And these are in no particular order, that would be too difficult. So, away we go. 1) “Blissed”. Started life as a demo called “Chilled”, made after listening to the first ever Orb white labels, which I got from the dance music shop I worked in. It had no lyrics for a while, until our first tour of Europe. All of us were packed like sardines, in a tiny little van, and spent most of our days speeding along the motoways of Northern Europe, trying to make it to the next town in time for soundcheck. In an era even before CD Walkmans were freely availablle, we would plug our cassette walkmans in , and lose oursleves, watching the scenery speed past. The words to “Blissed” finally fell into place as we drove across from germany to Switzerland. As the Alps reared up in the horizon, as the rest of the band was busy scribbling postcards to firends, family and lovers many miles away, the song was finished. The reason I love it is because it’s one of those rare times that Mike lays his heart on the line. The song finishes with a sweet love song to all of us: “There’ll be a time when all my dreams come to an end, when I run out of postcards for you all to send, but I’ll keep with me, all the things I feel and see” The whole thing, the atmosphere, the lyrics – reminds me of the naive charm of touring: the wide-eyed sense of wonder at seeing the world outside your back garden for the very first time. Everything was new, full of hope. The song has a number of VERY BIG artist samples in it, I could tell you who they are, but then i’d have to kill you. The song contains some great samples – birdsong, submarine sonar...lots of things which give it that spacey, trancey feel. Playing it live was always so special – as the song reached the two sections where all the huge samples piled in, I would invariably drift off into a kind of reverie. It was trance before trance was invented. - Iain Baker

"Blissed" was the first song on the second side of my tape. I would just hit play, rewind, play rewind, for about 2 months straight in my inheirted Dodge Ram Van. - SteVe C

2) "Nothing To Hold Me". Well, it's not the best song we ever did, but it's special to me, because I wrote it. The original song was a bass-heavy reggae groove, codenamed "Winston"" (all JJ songs were assigned codenames to last through to the point that they were finished.) The whole atmosphere was very eerie, lots of subsonic frequencies, quite dark and paranoid. The song stayed unfinished throughout the same European tour as above *points up* Eventually, we were driving from the south of France, across the Alps into Italy. We started off in France, in sunshine, and several hours later, were crossing the mountains in three feet of snow. I wrote the lyrics while listening to " A Tiels Leis" by Wim Mertens, struggling through a blizzard, and thinking of home. The first verse is all about the girl I was seeing at the time: I'd been madly, utterly in love with her, and it finished badly. "The Only thing you left was me - behind to try and talk so big when you make me feel so small...." I wanted to vent my anger, but at the same time, hold her one more time and tell her I was sorry. The second verse is all about the translator we were assigned whilst touring Romania just after the revolution. she was a student who was captured, and sentenced to death, on a Friday afternoon. On that Friday, it just so happened that the revolution finally happened and she escaped. "These things don't keep, when you wake up one day and find you won't go back to sleep" that's the whole part of the second half of that song. Very cathartic for me, getting rid of some very scary demons, which surrounded me after I'd seen some of the death and pain that had been visited on the Romanian people. We played the song just for the first couple of tours surrounding that second album, and for the last time on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury festival. It sounds quite gauche to me now, and I cringe at some of the inflections in my young voice, but the memories are as crisp and powerful as they ever were. That's why it makes this particular chart. - Iain Baker

Wow, that's quite the story behind Nothing to Hold Me. See this is fascinating to me, how artists work. - SteVe C

More tomorrow. x - Iain Baker

Thanks, Iain! - RAPatton from iPhone

3) "Info Freako". Had to make the list, really, didn't it? We've never played a gig that hasn't had "Info" in the set list, it's our signature song, I guess. Started life when Mike bought a Boss digital delay pedal, and realised that by tweaking the dial as far as it would go, he could get ONE SECOND of sampling time! Some samples were therefore sampled at high speed, then slowed down so they'd fit the track. Additionally, the breakbeat was taken from a Cassette tape recording of "I Got Da Feeling" by Sweet Tee. Mike taped that OFF THE RADIO. Welcome to the early years of sampling technology! Recorded in a studio in Finchley, for £125. The remixes were done in Mike's bedroom, with added samples of John Peel's voice, again, taped off the radio. When I first heard it, It sounded like it was a nailed-on hit, and I was right. There was a certain sense of me not being surprised when it made us famous, my attitude was "Well, if the songs that good, how could we not end up getting known?" Car screeches from a BBC sound effects album, scratching from "Raising Hell". Video cost £5k, which, after the cost of making the tune, seemed like a fortune. - Iain Baker

Please please more info on the production side! I'm loving the lo-fi biznizz, Iain. - Tont Coles

This right here, another reason to love Friendfeed classic... Wonderful stuff, Iain, thank you. - Michael W. May

