VIDEO OF THE WEEK: The Jim Jones Revue – ‘High Horse’ (Letterman Show, 2011)
CONNECT, and current tour details: Jim Jones All Stars – Ain’t No Peril
“The Letterman Show appearance all came about because our press agent in the States knew some people who worked on the show and one day told us they were interested in having us on.
But of course, we didn’t believe him and said no way, but eventually they sent a date through, and we arranged some gigs around the show – but what happened then was they got back in touch to say their guest was going to be Steve Martin and he wanted his ‘banjo band’ to be the musical section so our appearance got cancelled.
About a year later we were playing the ‘Rock en Seine’ festival in Paris and got invited back on the show and arranged to fly from Paris to New York, but this time there was a hurricane, and all the airports were closed because of it so we couldn’t get to New York and that invite never happened either. We looked at so many ways of getting there but couldn’t do it.
We kind of thought that was it, but they called us again once things had got back to normal and asked if we could do the show, but we had to be there the following day. Of course, we said yes, took the red eye and ended up doing the soundcheck at something like nine o’clock in the morning. I remember being freezing cold, but it was kept cold was on purpose so that when the lights eventually came on and the room began to fill up before filming, it hadn’t been warming all day.
The Kardashians were on the show, and we watched from the green room, and when it was time for us to go on, we just said ‘quick, get up and play before anything else goes wrong’ and we went straight for it.
And I knew I was going to go into the crowd, I don’t think anyone had done that before, a few have since, but I didn’t want anyone just sat there with folded arms, I wanted it to be a memory.
Rock and roll is all about seeing the whites of people’s eyes. I remember a festival once, I think it was Reading, and the gap from where the barrier for the crowd was to where the stage was, you could have got two buses in there. I didn’t want the Letterman Show to be anything like that.
Afterwards we had to fly back out to San Francisco to finish the shows we had there, then we came back east for some more. But after the first two invites fell through, we were determined to make it work.”
(Interview (c) MusicLoveMusic)
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