Twice now I've had tickets to see former Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie playing live in his new solo incarnation. Twice, despite the fact that he's written some of my favourite misanthropic songs of the last twenty years, I've had to give those tickets away... once because I'd just broken my arm, once because my back was so bad I couldn't stand up. (Back update - I still can't stand up for long, but using a combination of seated or partly-seated venues or painkillers/heated wraps, I'm not letting it spoil my appreciation of live music too much.)
Saturday night it was third time lucky, in my new favourite venue (and not just because it's a five minute drive over the hill), the Holmfirth Picturedrome. The last time I saw Currie live was back in 1998 when he was just a Drunk In A Band. The general consensus by all who attended that evening is that it's one of the most memorable gigs of our life. True, a certain amount of alcohol was consumed (those were the days, eh?), we were wild, we were free, we were still in our 20s... and Del Amitri looked like they'd last forever. And so would we.
In the cold light of 2011 then, when we're all starting to feel our age, there's no more Whiskey Remorse to be had (not for me, anyway), and JC's binned the band as part of "the new austerity"... how would the solo act compare with the hellraising days of old?
Well, it won't. They're two entirely different beasts. But while Wednesday October 28th, 1998, was exactly what a 26 year-old semi-alcoholic hedonist needed to blow his mind... Saturday January 22nd 2011 was much more in-keeping with the wants and needs of an occasionally morose teetotal 38 year-old. I don't care about getting old, as long as my favourite artists come with me.
The first time I heard the song below was in the early days of 1990. I was 18, hadn't yet touched a drop, and still believed my future involved spinning records and talking in between them for a living. How wrong can you be? Sitting there in the last free seat on the Picturedrome balcony, I wondered where I'd be in another ten of these increasingly fleeting years? As long as Justin Currie's still singing, it won't be too bad...
