From: owner-oppositeview-digest@smoe.org (oppositeview-digest) To: oppositeview-digest@smoe.org Subject: oppositeview-digest V9 #65 Reply-To: oppositeview@smoe.org Sender: owner-oppositeview-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-oppositeview-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk oppositeview-digest Sunday, October 14 2007 Volume 09 : Number 065 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [none] [leanne gibbons ] OV: RE: ["Joe Brady" ] OV: Just got my album, with signed lyric sheet!! ["Porl" Subject: [none] Yippee!! I received the album from Townsend Records today! Never thought that it was going to be here in time for Friday's gig in Manchester (with the UK postal strike an all!...) Can't wait for friday now! - --------------------------------- For ideas on reducing your carbon footprint visit Yahoo! For Good this month. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:54:31 +0100 From: "Joe Brady" Subject: OV: RE: Are you the funky Gibbon? R.T.I.D"Dont be fooled by imitations We are the hoops that rock the nation..." -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: leanne gibbons To: oppositeview@smoe.org Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 15:57:39 +0100 (BST) >Yippee!! > I received the album from Townsend Records today! > Never thought that it was going to be here in time for Friday's gig in Manchester (with the UK postal strike an all!...) > Can't wait for friday now! > > >--------------------------------- > For ideas on reducing your carbon footprint visit Yahoo! For Good this month. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The next generation of Hotmail is here - Windows Live Hotmail - update now for free. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:08:19 +0100 From: "Porl" Subject: OV: Just got my album, with signed lyric sheet!! Oh yes, finally got my copy of the album with the numbered, signed lyic sheet!!! See it here!!! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/porl/lyricsheet.jpg Must have been in the first 500!! Porl ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:54:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Stephanie Barker Subject: Re: OV: Just got my album, with signed lyric sheet!! Well, it says right there you're number 435! Lovely photo of J. Porl wrote: Oh yes, finally got my copy of the album with the numbered, signed lyic sheet!!! See it here!!! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/porl/lyricsheet.jpg Must have been in the first 500!! Porl - --------------------------------- Check out the hottest 2008 models today at Yahoo! Autos. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:34:35 +0100 From: "Neil Matheson" Subject: OV: Article & Review in today's (Glasgow) Herald From today's arts/books/cinema section (typed in haste, sorry in advance for any typos etc): The Del boy finally grows up Justin Currie's first work for five years has abandoned tweeness for a more mature misery, hears Lorraine Wilson To clear up any misunderstanding, Justin Currie isn't grumpy today. In fact, by the second Americano, he's positively jovial. It's an important point, as he does have a particular sense of humour, which in the flesh is dry, even rakish. One step removed, however, it can be misconstrued, as he found to his cost. "I was a guest on what was the Brian Morton Show on Radio Scotland, but instead of being in the studio in Edinburgh, I was in a broom cupboard in the basement of the Glasgow studios. "I had no chance to speak to him before we went on air. In fact, I wanted to tell him how much I liked the show, but anyway, he asked me something and I responded with something that I thought was obviously a joke, and if I'd been face to face with him, he would have seen that. The whole thing was just terrible after that. The thing is too, for listeners, it actually sounds like you're in the same room, so it makes it so much worse." There is a brutal honest to many of his answers, a commendable disregard for what others think of him, and a welcome absence of off-the-record comments. Perhaps it's experience. When he was frontman of Del Amitri, credible wasn't the favoured adjective of many reviewers and contemporaries. They couldn't deny the success, however. "We enjoyed it and were never cynical about it," he says. "Even though, in many ways we were loathed by our peers and audiences. It's understandable, because we were an annoying thing really. Actually we still are. We stick in people's craw as that combination of tweeness and something more solid. It irritates the **** out of them, but I can understand that because bands like that irritate the **** out of me." That was then, however. The last Del Amitri album, Can You Do Me Good?, was released in 2002. Five years on, the first solo album, What is Love For, is released on Monday. Quite a gap to fill. "What happened in between? Life, really. The thing is, we knew that Universal was going to drop us after the last album, and in retrospect it would have been better if that had happened. When that happened Iain [Harvie] and I sat down and wondered what to do. We didn't really want to make another Del Amitri record and shop it around. "It was getting like Groundhog Day. We would release an album, then play the same towns, same venues, and we had a following