4) "Caricature" Originally written, in great haste, to supply more new tracks as b-sides. Of the batch of tracks around it, it's been the most enduring, featuring in the live set ever since. We've recorded it twoce, and never quite caught its essence: the closest we got was as an extra track on the Japanese - only CD of "Perverse" The beeping noise at the beginning is Mike's tiny alarm clock, which sat on his bedside table. The chorus is driven by a ghostly wailing sample, taken off a film soundtrack CD (can't say which) When we tried to update the song a couple of years ago, transfering samples from S1000's and floppy discs onto hard drives, we found that the sample is actually all over the place and can't be altered. We've tried to find the actual pitch of the sample, but it defies us every time. There are simply too many notes going on in the original to work out what key its in. The song works because of this anomaly, and it's that which makes it so cool to play. It's just a huge, out-of-control beast when it's performed. I get to do the opening verse too, which is cool. - Iain Baker

Very interesting Iain loving all the sharing you are doing on the songs.......keep it coming thanks........... - HAPPY VALZ DAY

Those are great behind the scenes tidbits, I wish I had this kind of info on more of my favorite bands. JJ is in high circulation on the itunes by the way. I love the "taped off the radio" sampling. - SteVe C

5) "What Would You Know?" Possibly the most fun song of ours to play live, certainly one of the easiest. All I have to do is play a siren, and some odd little noises in the chorus - simple! Perhaps my light workload in this tune might explain why I always go nuts during this song - because I can! Well, that and the fact that it's a song which is completely in thrall to Acid House - the regularity, the repetition, the monotony, if you like - are all things that make the song like a mantra - it's easy to lose yourself in it. Written shortly after "It's the Winning That Counts" (another early song) it's fairly similar - a relentless bubbling guitar riff, driven by the pulse of a 303 sample. The sample on this song comes form a 12" remix of a tune by a well known pop outfit of the same era - no-one's spotted it yet! :) The siren comes from "Apocalyse Now" - "Hit 'em with the Sirens!" and AFAIK, was sampled by Mike off the telly, while he was playing a VHS copy of the film. Again, it's more of that super-lo-fi JJ sampling! Always used to be the song that ended our live sets around the time of "Liquidizer" as we were so shattered after it finished, we needed a quick break to regroup before the encore.... - Iain Baker

It would be interesting to know all the codenames. Naming something is important, it gives you a handle on it, and makes it more real - RAPatton

Real Real Real was codenamed "Janet", International Bright Young Thing was "Fun", Who Where Why was "Last Ditch" (it was a last ditch attempt to write a big hit, and we threw every sample we could find in there!), Move Mountains was "Norman" .......... - Iain Baker

keep it coming Iain you are making me hungry for more..............thanks - HAPPY VALZ DAY

I love Real Real Real, I'm not sure I want to meet Janet though. And now i have international bright young thing stuck in my head. Thanks so much for sharing Iain. - SteVe C

iTunes DJ served me up Magazine the other day - Replace the Word 'Magazine' with 'FriendFeed' and it works just as well. Very prophetic song that. - David Steer

These are great and make me even sadder that I missed out on the chance of interviewing you guys when you came to LA in '91, IIRC. You guys had interviewed at Request Video and I was supposed to interview you there, but I guess everyone was behind schedule. - Anika

Hey Anika maybe you can interview Iain at least, over friendfeed? After he gets done with his top 10, i get my homework assignment done first. Then we'll try and talk them into playing an LA show. - SteVe C

6) "The Devil You Know" As with all of the songs on "Perverse", its codename was assigned to be the place where it was written. I think it was "Melbourne", though it could have been "Ann Arbour". It was also influenced by another demo of that period, called "Meteor Boy" (great title!) The main sample is a Santur (a kind of Iranian dulcimer) with a repeated loop that reverses in on itself. The big power chords are from *ahem* a famous heavy metal band. It's bombastic, it verges on almost being pompous at times - but it's that theatrical quality that makes me love it. It's a nightmare to play live, the samples require constant attention to keep them in time, and one small mistake can result in some pretty obvious graunches. Still, it's fantastic playing it live, and always seems to get a good reaction. The reason I love it so much is all tied up in the excitment that surrounded the song: it preceded our third album, which was supposed to be the one that launched us to huge success (it kind of didn't happen, but hey, you have to try) and the video was an absolute blast to film. We were sent to a warehouse in the East of London, and dressed in rubber, sprayed with paint whilst stark naked, filmed in a huge number of ridiculous situations, and we felt like stars. The eventual lack of global success for the third album has, thankfully, never managed to dim the feelings of incipient excitment that I felt back then. The hope and trepidation, the confidence, I can feel it still. And it was all never stronger than the two days we spent in that warehouse, filming "Devil". At the end of the second day, and still dressed in our rubber clothes, we walked out onto the street, and went to the pub next door (The Blind Beggar in Whitechapel, where Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell), sat in the saloon bar, where East End Gangsters had murdered their rivals, and got totally shitfaced. People sometimes say "Those were the days", and they don't really understand the weight of their words. Well, I do, and I can safely say, those were the days. - Iain Baker

