DEL AMITRI FEATURE
8 March. That was defintely post-album
‘ therapy. That was our last week off. then we started rehearsing for everything. At this point. it‘d been two years since we‘d actually ; played a gig.
So. basically. at this point. we couldn‘t really play.
We started looking at videos in the middle of rehearsing. which is always very irritating. All we actually seem to do is tour. do B-sides and make videos. Then the first single. ‘Always The Last To Know‘. came out on 27 April. so that‘s when it all got incredibly exciting. Not!
Oh. and there was a general election on 9 April. That‘s when me and David (Cummings. guitarist) were found wandering round the Gorbals at three in the morning. drinking out oftwo rather large bottles ofvodka. depressed and shouting at people. ‘Did you fucking vote Tory. you bastard?!‘
And we did one little trip to the US for press. That was pretty boring.
l DANGEROUSLY
MAY
That was our first British tour. which we underplayed. we just did universities and clubs. We did the Fleadh in Glasgow. that was brilliant. We got very drunk after the Fleadh — I think I was up until about six in the morning. And we had to fly to Boston that day for a three-week promo trip. which was horrible. it was the worst hangover I‘ve ever had on a plane. But we got to Boston and jetted around the States doing acoustic gigs in little clubs for the media and the whole music biz side ofit. Lots of radio. lots of shaking hands. lots of smiling nicely at people. being good little Scottish boys.
We did a remarkable journey from Amsterdam to Wick in five hours. We played Wick and two gigs at the Kirkwall Arts Theatre as warm-ups. The album came out on 1 June.
To our great frustration. we spent a lot of this year doing promo. very much concentrated round the industry. It‘s very demoralising. partly because we‘re quite good at it. You find yourselfsmiling and shaking hands and you think. ‘I am a wank!‘
JULY
So we did all that bullshit. and we went straight into our second British tour. slightly bigger venues this time. Then we had a week off. I saw all my friends and had a Bloody Mary party. Then I went up to my dad‘s house in Perthshire to go hillwalking.
AUGUST
We did a couple offestivals. Feile in Ireland and the huge lIultsfred festival in Sweden. The organisers had chartered a DC-9 jet to fly all the hands over from England. So there were twelve rock‘n‘roll bands and their crews all on a plane at once. and all these guys are trying to out-rock‘n‘roll each other. Swervedriver were there. so I said hello to them ‘cos I really like Swervedriver. The Rockingbirds outdrank everybody. they were magnificent. Blur were on as well. they were looking very dapper — they were all wearing suits with little skinny ties and Doc Martens.
Then we went back to America to do another promo tour. . .
SEPTEMBER
We did a couple of festivals in Belgium. and a big Radio One gig in Birmingham. We went to America again. did the David Letterman Show. Then we flew back home again and did Top Of The Pops. Then we did a two-week European tour. then off to America again. We did a complete slog ofa tour — we crossed the country in four weeks and played the same amount ofgigs that we would normally do in six weeks because we
were scheduled to go to Australia after that. Which got cancelled. We didn‘t have a single day off on the whole tour. and my voice had totally collapsed by the time we got to Phoenix. Hah!
OCTOBER
We came home and I had another week off. Incredible. All pretty boring — well. it‘s not boring to me but I‘m sure it‘s boring to everybody who reads The List. I got pretty sick in October as well. The stress. y‘see. The jet-setting lifestyle. Artistic stressI think we‘ll call it.
NOVEMBER
We went to Australia for a promo tour. We did an in-store signing session which was very embarassing because hardly anyone turned up. We were back-pedalling a little bit because the last album went platinum in Australia and this album‘s not gone gold yet. Then. just last week. we went to France and
' Spain for some promo. And that‘s it really.
DECEMBER
This whole British tour is pretty boring except for these last four nights — the whole function ofthe tour is just to warm up for Barrowland.‘
By now. Del Amitri should be positively sweltering. well-fired up by a frantic year of international meeting and greeting. As exclusively revealed in The Secret Diary Of Justin Currie. Aged 27 and a bit. Del Amitri are vigorous in their dourness. rigourous in their self-slagging.
‘There was a brilliant review in NME which described us as coming across as a ‘puzzled Wings‘. which really appealled to me. I‘m not a big fan ofgood reviews ofdel Amitri.‘
Oh. right. Del Amitri are crap. everybody. a. er. ‘perturbed Lynyrd Skynyrd‘ who. for some bizarre reason. loads of folk like and who. saddos that they are. are glad to be grey. But not for long. mayhap . . .
‘I don‘t think this has been a pivotal year for us.‘ Justin decides. “All we‘ve really done is release another record. and we‘ve gone out and done more or less the same things that we did on the last record — the same sort ofgigs but a lot more promotion.
‘Actually. what I think will be really pivotal is our next record. That could completely sink us or do really well. We‘ll make the next record with a sense offun and hopefully with a sense ofadventure. You may as well risk it all now. there‘s no point in playing safe or trying to second-guess your audience.
‘But it‘s definitely been a long year. . .‘
Del/imitrt'play The Burrow/and. Glasgow
from M on 21— Thurs 24 Dec.
List December 1992 — [4 January 1993 7