The Del Amitri Concerts, November 2/3, 1997
Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 06:35:21
Subject: Barrowlands shows
by Karen Nesbitt

For those of you who haven't seen the dels in their home town, go. It's worth the 17 hour trip home and any other minor inconvenience you might have to endure.

As Anna said, Monday night was 10 times better than Sunday night but I'll start at the beginning for you.

Barrowlands is a huge club (probably holds at least 3000) and after you get through the metal detector and the body search, you run up two floors to the concert hall and have a medium long sprint over to the stage. Anna made a particularly graceful and memorable entrance Sunday night but was reminded that there was no moshing allowed and promptly settled down to behave herself for the rest of the evening. The ceiling's waaaay up there and painted blue with ceiling tiles glued to it in a sort of checkerboard pattern and stars of every colour stuck on in between. Getting the picture yet? There's a big stage with plenty of room for everybody and the infamous stage set. There's a bookcase with various knicknacks and records as Richy said. Justin have away a gnome and an old LP. Nobody guessed the first track on side two (May The Bird Of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose....I actually know this song!) but Justin generously gave it away anyway. Also on the bookshelf was some sort of decapitated head that Justin made a big fuss over until somebody said that it had been donated by Buddie's Mum which shut him up pretty fast. Actually, the head looked a bit like Buddie. Now, it's remarkable that I saw any of this at all because if there's one thing they do to excess at the Barras, it's dry ice. Every two minutes some idiot gets the idea that we need a bit more dry ice up there and over the crowd in general. Might help to cool them down. I think they use Mark as some sort of guide. If he can see his drum kit then they need more dry ice. For everybody (like me) who'd only seen the dels in the US, you know how there's always about 20 or so particularly enthusiastic fans right down front? Well, in Glasgow, the entire crowd is like that. All 3000 of them. Very energetic but in a good natured sort of way. And when they want the guys to come back for an encore, they don't just clap and shout and stomp their feet, they sing to them.

The set list was more or less the same one they've used all summer with some notable exceptions. They started with SOSP followed by Just Like A Man and did a quite a few from the new album including What I Think She Sees and Paper Thin. There was no sign of Medicine either night but Sunday night they did do Won't Make It Better. Being Somebody Else was back in the lineup and so was Start With Me. We also heard Nothing Ever Happens and the entire version of In The Frame which Justin said he wanted to do because he'd written it after a concert at the Barrowlands by the Lemonheads. They did two covers in the encore, "Boyfriend" by the Ramones and "Girlfriend" by Slim Dunlop (JC: It's a concept). A good time was had by all on those two. They ended the night with Be My Downfall, which is better than closing with Kiss This Thing Goodbye in my opinion. They threw in Drowned on Dry Land and the hysterical laughter from the crew offstage notwithstanding, Andy did a superb job on backup vocals. He had to do them because he hit Kris rather hard over the head with is water bottle and Kris had to go smoke and recover.

Justin had a cold so there was a somewhat protracted discussion on the nutritional properties of phlem directed at the people in the front row. He asked for a hanky and got a bra squarely on his right shoulder which he politely thanked the girl for and promised to add it to the collection before draping it over Buddie's decapitated head.

When Mark lost his place on the set list and counted them in for Start With Me instead of Here and Now, the result was a great deal of finger pointing and giggling from the rest of the band.

And that was it. A typical Del Amitri gig such as you've all seen before.

Monday night was a different story altogether. I can't really say why some nights they're just more 'on' than other nights but this was far and away the best I've ever seen them. The crowd was even more enthusiastic than the night before and were packed in even tighter. If it's possible, there was more dry ice too. The guys came on and did the first three songs the same as the previous night except Justin's voice sounded better and he must have gotten over his cold mostly. By the fourth song they were all sweating hard and so was the crowd. Even the security guards were singing along. The backup vocals were outstanding, the mix was great, Derek was brilliant on the lights and the dry ice guy made sure we never got more than a brief glimpse of Mark.

They knew that the crowd would have many of the same people in it as the night before so they changed the set around some. They brought out the steel guitar for As Soon As The Tide Comes In followed by Lucky Guy. Iain was a study in concentration during these numbers. Over the evening Justin was a study in forgetfullness. There were at least 4 songs that he forgot the words to including Here and Now which he claimed had "too many f#$%ing words anyway". When they did Being Somebody Else, Andy jumped down off his perch and played guitar (I'm not making this up) with Kris. Ken could be seen frantically playing out more cord to him as he wandered all over the stage. He did some backup vocals with Kris and started to wander off again but Kris put his arm around Andy's shoulder having obviously forgiven him for the water bottle incident. They also did One Thing Left To Do and Cruel Light of Day which we haven't heard for a while. They had some techinical problems at one point, I don't remember which song and Iain announced that "it's all going horribly wrong" but he was laughing while he said it. Someone in the crowd was shouting for 'Ten Guitars' and Justin said "Kris, you won't know Ten Guitars, you're English." Then he explained to the audience "that's what's known as a deflection. When your guitar doesn't work and you fuck up, you deflect on the English person. We've been doing it for centuries. Now we can make our own f#$%inh mess. There's something nice about your own mess isn't there?" Quite a speech actually, especially when he'd introduced Kris and Mark as "two people who are going to stay in the f$%#ing band". They ended the main set with Be My Downfall this time with no extra bits in the middle. They ended the evening with Kiss This Thing Goodbye although they obviously didn't want to go. Justin tried wringing out his shirt but there was no hope. Even his boots had salt stains on them from night after night of that I guess. They didn't do Paper Thin this night but they did so many other songs that the set list took up two pages. They had a guest bass player but I don't know who he was. Anna would probably know. They did the same two covers as encores as the night before. We also got Spit In The Rain by popular request, a definate crowd pleaser. The crowd in fact spent the whole night jumping up and down although next time I might suggest a round of deodorant before the show!