"Devil" has a special place in my heart for it is the one that snapped me back to reality and saved my life and for that I am eternally grateful...........thanks Iain ......and the rest too..........................xx - HAPPY VALZ DAY

"dressed in rubber, sprayed with paint whilst stark naked, filmed in a huge number of ridiculous situations." Who amongst us hasn't been there? - SteVe C

All very cool. Have to agree and say "Blissed" is one of my all time fave JJ songs. I used to work for Rape Crisis. It's when I thought I was gonna save the world. HAHA. After every shift, on the drive back from the hospitals, I'd play "Blissed" on repeat, until I got home. It allowed me to shake the night off me and fall into bed with hope in my heart. Somehow it worked. I left there after a year plus. I'm too sensitive. - Gabrielle

For those of you wishing to catch up with some great music and see what Iain is talking about as he recounts some history Jesus Jones album Doubt is a steal on amazon for 9.50 - ya get 21 songs, frick my original cd only has 14. http://www.amazon.com/s... - SteVe C

7) "Maryland" OK, this ties in to the post from Steve C above, as it's one of the extra tracks on the "Doubt" album. Like "Caricature", "Maryland" is another one of those songs that was written to order. This is the record company reacting, with some degree of panic, to the fact that we'd become famous REALLY quickly. They didn't have enough tracks to fill all of the multi-format releases that were in vogue at the beginning of the 90's. So, when we arrived in America for the first "Doubt" tour (we toured the album 3 times in a year) Mike was under instructions to "come back with new songs". So, we fetched up in Washington DC, ready to play the 9.30 club, and ready for our first real taste of stardom, and mike just had his nose to the grindstone. We checked into a swanky hotel in DC, and all of the rest of the band got down to some serious partying! I remember heading out into the projects to score drugs for all of the band, nearly getting myself killed in the process, and arriving back to the hotel suite to find an utterly debauched party in full swing: people were hooking up in the bathrooms, and our tour manager was dangling our bass player out of an eighth storey window, by his ankles. When the bass player finally dragged himself back from the brink of certain death, I noticed he was completely naked. It was that sort of a night. Anyway, while all of this was going on, Mike was hunkered down in a suite of conference rooms on the first floor of the hotel, in a cold, impersonal room full of serried ranks of chairs and with a little lectern and A/V machine, the sort of place where car salesmen from out of town would meet and share that years figures. Cold, impersonal, lonely, and utterly devoid of inspiration. Yet somehow, he managed to write some wonderful songs. "Maryland" is one of them. It's named after the room he was in: The "Maryland" conference suite. It's a cry for help, at a time when his first marriage was falling apart, as the pressures of our new-found... more... - Iain Baker

Yeah, this confirms it i missed out by not being in a rock and roll band, i've always wanted to be dangled naked from the 8th story. - SteVe C

sounds like Al for sure..................no DOUBT (pun intended)............x - HAPPY VALZ DAY

Steve, I actually left out some of the more insane details of that night too, it was just.....far too out of control to be able to sum it up properly. I don't think people would believe me. - Iain Baker

I would believe you............................. - HAPPY VALZ DAY

That'll do for now, 3 more to go, will try and get those done before the end of the weekend..... - Iain Baker

Take the weekend off, i want something to look forward to next week anyway. :) - SteVe C

8) "International Bright Young Thing" This was part of a series of demos written in an incredibly purple patch for Mike. This, "Who Where Why?" and "Real Real Real" were all on the same tape, 3 hit singles emerging from a batch of four songs. IBYT (it's easier that way) was originally called "Fun" and was an instrumental for quite some time: it defied any attempt to be saddled with lyrics. It was driven, as so many early JJ songs were, by a breakbeat. On top of that, was looped a big rolling bassline. That gave the song propulsion, and gave it a sense of brightness, of optimism. That's why it ended up being called "Fun", I guess. Mike was obsessed at that time (and indeed, still is) with the Beatles' "White Album" and the twangy, descending guitar riff in the chorus is a definite nod towards "Helter Skelter". So, we had a tune, a riff, song that raised the spirits, but no title, no lyrics, no identity. Whilst the other demos from the same session got finished quite quickly (we'd already been playing "Real Real Real" for about 6 months) this song without a face languished in the doldrums. All of that finally changed after our first tour of Japan. We'd been going for less than a year, yet we'd already gone from playing to 30 people at the Bull & Gate, to touring America (twice), Europe, Australia, and now Japan. Mike wrote the song from the point of view of someone who's trying to find stability and constancy amidst the changing landscape of the fame we found ourselves thrust into. It's a theme he's revisited a number of times - the more crazy, the more unreal this all gets, there are things which remain unmoving, solid, grounded. It's Mike desperately trying to hang on to the person he was before the sideshow took him away. So, the song finally became IBYT on a flight back from Tokyo to London. I sat next to Mike as he wrote the words, in the "bubble" of a 747, as we drifted along, five miles up, over the wastelands of Siberia. Here we were, five normal people,... more... - Iain Baker

