Del Amitri

830 E. Burnside St.,Portland OR 97214

03 April, 2022

Description

Del Amitri Ages 21+ Live at Doug Fir Lounge PROOF OF COVID-19 VACCINATION OR NEGATIVE TEST REQUIRED FOR ENTRY Doug Fir is currently requiring COVID-19 vaccination proof, or proof of a negative Covid-19 test result, taken within 48 hours prior to entry. For full, up to date information, please visit dougfirlounge.com/covid THIS EVENT IS 21+ VALID U.S. ID OR PASSPORT REQUIRED DEEL AMITRISo, what is del Amitri? Some songs and some noises and some stories. The noises began many years ago born of the youthful exuberance, and sexual frustration of Justin Currie, James Scobbie, Donald Bentley, and Paul Tyagi. After recording one flexi-disc and playing some concerts Donald Bentley and James Scobbie began to perceive that there might be better ways for them to exorcise their dissatisfaction with existence (through architecture and clinical audiology respectively). But similarly afflicted individuals were soon found to replace them and make similar plangent sounds with guitars and so the spirit grew. Now with Iain Harvie and Bryan Tolland at its service del Amitri made two songs and engraved them onto 1000 seven inch vinyl discs. One of these songs, ‘Sense Sickness’, was broadcast to the people of Albion, nay, the world at large by the once venerable (lately slightly sullied) John Peel who subsequently invited del Amitri to record four more songs for the British Broadcasting Corporation to be similarly broadcast to the nation. This brought del Amitri to the attention of a commercial company (only peripherally connected to the military-industrial complex) that was designed to make money from songs on vinyl discs. The godlike Hugh Jones was engaged to unravel the tangled creative knot that was del Amitri in 1984 and from the threads he wove an intricate tapestry of twanged strings, layered voices and banged drums that became the ten songs of the eponymous 1985 debut album. At a time when people in their millions were buying records of songs by Spandau Ballet and Wham!, del Amitri, though arrogantly convinced of its own genius, remained obscure and misunderstood except in a very few specific locations; the Marquee Club in London,[1] Portugal,[2] and scattered ‘college towns’ in the United States of America. It was the support of radio stations in these college towns and the epistolary encouragement of their listeners that emboldened del Amitri to rent an Econoline van in New Jersey and, accompanied by friends and relatives, to drive to these towns to perform.[3] Not all who departed in that Econoline van after a disastrous first show at Maxwells in Hoboken made it back to New Jersey and none who did can claim to have been unchanged (for better, or for worse) by the fifteen thousand mile, coast to coast and back road trip. Ronald Reagan was elected to a second term in office, Margaret Thatcher to a third, and now records by Duran Duran and Dead Or Alive were being consumed in their millions. On returning to Alba del Amitri experienced an epiphany. The sheer pig-headedness of the early years, when del Amitri had convinced itself that four wet-behind-the-ears Glaswegians could out-do the melodic beauty of the Smiths while simultaneously promoting hardline politico-social musical ideology thus comprehensively undermining the public’s adoration of Spandau Ballet and Wham! (and now also Duran Duran and Dead Or Alive), dissipated. There was a realisation that music is beauty, and truth beauty, even (especially?) when it is just music; and the important thing was to just do it. Del Amitri realized that to survive it must adapt. Back in Glasgow Mick Slaven’s prodigious and visionary musical talents opened del Amitri’s eyes to new possibilities and now with Andy Alston in tow the interest of a second, more efficacious commercial organization was piqued; del Amitri set about the long and tortuous process of making the album of songs that would eventually be released by A&M Records Incorporated[4] as Waking Hours. This was not immediately profitable for the commercial syndicate that had underwritten the six figure recording costs[5] but thanks to the sheer doggedness of certain individuals employed there ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ was eventually ushered into the UK Hit Parade, ‘Kiss This Thing Goodbye’ breached the fringes of the US Top Forty, and del Amitri came to the attention of the public at large. And with that came 6am calls to sit on sofas with smiling, orange hosts on national prime-time television slots that were bracketed by footage of the current war and the latest famine; Terry Wogan, Top of the Pops, Late Night with David Letterman, Saturday morning kids’ TV; months on tour buses, where the odometers clocked up many times over the miles we travelled in the Econoline in 1984, playing to full houses in Findhorn, Sydney, Stockholm, Portree, Berlin, Madrid, Melbourne, Chicago, Kirkwall, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Copenhagen, Minneapolis, Preston, Bielefeldt, Copenhagen, to half-a-dozen in Oklahoma; to festive crowds in Glastonbury, Roskilde, T In the Park, and ten people and a dog in a field in Besancon. But also the opportunity to make records—four more albums; Change Everything, Twisted, Some Other Sucker’s Parade, Can You Do Me Good: fifty songs distilled from hundreds written. Writing is a labour of love that has driven many better souls than ours to perdition. Blessedly, del Amitri only led us to the waves of mercy offered at the bar, and our poison fed the lurking muse, and continues to do so, and long may it continue.[6] In these decades of recording and performing del Amitri has enlisted the services of many, exploited some and ruined the lives of an unfortunate few.[7] And to what end? The cold statistics of del Amitri’s ‘success’ can be summarized as follows; fifteen top forty singles and five top ten albums in the UK, one top ten and three top forty hits in the US, a number one album in Australia, and extensive radio play across mainland Europe that have combined to generate millions of sales worldwide.[8] What any of this has meant to you we can only speculate on. But what it has meant for those close to the heart of del Amitri and (excuse us if we sound like romantic fools) lucky enough to have caught the tail of a golden age of recorded music is that we have been privileged to spend a lifetime devoted to writing, listening to, thinking about, and performing, music. Doug Fir Lounge is an intimate Music Venue located underground below the full service Doug Fir Restaurant and Bar. We are just a few blocks east of the Burnside Bridge on the corner of 9th and East Burnside in Portland, Oregon.