Louder Than The Music

LTTM's Jono reflects on his personal experience as a Delirious? fan ahead of the band coming to an end later this month.

I have been going to church since I was 11 and sang whatever songs were played in church. Looking back, the church I was in thankfully were playing whatever was played at Spring Harvest that year or what tracks were on the latest Vineyard album. We sang a lot of the obvious Delirious? Cutting Edge tracks; "Lord You Have my Heart", "I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever" etc, sadly at that time I didn't know them as Delirious? tracks. It wasn't until 1997 when I first heard King Of Fools. I was very heavily into the Britpop scene in the mid 90's and as that was starting to come to an end, I was still a massive Oasis fan, still am. I was always looking for bands with a similar style and attitude.

One late summer evening I had a phone call from a girl in our youth group, who I had a massive crush on. She had been on a youth mission to Croatia with another church and one of the lads in that group gave her King Of Fools as a present on tape before she left. She phoned me one night to say that when she'd heard it, she thought of me and how it was my style of music. So down the telephone she played me Sanctify and Deeper and I was blown away by this. A Christian band that could compete in style and quality with any band in the mainstream British charts. The young woman then copied the album for me onto a cassette (we do not condone copying of music on any format, old or new!) and I listened every morning on the way into school for 6 months. Delirious had now become my new favorite band, of course joint with Oasis.

My first opportunity to see Delirious? live was on the Mezzamorphis tour. We took a large youth group to Newport Centre to experience this amazing live, visual show that so many other Delirious fans had told me about. The gig was amazing and all I can really remember was singing Bliss and History Maker and that I also got my first experience of hearing and seeing the mighty Switchfoot. After the gig I had my first opportunity to speak to Martin Smith, that's what I loved, they took time to sign merchandise after the gig. I had bought a Delirious hat, so I started my walk up to Martin, already sweating with nerves about going to speak to the front man of my favorite band. "Hey Martin, great gig, can you sign my Delirious hat?". Martin replied "Of course. Did you enjoy the gig?" My mind started to race, Mr Smith has asked me, little young me, a question. So with all my brain power I thought of a reply. I stood there tall and proud and said "Yes", nothing else seem to come out. He passed me the hat back and said "cool" and I had to walk away thinking, I have just blown my big moment, speaking to Martin Smith.

I would have to say I became obsessed with Delirious. Every chart single release I would make everyone I knew buy the song so we could push the single into the mainstream world. I went to every gig within 50 miles of Cardiff. I do believe my live count to date is
between 15-20, I really need to work that out. Probably my proudest moment seeing Delirious live has to be on the Bon Jovi Tour at the Millennium Stadium. I had been to that stadium many times before to see Wales play Football or Rugby, as that was the home of those sports in my opinion. So when I heard Delirious were going to play as a support act there I had to go. I was so proud being there in this massive stadium, being able to sing "My Glorious" and "History Maker" even when everyone around me spent more time saying "Who are these guys?" Amazing times.

I'm going to have to end this blog with a few more thoughts about Delirious. No matter what your view about the band is, they have changed the face of Christian music, pushing the bar higher for quality of songs and how everything is done. Without them I would have never got into Christian music with such a passion and this site might never have existed. Shocking I know. Now you know who to blame. I will miss my favorite band, and the passion filled songs, but can't wait to see what the future holds for these amazing guys.

Jono