The East Coast Reunion, July 30 - August 1, 1997
by Karen Nesbitt, Lori Royal-Gordon, and Taire Ruffing

I posted this last night but two people have told me they didn't get it so maybe it's lost. I'll send it again with apologies if you've already suffered through it once!

Well, the reunion was an incredible success at least for the three people involved in this report (Taire, Lori and Karen). We have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is possible to suffer intense sleep deprivation and still have a thoroughly great time. In fact, for those of you planning to join the deltour this summer, just plan on sleeping when you get back to your real life. Don't miss a _minute_ of this!

The first show we caught was at The Paradise in Boston and it was by far the best. Jackopearce opened to a club packed full of their own fans who were just a teensy bit excited to see these guys. The three del fans at the front of the stage were distinctly in the minority at that point. Anyway, Jackopearce was pretty good and certainly got the crowd revved up for the main event. Evidently their touring schedule has been a bit confusing for them though since there were prominent reminders on their set lists of where they were, what day it was and who they were opening for. Must be a story there but who cares. The music kind of grows on you after a while.

The lights went down, a pre-recorded voice came over the sound system, we were told to prepare for the 'night of nights, quite possibly the greatest night of Del Amitri's life' and suddenly the waiting was over. We were totally unprepared for Justin's sudden interest in his shaving gear but in fact we didn't even notice the missing sidies for a few minutes 'til we had adjusted to the sight of his (nearly) bald head. By now, you've already heard about this so let me just say that it's a radical change and the conscensus was that scruffy was better. That was the last time we saw him clean shaven and he's been keeping those dimples a secret under those whiskers. He looks great. When somebody in the audience asked him about his sideburns he said he shaved them off because he hadn't been laid in 10 years and after shaving them he'd had a different woman and a different man every night! He recommended this to all the guys in the audience with sideburns of course.

They opened with Some Other Sucker's Parade and played quite a few from the new album (NWIA, What I Think She Sees, Cruel Light of Day) and Paper Thin which sounded awesome. The rest was the usual mix from the other albums. The new intro to Always The Last To Know rocks and Mark was brilliant on the drums. Not everyone agreed with me about that but I love him. Chris (Kris?) is really good too. Lots of dancing around, lots of eye contact with the audience and a big grin on his face most of the time. Apparently that was contagious too since Andy was smiling and dancing and having a whale of a time behind the keyboards. The guitar techs on either side of the stage were dancing their hiney's off and generally making us howl with laughter whenever we looked their way. One of them had a broken ankle and the other one hurt his neck doing it (so he said the next day anyway). They did two encores of two songs each and when they came back for the first one we held up requests for High Times, Make It Always Be Too Late and Downfall which Justin held up to show everyone in the audience while he asked us if we had left our boyfriends laminated to the beds at home! They then proceded to do a near perfect rendition of Downfall with Drowned On Dry Land thrown into the middle and Andy up front on the accordian. It was the first time I had heard them do all of Drowned and not just a verse or two. They finished with Kiss This Thing Goodbye which was sort of fitting. Justin did a lot of talking to the audience including a private conversation with Lori which she can tell you about if she want to. All in all, they looked to be having fun up there, the crowd was terrific and I know the three of us left totally satisfied with that one.

The next day it was on to NYC where we met up with Jere, Teresa and Doug so the reunion was now doubled. That was cool. The show was not so good that night since the audience was crap. The band didn't seem to appreciate the crowd (and vice versa) and tore through the set list with very little interaction with the fans. What little talking Justin did do, was pretty sarcastic and nasty. The set list was the same as the night before except for a brave attempt from Justin to do Fred Partington's Daughter for a persistant fellow down front. He only got through a verse and a half before he forgot the words and gave up. That much was fun to hear though. Instead of Drowned on Dry Land they did New York, New York in the middle of Downfall which was hilarious and sounded pretty good since it was coming from Justin. The rest of the band hid offstage until he got back to Downfall though. Except Andy who was doing his best to drown Justin out on the accordian. Anyway, it was a good show but not as good as Boston since there was no real connection with the audience that time.

Friday we headed down to Seabright for the last of the three shows on our minitour. Here we met up with Doug and Leah which completed the reunion entourage. We got there early and were treated to the sight of Justin lounging on the patio with a book. What was really funny was that while he was sitting there, NWIA was played and he never even blinked. I don't think he was reading though, just waiting it out. As the last few bars were playing he started nodding slightly as if counting them off and when it was over he looked around to see if anyone had noticed! Very surreal. The set list was the same again and the show was terrific. The audience was enthusiastic without being obnoxious and the guys played a terrific set. They had some technical problems which had Justin and Iain upset at intervals but they got over it pretty fast. Iain finally kicked his monitor away so he couldn't hear whatever was bothering him and settled for banging his forehead against his mic. Justin got flowers from a woman in the crowd and seemed a bit embarrassed about it since he reciprocated with a handful of carrots and celery. When it came time for encores Justin promised to do some requests and after carefully considering what we asked for he settled on Whiskey Remorse which came off really well except when he forgot the words just for a second near the end. Then he started to play Downfall in the wrong key and had to start over even though Iain told him it would have been just fine. They had a lot of equipment problems at this point and just did Downfall without adding anything extra. It was going on 2am when they did Kiss This Thing Goodbye and it was 5 before we got back to the city rather pleased with ourselves.

Next day we did reunion stuff like record shopping in the village and even though none of us seemed to have any sense of direction we managed to find quite a few used shops and some good bargains. The find of the day went to Lori who found a copy of the SOSP CD-R for 88 cents! There were frappocinos and Doc Martin shopping although nobody bought any as per tradition. We stayed up really really late again just because we could and we didn't want to waste the last few hours on sleep. Everyone seemed to have a great time although sometimes it was at the expense of an accent which I do not have. Next up, the West Coast Extravaganza beginning in San Fransisco....

We must do this again sometime,

Taire, Lori and Karen