Friday Jukebox, 02.01.08

In 1986, my family moved from Hawaii to Scotland. My father was now a Captain in the U.S. Navy, and was about to take the position of Commanding Officer of R.A.F. Edzell, a base built by the Royal Air Force of the U.K., but now almost entirely populated by American sailors and their families.

I was actually really excited about the move. Hawaii sounds fun, but I missed the four seasons, and was going through the dreaded "awkward phase" during my sophomore year of high school, feeling pudgy and pimply and not very inclined to stripping down to my shorts at the beach -- ever. Besides, this was the height of the New British Invasion. Everything about the U.K. was edgy and cool, particularly the music we listened to.

I loved my time in Scotland. I loved how the sun never went down during two weeks in summer and never came up during two weeks of winter. I loved walking through the glen on the way to Edzell Village, where for two pounds, I could purchase fish and chips, coated with salt and vinegar, served in wax and newspaper. Nothing tastes as good as that, to this day. And of course, the music I was exposed to there became a soundtrack to my youth.

In 1987, a band called Deacon Blue had a #1 hit and the album it came from, Raintown, hit #1 as well. This was a huge deal, because Deacon Blue was a Scottish band, and this hadn't happened to a Scottish band for a really long time.

And then there was another hit song from the album, then another, then another. Deacon Blue were like national heroes, and even though my friends and I were a bunch of American kids just camping out for a few years on foriegn soil, we jumped right into the hero worship.



When I returned to Deacon Blue a few years ago, it was amazing to me how many memories were captured in the lyrics and sounds of this record. There was more synthesizer than I recalled; in the height of Brit-Pop, Deacon Blue sounded more like a straight-up rock band, and I guess that's how I remembered them. But what I never forgot was the husband-and-wife vocalists, and how Ricky Ross's gravelly voice fits so perfectly with Lorraine McIntosh's sweet and soulful soprano.

I'm not sure that Deacon Blue ever really made it across the pond, and yet it seemed they were everywhere during those couple of years of my life. You can't find them anywhere on iTunes, and yet I'm always surprised when I play a Deacon Blue song on my stereo and no one knows all the words. I've heard that they reunited after a ten year split, released a greatest hits album, and went on a U.K. tour last year. I wish I could have been there to see it.