SotD - Saturday Throwback: Del Amitri

Song of the Day Saturday Throwback is some music from back in the day to kick off your weekend in style. This week, Steve Taylor-Bryant finds that nothing ever happens with Del Amitri...



And bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs

While "Angry from Manchester" writes to complain about

All the repeats on TV

Computer terminals report some gains in the values of copper and tin

While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs

For the price of a hospital wing



Those who know me know I love my political commentary. I don’t really care from which side of the proverbial aisle you hail from, if it’s informed, passionate, non-offensive and well written then the chances are I will love it. I am a Sorkinite after all. The other day on the dark side (or Facebook as we call it in DCMG Towers) I was shown a political statement by Justin Currie (below - click on the See More to read it all).









What do you mean “Who is Justin Currie?” Did I hear you right? Well I never…



There was a period of my life where a man and his band from Scotland kind of wrote my autobiography through songs. To be honest, it was probably the biography of our generation; we were the victims of Thatcher’s reign, we were entering the 1990’s with a weak Prime Minister in John Major and a few years away from the rock n roll show that was New Labour. Some of us were still downtrodden, the inevitable outcome of a decade that defined us, some of us were more optimistic, some of us were… well, drunk if I’m honest. VERY drunk. And a bit high. Okay, yeah, very high too. For a while. The 1980’s was a decade that scarred a lot of us, whether knowing something good would come or wallowing, it really didn’t matter. We were living in apathy. Getting by if we were lucky. We didn’t have an REM to pick all the shiny people then the happy people and take them on a bus, we were in Britain. The buses weren’t running. We had Billy Bragg. We had The Levellers. We had The Wildhearts. In fact our musical wellbeing was pretty well taken care of. What we didn’t have was quality tunes. Proper songwriting, performed with meaning.



That is, until we discovered Del Amitri.



Justin Currie, the aforementioned political scribe, was a singer and songwriter that could nail where we were perfectly and yet still make our depression feel upbeat and almost danceable. If you take a look at Hatful of Rain, Del Amitri’s Best of compilation, I GUARANTEE you will know at least some of them there songs. Kiss This Thing Goodbye for sure, Always the Last to Know you definitely have, Roll to Me I am sure we can all agree we have loved and sang in the past. Then we come to my Saturday Throwback SotD. A song that we all hear and bop our heads to and yet some of you don’t know why or where you know the song from. You know it from a gifted songwriter, a brilliant singer and an eloquent political spokesman.



Ladies and Gentleman - Nothing Ever Happens...







Image - Amazon