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Andy White, Belfast born and Belfast bred, first picked up a guitar when he
was thirteen. It was blocking up the hallway. He started strumming it in a
beatnik basement belonging to a big bastard called Bobby. Born in 1962, White heralded the year of the big snow. They say that in the month of May there was skating on the Liffey and the Lager. Andy is driven by cheap cigarettes, a passion for potatoes and a 1969 Beetle. He tours with a guitar and an off-key harmonica. Influenced by Jimmy Joyce, Pope Pious XXIV and others from the great Celtic tradition of storytellers, he finds political leaders and cut-price sneakers a drag. He's seen the Battleship Potemkin more times than his mum has seen the Sound of Music. Andy went to Cambridge to check out the Bridge over the River Cam but he was press-ganged into Robinson College where he spent three years munching through old bookshops. Meanwhile, back in Ireland, Dave Robinson was recording an album with Shergar when a local bookie tipped him off. A day later, Robinson had his hands on four White songs. On the first day of winter 1985 Stiff released the vinyl classic 'Religious Persuasion', still played at LA weddings. Fuelled by a desire to see his records in the shops, Andy signed with the winner of the Andy White Handicap, Decca Records. With an advance rumoured to be in three figures, Andy bashed out a single 'Reality Row' and the White album 'Rave on Andy White', released in October 1986. He records all his songs with a few mates, to make them sound noisier, in a field in Randalstown. Yer man spent a lot of time re-arranging the countryside between shows and ended up with the 'Kiss the Big Stone' album two years later. Thrashing through the TV channels, this time the picture came up in colour though the field and the mates were the same. These two aural delights are being reissued for you in the year of the sticky typewriter key 1999 by that fine chef Mr. C. Vinyl. 'Rave on' has a different cover and 'Kiss the Big Stone' is full of different mixes. Andy is expected to hitch up his trusty acoustic guitar and play a few gigs around town , alone or with his mates, in the not too distant future. "An artist for our times." |