who would always come to see us. We tried to make different sounding records. Whether we were successful in that, I'm not quite sure, but we came to the end of that period and we thought we could just do this forever. "Artistically though, it would be really invalid ... most bands could make Del Amitri records. It's just two guitars, bass and drums, melody and words, so we thought, no, let's do something different." In the end, Currie and Harvie did record, but anyone patiently awaiting the band's return shouldn't hold their breath. It's not Del Amitri as they know it. "Iain and I hatched a plan to make a really radical, out there record. In the end we realised it was pointless as it was so out there. It was good fun and a good way to shake Del Amitri out of my hair." It's fair to say that at this point Currie was at a loss about what to do in life. Del Amitri had been part of him since the age of 15, the breakthrough hit coming in his mid 20s. Then, aged around 37, he had a bunch of songs that weren't suitable for the band. But there were things to do before doing anything with these. "I just got wasted for three years, really," Currie says, candidly. "It was a funny but fortunate position to have that long-mediumly-successful career. We had a slow climb to, well, solvency really. We didn't get any bigger than our first hit, so didn't get impracticably famous, but we did make quite a lot of money. We had more than 10 years of frenetic activity, then suddenly it all stops. But royalties are still coming in, so you feel like you still have a job. So I was going to the pub, waiting for inspiration, or some perspective on everything that had happened." Everything that had happened was 15 top 40 singles and five top 10 albums in the UK. There was also American success with three top 40 singles in the US. Currie spent a lot of time in London in the 1990s. "London's weird, [with] high levels of insincerity. So to come back to Glasgow and have the piss taken out of you mercilessly was great. A lot of people in London were fabulous and thought I was terribly fabulous. Here people will come up and say, 'I really hated that song', or just 'you're ****'. I know that sounds like the phlegmatic, slat of the earth Scot, but there is a big difference. I think all that affected the songs on the album too." Yes, the album, which became a blend of existing material and new songs. "There was a fairly intense writing period in 2003, but it took two years to get a deal with a label that understood what the record is. It's really miserable. I let me mother, who is a very proper, West End of Glasgow respectable woman hear it, and she said ... it's miserable," he says with a laugh. What is Love For is certainly low-key and devoid of any jaunty country-rock, but calling it miserable is harsh. There's a definite sombre mood to the album, but the pace gives the vocals, often under-rated in his case, space. "It is very slow, but genuinely the same mood. Very late in the day we took off two uptempo songs, they were simply there for token reasons. In Del Amitri, because we were a radio band, we always had to have uptempo tracks, and they were invariably the hits. "There are no commercial pressures here. It may have been a more interesting album if I had been on a major label and forced into the commercial versus creative urges battle, which can be really interesting. However, this record would never have been made on a major label." The recording started in his front room, "getting in my mates to help". Despite his claims of unpopularity in the music business, there were plenty of people who wanted to work with him. That goodwill has extended to audiences, who have given the new material, in between selected Del Amitri tracks, a positive response at live shows. The prospect of this month's UK tour is something that he relishes. "I absolutely love touring. If somebody gave me an itinerary that kept me on the road for the next three years I'd be ecstatic. "I have to say the show at The Outsider festival in Aviemore was the first show i really enjoyed. Del Amitri was a really dynamic rock'n'roll show with songs, but this is just songs, so I was worried about the reaction, but so far it's been good. So I have to say: 'stop worrying and play'." Rykodisk release What is Love For on Monday. Justin Currie plays Inverness Ironworks tonight, Edinburgh Liquid Room on Monday and Glasgow Fruitmarket on Tuesday. The same issue contains a brief four-star review: As Justin Currie has conceded, his band Del Amitri, while popular, were never exactly trendy. That turns out to have been a huge advantage, because Currie has gone straight from "commercial" to "elder statesman", without bothering with "fashionable". This disc will surprise many who assumed him to be incapable of making a record quite as profound. Its subject matter may be the hoary old topics of girls, mistakes and heartbreak, but may - nay, most - of these songs sound like classics. Production is commendably unflashy, with some lovely breathy sax on a couple of tracks, and the songwriting is absolutely top notch. KEITH BRUCE - -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.14.9/1068 - Release Date: 10/13/2007 10:15 AM ------------------------------ End of oppositeview-digest V9 #65 *********************************