charm. It was all about knowing everyone in there. It was like a giant version of Cheers.

Adam- I still like going to Tesco. Three in the morning is the best time to go.

James – There’s a 24 hour Tesco over the road from the house where I’m living which is partly the reason I chose to live there. It annoys me when they don’t stock what you want though. If the issue was shelf space, they could get rid of the pet food aisle. I never use that. Even if they just got rid of all the cat food.

Adam – I like the cat food aisle.

Jude – Are you a cat lover then?

Adam – I just like eating cat food. It’s cheaper than chicken.

Jude – (taking him seriously) Lots of people do that. Eat cat and dog food.

Adam – (quickly correcting me) I’d like to point out that I don’t actually eat cat food.

James – Yeah I can see the headlines. “Sheffield media star eats cat food”

Jude - And then the arguments on the forums! "Which variety cat food tastes the best, Felix or Arthurs!"

Adam – I like “Iams” YARMS.

Jude - Okaaaay. So what are your musical influences?

James – One of our fans said our music is like a cross between Bob Dylan and Bob the Builder.

Jude - Someone on YouTube said you’re a cross between Alan Partridge and Bob the Builder.

James - I think Partridge is probably the biggest influence.

Adam – Another influence is Atom and His Package

(check out the Atom and his Package hate mail page. This is also one of the funniest things I've seen on the net for a long time.)

Jude - Who are your local heroes?

James – The Chuckle Brothers, from Rotherham, and Brian Blessed, also from Rotherham.

Jude – The one who tried to climb Everest? (What I really meant to say was, "You mean the third dan Judo black belt, that great English actor, the son of a Yorkshire miner, who climbed Mount Blanc at 17, who has successfully climbed many mountains including Mount Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua and heroically reached 28,000 feet on Everest, to which I believe he refers by its original Tibetan name of Chomo Longma? ")

James – Yeah.

Adam- I saw him doing a lecture at Hallam University and it was one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen. They played a clip from Flash Gordon and he burst through the door roaring. He roared for about 2 hours, my face hurt so badly from laughing, he was so cool.

Jude – So, local heroes. What about Phil Oakey?

James - I saw Phil Oakey in GT News in Banner Cross in about 1995.

Adam - Was he shoplifting?

James - Not quite. I think I was second in the queue at the counter buying a Double Decker, and he barges to the front of the queue, and I start getting a bit cross, but being a small child, I decided not to take him on or do anything worse than giving him a glare, and he said “Do you know who I am?”

Jude - Ooooh he didn’t. Really? I’m shocked.

James - I don’t know if he’s still like that. I’m not saying he’s a bad guy. Maybe he was in a hurry.

Jude - Anybody who says “Do you know who I am” is a baddy.

Adam - Jarvis Cocker has got to be a local hero. And also Ken Jones. He was my art teacher at High Storrs school.

Jude - Have you got any gigs coming up?

James - We might do a Christmas party

Jude - That’s a great idea. You can hire out the Bar Matrix I think.

James - That’s too upmarket for us. We need nylon carpets and a choice of either John Smiths or Carling at the bar. One pound fifty a pint. The last gig we did, we came on stage in those fluorescent safety suits with glow sticks gaffer taped all over them.

Jude - Brilliant!

James - Yeah. We were absolutely glowing in the dark.

Jude - Cool. All you need now are firemen’s uniforms to get the female audience.

James - We’ve got the female audience!

Jude - I’m kidding. I've seen the babes on your YouTube and MySpace. I’ve got a thing about firemen that's all. I’m a woman. Are Roneys still selling your CD by the way?

Adam - I don’t know. But if you don’t get one of our CDs you’ll get a really nice sandwich. One of my friends went in there and didn’t know what to have, so she said “Can I have what Adam and James have?”

Jude - And they knew?

Adam -Yeah.

Jude - Cool. One day Roneys might start doing an “Adam and James Special”. That’d be better than winning a Mercury! That’d be the sign that you’ve made it!

Adam - One of our friends wanted to be an honorary boy in our gang so she had to do challenges. Like jump off a big wall. One of the challenges was to eat two Roneys pork sandwiches. Large. One takes about an hour. And she did it.

James - We made her jump off the wall afterwards.

Jude - If you had an interview in a music paper, which one would you choose?

James - Not NME. We’ve had a review in a fanzine called funkyasfudge.

After that we start talking about things I promise not to blab about online, so for now, that’s a small sample of the world of Adam and James.

Instead of giving me chocolates or flowers, like most of the pop icons I've interviewed in my time, Adam mails me a pic of a building site, knowing my fondness for them.

In return I send Adam a picture of the Liebherr LTM 1500-8.1 which of course has the world's longest telescopic boom, and was parked down the road from us just recently!

Sexy.

Other Adam and James videos:

The Quest Part One (about boys' outdoors adventuring)

The Quest Part Two

The Entire Back Catalogue

"I can’t stand showbusiness. It’s completely unreal, it’s crap, it’s s**t, it’s meaningless, it’s a waste of space. Acting is a noble art. For me it has been a must. But anything to do with showbusiness, all those first night parties, I’m not there. I’d rather go home to my dogs."

Brian Blessed.