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You’ve spent ten years as one-half of one of the UK’s best-loved indie duos, releasing fistfuls of acclaimed singles dealing with everything from AIDS to corrupt landlords, and even lodging several releases near (or on) the top of the British album charts. What can you possibly do for an encore?
That was the quandary facing Jim, a.k.a. Jim Bob, when Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine called it quits in the summer of 1997. The passage of time may have diminished the joys of performing with Carter, but it hadn’t robbed Jim of the desire to write songs, nor had it jaded him to the pleasures of entertaining live audiences. And yet, an act as unique as Carter surely demanded a flashier follow-up than a garden-variety solo album…
Jim’s radical solution was to form Jim’s Super Stereoworld, a parallel-dimension duo featuring “Virtual Jim” (a.k.a. “The world’s first virtual cartoon pop star”) and Jim himself. Their arrangement is so simple, it borders upon genius: Flamboyant frontman “Virtual Jim” sings, parties with strange friends, and indulges in all sorts of questionable behavior; meanwhile, “Real Jim” writes the songs, programs the drum machines, and helps his virtual pal adjust to the idiosyncrasies of life in this mystifying universe.
“Pear Shaped World,” a track recorded exclusively for MUSICBLITZ, may be the finest track of Jim’s Super Stereoworld’s budding career. A dramatic piano ballad wrapped in synthesized strings, “Pear Shaped World” sounds a little like Hunky Dory -era Bowie with a drum machine thrown in. The wryly-worded vision of global apocalypse builds to a majestic climax, while a faux-kiddie chorus chants a mantra of “We don’t want to go on feeling this insecure.” It’s warped, it’s wonderful, it’s catchy as all hell, and it’s more than a little bit frightening. In a nutshell, it’s Jim’s Super Stereoworld.
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Dan Epstein is a Los Angeles-based journalist and pop-culture historian whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, BAM, Raygun, Guitar World and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. His first book, Twentieth Century Pop Culture, was published in 1999 by Carlton Books.
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