As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Del Amitri – The Birchmere, 4/19/2022

Coming into this year, Del Amitri was one of only two of my all-time favorite dozen acts that I had never seen live. (I hope to knock the other one off this summer.) Given that they’re based across the pond, were never big stars in the States, and hadn’t toured here in 25 years, it was a delightful surprise when I learned earlier this year that they would be doing a U.S. tour. It was well worth the wait.

 

Appropriately enough, for both the band and most members of the audience, they started out with “When You Were Young”. A particularly strong point of the show came just a couple of songs later, with a 1-2-3 punch of “Always The Last To Know”, “Not Where It’s At”, and “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” (the first thing I had ever heard by them). Their four-song encore was one of the best I’ve ever experienced; Justin Currie held everyone spellbound with his vocals on “Empty” and “I’m So Scared Of Dying”, and they closed with the will-he-or-won’t-he “Be My Downfall”, one of my personal favorites.

 

Interestingly, a couple of the highlights of the show for me were songs with which I was less familiar; in addition to “Empty”, they did a great job about halfway through the 90-minute show with “Crashing Down”. Seven of the 13 tracks from last year’s Fatal Mistakes album (their first studio effort since 2002) made an appearance, complementing the older material nicely. In addition to “I’m So Scared Of Dying”, I particularly enjoyed keyboardist Andy Alston stepping out front with his accordion for “Mockingbird, Copy Me Now”. The musicianship was stellar throughout – I was especially impressed with Iain Harvie’s work on lead guitar, which came across much more in person than on their records.

 

My only disappointment was with the arrangement of “Driving With The Brakes On”. I at first thought that the clickety-clack percussion was a prerecorded backing track, but a glance at Ashley Soan revealed that the wood-block tapping was completely live. Either way, I found it distracting for such a great, slow, moody song.

 

Being about 10th in line – I arrived around 4:15 – I got a forward-facing padded bench seat at table 316: dead center, parallel to the stage and just in front of the divider. The view was quite good, and the sound was excellent. Currie’s vocals could be heard clearly over the instruments, even on the louder numbers. While the show didn’t sell out, at least 80% of the seats seemed to be occupied.

 

Kris Dollimore, one of the band’s guitarists, provided a nice 30-minute acoustic opening set, with a pair of instrumentals (both of which reminded me of Tom Rush’s “Rockport Sunday”) sandwiched around more bluesy songs that also featured his singing, including a Mississippi John Hurt cover and a spirited version of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues”.

 

Setlist

 

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