To mark the occasion, I've decided to post some YouTube links as well as a few thoughts on the man whose music sparked a passion in me which never wavers and will probably never be equalled.
Like many of you, my earliest memories of Stuart Adamson go something like this:
I was eleven years old when that video appeared in heavy rotation on Muchmusic. I adored it then, and I adore it now, even if the song became an albatross around the band's neck.
The album as a whole was brilliant, combing New Wave with traditional Scottish folk music, and some very progressive, complex musicianship on tracks like "Porrohman". The lyrics had a timeless, universal, epic quality, like folk songs that had been passed down for generations. At his best, Stuart's lyrics were a perfect combination of raw emotion and refined intellect.
The album also kicked some serious ass, which was very important to me then, as it is now. Few bands have ever been as energetic and invigorating as Big Country, and fewer still have had offered such depth combined with the sheer joy of an adrenalin rush.
"In A Big Country" appeared after a wave of songs like "Pass The Dutchie", "Down Under", and "Come On Eileen" which were often portrayed as ethnic novelty hits, so it became very easy for lazy critics to hear Big Country's Scottish influence and see the tartan shirts and dismiss the band as some sort of Bay City Rollers for the MTV generation.
Anyone who looked beyond the surface should have been able to tell that Stuart Adamson's love of traditional Scottish music was genuine, but no one else was scoring hits by combining Scottish folk music with modern sounds, so many people wrote it off as a gimmick instead of a genre. But as Stuart once said in an interview, "No one ever criticized a black guy from Detroit for playing soul music." But it was, and still is, politically correct to marginalize the Scots, so Big Country were stigmatized as that band whose guitars sounded like bagpipes.
Throw in the fact that their first international hit single had their band name in the title and suddenly the dreaded "one hit wonder" label followed the band everywhere they went.
Then, after a few short months in the spotlight, Big Country dropped off the face of the earth. At least, that's how it seemed to a young boy in small town Canada in the dark days before the internet.
But nearly a decade later, I still hadn't completely forgotten about that big blue album I'd loved so much as a kid, so one day in the early 90s I went digging through my parents' basement, searching for my small stash of vinyl which hadn't been played in years.
When I finally found my original copy of Big Country's debut album, songs like "Harvest Home" and "Chance" greeted me like old friends whose names I'd forgotten, but the memories of the good times we'd shared were still buried somewhere deep in my subconscious.
At that time, I had been drifting away from the mainstream for several years, listening to artists like the Pogues or Daniel Lanois, and rediscovering The Crossing was a watershed moment for me. Instead of relying on Muchmusic, local radio, or my peers to point me in certain musical directions, I turned my back on what everyone I knew was listening to at the time and began a lengthy obsession with this obscure Scottish band from the 80s that no one else remembered.
I realized that those early years with Big Country probably laid the groundwork for my love of the Pogues, who I'd discovered around the time of "Fairytale Of New York", and my growing appreciation for Celtic music in general.
That vinyl copy of The Crossing was already full of pops and scratches when I rediscovered it, so I began scouring the local record stores to try and find a copy on cassette, or maybe even one of those new-fangled compact disc thingys.
There wasn't a copy to be found anywhere, but one national chain had recently added a kiosk with a database of every album in their inventory, so I typed in Big Country and discovered something utterly shocking.
The band had recorded other albums!
If Big Country had truly been a one-trick pony, or if my renewed love of The Crossing had been all about nostalgia, the story might have ended there. But a quick glance at Dynamic Range Radio's weekly charts certainly proves that the story continues.
Form a purely commercial standpoint, the sophomore slump hit Big Country hard in North America, but they were at their peak creatively when they headed back into the studio to record their second full-length disc, Steeltown, which debuted at #1 in the UK, and is, quite simply, my favourite album of all time.
Stuart Adamson's lyrics were often full of death of despair, and never more so than on Steeltown, but it was the music which seemed to offer hope, like a king rallying the troops on the battlefield in the face of a seemingly unbeatable enemy. Maybe that's why the militaristic drumming and guitars as bagpipes have such a stirring effect on songs like "Where The Rose Is Sown".
If your favourite U2 song is Sunday Bloody Sunday and your favourite Springsteen album is Nebraska, you owe it to yourself to get a copy of Steeltown. It's dark, dense, furious, ethereal, cinematic, heart-breaking, yet ultimately cathartic. When the closing track, Just A Shadow, reaches its stirring climax, you'll feel like you've been on an epic journey and survived.
One of the most prolific and eloquent fans of Big Country is Glenn Macdonald, who maintains a music site called The War Against Silence. Regarding Steeltown, he once said the following:
These songs are part of me. I have taken them so thoroughly into myself that I imagine the converse to have happened, and I half feel like copies of this album go out into the world with pieces of me pressed inside. They probably don't, really, but just in case, handle your copy carefully.
Ditto.
This is turning out to be a lot longer than I planned, and I still have a lot to say, which is hardly surprising because once I get started talking about this band it's impossible to shut me up.
I'll save the rest for a later day, so check back soon for part two, and maybe even part three, four and five.
John, that is wonderful!
ReplyDeleteStay alive Robert
Excellent John.
ReplyDeleteRegards Sue