Listened to the album again this weekend with the Wife. She said she recognized Real Real Real, I reminded her this was the 4th time it was on the album (the extended Doubt album). She said Oh. Love IBYT. And noticed lots of things on other songs you've pointed out, very cool. I always get an XTC vibe out of Welcome Back Victoria, is that possible? - SteVe C

Well Steve, I guess it's an indirect thing - with XTC at that time ("Oranges & Lemons") being massively Beatles - esque, and Mike listening to the White album all the time, it's very possible.... - Iain Baker

9) "Trust Me". Opening track on "Doubt", and one of the most intense JJ tunes ever. Originally called "Sledgehammer" ('cos that's where the samples came from!) it also features some of the most inventive sampling of our career. The screaming "klaxon" sounds are actually from a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Remember when Tom used to get his neck slammed in a window frame? And his tongue would come rolling out of his head as he screamed? That scream is what we used. The other noises come from F1 grand prix cars, screaming round a circuit. All of these were taped straight off the TV. The idea was to get very intense, compressed, scary noises, ideally as short and effective as possible. This was recorded in Matrix Studios in London (just behind the British Museum) and we weren't wasting ANY time. The album was done in 2 weeks, and a lot of that was taken up by sequencing. Most of the songs were done first or second take. "Trust Me" took two takes, and the version on the album is pretty much "live". I can remember Mike saying "OK, here we go!", getting a red light, and going for it. It's that take which you can hear. And some of it is just WRONG. I got some of the samples wrong, missed my cues, didn't really play things the way I wanted. But, that was that. And because of those imperfections, it's actually better. It's the faults that make it. As we finished recording, I was hot, sweaty and ready for more. But, that was it. And, I guess that was the right thing. The next take would never have captured the eagerness, the excitment. We play "Trust Me" live very infrequently, and that's a real shame, but it's understandable. The song takes so much out of us - it's meant to be played at breakneck speed, taking no prisoners. It absolutely SHREDS Mike's voice. We started our "Doubt" tour in the UK with it, and after the very first song we were spent. Still, it's one of those songs that can give me goosebumps. I love its power and it's urgency. I love the fact that we didn't (and... more... - Iain Baker

10) "Idiot Stare". It had to be this one, really - to finish the list. It's a song which has ended up being something which always closes our sets. A very difficult song to follow. That's why it's the last thing we play before we walk off stage. But, it was never meant to be like that, it just sort of...happened. When we were doing "Perverse", things were very dark in the JJ camp. The instant success of "Doubt" felt a long way away, and Mike's first forays into songwriting for our third album were met with quite a lot of confusion and negativity. Mike's mood was very, very down; his relationship with his wife was disintegrating, and the demos were very reflective of where his mind was at. "Devil" was about the music industry's sudden obsession with the past - "Magazine" about the fickle nature of the press - "Yellow Brown" about the depressing sludge of litter that seem to wash around the streets of every wonderful city we found ourselves in as we toured the world. Dave Balfe from Food Records would refer to the 3rd JJ album as being called "Doom Merchant", in keeping with our frame of mind. "Idiot Stare" was part of a batch of four demos, intially, that also included "Tongue Tied" . At the time, both songs felt equally imposrtant to us, equally huge, equally powerful. In rehearsals before the "Perverse" tour started, we imagined both songs would have the same impact. How wrong we were. "Tongue Tied" whilst great to play, never really reached people as much as "Idiot Stare". It's funny really, both songs dwell on exactly the same theme - that of helplessness. In "Tongue Tied", the protagonist is unable to speak, struck dumb. But in "Idiot Stare", that helplessness becomes more sinister - an angry, empty gaze. That anger permeates the whole song, and playing it live is just the most literal we've ever been as a band. It's a wall of focussed dread and fear, a clenched-fists burst of power, reaching the point where it can finally escape the stasis that created it. All... more... - Iain Baker

Cheers Iain, I really enjoyed every one of those, brought back some great memories. - David Steer

Cheers Dave - and hey, thaks for the "plate" videos - I was convinced they'd been lost for all time! :) - Iain Baker