very interesting!  out in the wind is one of my favorite del songs (i managed to download it at some point back in the day).  i'd be extremely interested in hearing others like it if those tracks ever become available!  thanks for sharing!

I never knew this existed - although many years ago I was offered some demos from this period from someone who I never saw again.....grrrr....I too have a copy of Out in the Wind  --  I also have a very jumpy and apparantly live version of Life Going backwards which I love

Wow! That would be super cool to hear. That sounds plausible, too, because 4 years in between albums, and considering that the divide between the first one and "Waking Hours" is so different in content, it would make sense. I'm guessing that it's sort of arty, kind of vaguely political or something.

From what I can gather from Justin's words on the history of Del Amitri in bios and whatnot, it sounds as though the band had high hopes of taking it's earlier protest type post punk stuff to the masses, but that it wasn't profitable enough to live on. Something that i've always admired about Justin and the band, is that even though they became much more commercial sounding, they never really dropped the protest stuff ("Nothing Ever Matters", etc) and just reconfigured it in a way where they could get the message out and support themselves. There's always been that punk thing in there (I was blown away when Justin said that he was a Cramps fan), but I think that he and the band had the smarts to go about the process in a different way. There was still always a pretty dark and unsettling undercurrent in alot of the songs (even "Stone Cold Sober"), where alot of the themes were more about loss and oppression and glass half empty thinking. Hell, "Not Where It's At" is pretty humble for a band, lyrically, at that point in their career! That's what I liked--the songs focused alot on being the outsider, the outcast....no matter how sunshiny the songs sounded on the surface.

So i'm guessing that the 2nd album was an aborted attempt at continuing on with the less commercial earlier sound. "Sense Sickness" in particular of the earliest days, you can really feel the oppression and the claustrophobic, suffocating vibe that they were trying to get across. They're a great band in every incarnation.

http://ia600402.us.archive.org/0/items/DelAmitri1985-1986MissingLinksDemosRehers...

I know this thread is dormant, but if anyone sees this, I've become a little obsessed with trying to decipher this one line in "I Am Here," around the 4:06 mark. I can't post links here but you can find the song on YouTube titled "Del Amitri - Lost 2nd Album - I Am Here."


Sounds like "...and then on Boxing Day I'll give you back which children [??????]"

Any guesses? I love the way this line sounds but can't make out the words, and that's just not gonna fly.