At the Largo with Justin Currie (6/11)

The new Largo is quite up-scale, but, as you fans know, Justin and Peter are very well dressed, so he fit in as well as any f---ing Scotsman could expect to. It’s a big room (280 seats) and the acoustics are great, so I was very pleased — you can both hear every word and not be jammed into your neighbor’s elbow.


Flanagan seems to have spent willingly on the new place and was eager to show everyone around. Couldn’t have been more different from The Viper Room, which is way too small and way too loud as far as I am concerned. Not a place Justin would want to play in this new solo career, though perfect for the old days, I guess.

Certainly The Viper was the right place for a rock star like Rob Dickinson [The Man from Catherine Wheel] — I don't mean to put the place down. We had a great time there squeezing into the telephone booth they call a green room and the band was great [not just because Peter was in it]. There was Peter's old friend from the Boston days, Michael Eisenstein [USA Mike of Letters to Cleo fame], on guitar — that was a very pleasant surprise. Then, there was Rob's friend, Tim Friese-Greene, on keyboards — even more of an eyebrow raiser; an awesome shocker even, since Peter and I grew-up together musically listening to Talk Talk and similar British pop bands from back in The Day.

But I digress more than usual—
For Justin's Largo show I brought along an extra handkerchief just in case it got to be too much — his songs are so heart wrenching I can barely stand to listen sometimes. Happy to say I managed to survive even though they ended the show with two incredible Del Amitri B-side classics: ‘Driving with The Brakes On’ and ‘Sleep Instead of Teardrops’.

Imagine this! After an hour and a half of the slick-tongued Scotsman plucking your heart strings, you get [back to back] a guy being driven into the long night by the girl he loves toward some place so desolate that no one where they come from would ever go there, followed immediately by this shot to the now unguarded solar plexus—

Cry, cry out your eyes forever
It won’t go away
I, I’m just a dumb observer
It’s so stupid what I say

Like everyone else will do I’m gonna lie to you
Tell you that life is cruel but someday you’re gonna wake up
With sleep instead of teardrops in your eyes

And so, nobody lives forever
The crassest of clichés
Like time, time is the greatest healer
But it’s a murderer today

Like everyone else will do I’m gonna lie to you
Tell you that life is cruel but someday you’re gonna wake up
With sleep instead of teardrops in your eyes

You know my holding you won't change anything
I can’t stop this whole charade continuing
As each consoling kiss remains on your face like a stain

So cry, cry out those tears
And let them succumb to gravity
And try, try as I might
I’ll never fill that vacancy

Like everyone else will do I’m gonna lie to you
Tell you that life is cruel but someday you’re gonna wake up
With sleep instead of teardrops in your eyes

Someday you’re gonna wake up
With sleep instead of teardrops in your eyes

By now Justin is safely at home in Glasgow. Peter is probably down on Sunset enjoying The Submarines' show at The Echo. And I am left here to reassure you that someday you're gonna wake up with sleep instead of teardrops in your eyes.

Justin Currie & Peter Adams at Joe's Pub, NYC