While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs for the price of a hospital wing

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.

18/02/90 : Waking Hours - Del Amitri

This is an album I have fond memories of - Wendy and Michelle bought it for me as a finals/birthday/leaving uni present.  It's somewhat unfortunate that "Empty" includes the lyrics "Happy 22nd birthday and I wish you were dead" but I'm sure that was a complete coincidence (and yes, it was my 22nd).  I haven't actually listened to it in years - I quite often listen to Change Everything (their follow-up) but only because the CD's in the car, so it will be nice to catch up with this one.  And it's also nice to notch those ownership stats up for the first time in ages (8/46 - can we make double figures by the end of the year?).

Yeah, I enjoyed revisiting it - I don't think it sounds quite as polished as Change Everything but there are still some decent tracks on there.  "Nothing Ever Happens" is the top track for me (and unusually, the last track on the album) - I still remember hearing it on the radio for the first time and thinking "now this, I like!".  "Kiss This Thing Goodbye", "Opposite View" and "This Side Of The Morning" are probably my favourite other tracks, but for me there's not a bad track among them.

We're at #6 in the chart this week with a new entry starting a fourteen week run, and this was as high as it got.  However, it did follow this run with a sixteen week run, then a four week run and then a ten week run which took it all the way into the new year.  And then it reappeared for a single week in '96 - how peculiar!  The top five this week were Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, Lisa Stansfield, the Miss Saigon soundtrack (a new entry which I could have made an argument for, but a) I didn't want to listen to it and b) I wanted to listen to this one) and Technotronic (this was way more successful than I remembered) and we have one more new entry in the top ten, which is obviously Iron Maiden (#10).

Wikipedia has some very peculiar facts about the album and the band - this is actually their second album (which I never knew) after their eponymous debut from '85 which apparently has a very different kinda sound to it - and very few people knew about it until it was re-released in '03.  Additionally, two of the band members featured on the album cover don't play a note on the album because they joined after it was completed - apparently personnel changes were not uncommon for the band and all their albums feature different line-ups.  Commercially, the album did best here but also went down well in Australia, getting to #8.  I'm quite surprised it even got as high as #95 in the US though...

"Customers also listened to" Hothouse Flowers, Deacon Blue, The Waterboys and Hue and Cry - a definite Celtic flavour there.  But I think Del Amitri are my second favourite Scottish band (after Big Country, OBVIOUSLY!) and it was great to catch up with their second album (and also to learn it was their second album).

25/02/90 - Perfectly fine in a way I'm not fine with
11/02/90 - Pleasant enough

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