It’s amazing how many people thought Big Country
split in the mid-eighties. In fact, the band carried on recording and
gigging until 2000. It is a story of unrealized potential, lack of support
from record labels, and a musical style that the music industry couldn’t
pigeon-hole. However, let’s go back to the beginning.
The band formed in 1981 when hugely-talented
vocalist/lead guitarist/songwriter Stuart Adamson left Scottish punk band
The Skids and joined with long-time Dunfermline pal and ex-nuclear
submarine cleaner Bruce Watson on rhythm guitar. In 1982 the original
rhythm section was fired and Tony Butler (bass) and Mark Brzezicki (drums)
were recruited from On the Air via session work. On the Air was a
three-some with Simon Townshend, who’s now helping brother Pete out in
The Who.
The band signed up with Phonogram and released their
first single ‘Harvest Home’. It introduced the band’s distinctive
twin-racing guitar sound. References have been made to a ‘bagpipe’
sound. Let me tell you that most bagpipes I’ve heard would make a deaf
dog cringe. We’ll leave this stereotype to the ill-informed.
The band’s second single, ‘Fields of Fire’, hit
#10 in the UK charts in 1983. The excellent first album, ‘The
Crossing’, charted initially at #4 and eventually reached a peak of #3.
Subsequent touring and singles releases confirmed Big Country as the hot
new act in the post-punk music industry.
Big Country’s second album, ‘Steeltown’, hit the
UK charts in 1984 and went straight in at #1. More successful singles and
sellout gigs followed. The band then took a brief sabbatical to record the
soundtrack to the movie Restless Natives.
The third album, ‘The Seer’, was released in July
1986 and reached #2 in the UK charts supported by the success of their
biggest hit single (at #7) ‘Look Away’. High profile live appearances
followed at the classic 1986 Princes Trust Concert and at Knebworth,
supporting Queen at their last ever UK gig in front of 200,000 people
(including this dog!). Looking back, 1986 was the band’s commercial
peak.
Each of the five studio albums that followed had some
elements of experimentation and achieved varying degrees of success. The
sixth studio album, ‘Buffalo Skinners’, was a classic twin-guitar hard
rocking album that eventually reached #25 in the charts, but with proper
support from the record label could have brought the band back into the
big time.
Big Country’s last studio album, ‘Driving to
Damascus’, encompassed many of the styles of the previous albums and had
a more relaxed leaning consistent with Stuart Adamson’s move to
Nashville in the US.
So, what do we have in Come Up Screaming? A double live
album of 22 of their best tracks taken from the Glasgow and London gigs on
the ‘Final Fling’ tour of May 2000. The album kicks off with the
rousing ‘Harvest Home’, quickly followed by the hard-rocking ‘King
of Emotion’ from the ‘Peace in Our Time’ album.
‘John Wayne’s Dream’ and ‘Driving to
Damascus’ follow with Adamson and Watson in great form, supported by the
tightest rhythm section in the business. Other classic tracks follow
including ‘The Storm’ with the unique E-bow intro; a quieter moment
with ‘Come Back to Me’, before cranking up again for the ever-popular
‘Look Away’ and ‘Wonderland’.
The finale is formed of four tracks from ‘The
Crossing’ in rapid succession - the epic ‘Porroh Man’, ‘Chance’
with vocals as usual loudly augmented by the crowd; theme song ‘In a Big
Country’, and great favourite ‘Fields of Fire’, all with the racing
guitars on full throttle.
Where are they now? Sadly, Stuart Adamson took his own
life in December 2001; Bruce ‘the man who invented the seagull’ Watson
is recording and touring with ex-Marillion-frontman Fish; Mark Brzezicki
has been recording and playing in Procol Harum, and Tony Butler currently
concentrates on re-mastering and music production.
It’s always been a mystery why Big Country never made
the big time commercially. They shied away from publicity-seeking at the
height of their popularity, when many of their less-talented
contemporaries sought the limelight. The band stayed together for most of
their 18 years and continued to be a great live act to go and see.
However, a band with four top ten albums and four top ten singles should
not have been forgotten so easily.
Their legacy is kept alive by the ever-supportive
ex-manager Ian Grant, the two websites he runs (Track and Big Country),
and an enthusiastic group of fans across the world. Live and rarities
albums continue to be released and some of the studio albums have been
lovingly re-mastered by Tony Butler.
The big stores in Thailand have seen fit not to import
‘Come Up Screaming’, so the best bet is the Track Records website www.
trackrecords.co.uk or the Big Country website - www.bigcountry.co.uk
The
annual calendar season is almost upon us, and one that was brought to my
attention was Thailand Calendar 2004 (ISBN 9001700000209). Calendars fit
into two types - those that you send away to people overseas and ones that
you actually use. The big glossy flip overs are generally of the former
category, and Thailand Calendar 2004 is one of those.
Police
chief Matt Lee Whitlock (Denzel Washington) is happy and content living
the good life in Banyan Key, Florida, the land of swaying palms and
beautiful beaches. He loves his job, Anne Merai (Sanaa Lathan) is his
beautiful mistress, a woman that any man would dream of possessing. Only
problem is, she has a very unpleasant ex-football player husband Chris
(Dean Cain) who has found out about the affair.
Muttly’s CD review: Big Country - Come Up Screaming
