Well, it took him long enough but Todd in the Shadows finally got around to talking about Big Country. As usual, I have numerous bones to pick but appreciate the gesture all the same.
But I really shouldn't have been: Todd always caves to conventional wisdom, and always follows the party line. Which I reckon you have to do when you're running a big channel.
Granted, that leadoff track to Peace in Our Time, "King of Emotion," is indeed absolutely shiteous, but it is also nothing at all like the rest of the album, or the lovely Celtic/acoustic b-sides to the singles.
I would also bet dollars-to-donuts "King of Emotion" was also written at the record company's insistence, since the rest of the album is very much a late 70s, harmonically-rich kind of vibe and doesn't have much in the way of dumbed-down late 80s radio fodder.
Which brings back to that complicated 90s Big Country catalog...
Since albums are a dead format and only playlists matter, I've been going through the 90s portion of Big Country's discography, looking for top tracks for a BC megamix, and finding there are actually quite a few. Nothing really containing the magic of the Eighties material, but some fiery and stirring numbers nonetheless.
The real problem with that era is that losing out on the Eighties star-making sweepstakes seemed to deeply rattle the already-troubled Stuart Adamson. After Peace stiffed, Big Country dropped the Celtic rock vibe - meaning their entire identity - and struggled to find anything worthy to replace it.
So they lurched into American-style heartland rock and then 90s-style post-grunge meathead rock, not seeming to fully recover their bearings until 1999's Driving to Damascus, their last album with Stuart. I even thought the highly-regarded Buffalo Skinners got a bit stodgy, plodding and colorless.
Then lifelong struggles with alcohol and depression took their toll, and Stuart died by his own hand in an Hawaiian hotel in December 2001.
The band briefly reunited as a trio a few years later then reformed with Mike Peters of The Alarm on vocals and the great Derek Forbes on bass. That lineup fell apart rather quickly, and then some replacement randos came in. I still kept my eye on the new-model Big Country, but wasn't impressed by what I saw.
Until this happened back in June, at the Totally 80s package tour show in Bethlehem, PA...
But then Big Country came on, and everything changed.
It’s a totally different lineup than the one I listened to in school: it's the original guitarist, his son (also on guitar), a singer from a Big Country tribute band, and a new rhythm section. Which sounds really dire, but was actually one of the best shows I’ve seen in a very long time.
The tribute singer sounds uncannily like the (deceased) original singer, and might even be a better guitarist. And the band understood that they were there to give people a nostalgia fix, which they did with an absolute blazing wall of sound.
Big Country are dismissed as a one-hit wonder to most people, but they represented my freedom. I got into them around the same time I was accepted to art school and began doing freelance art for local businesses.
Then they stood for my escape from an unhappy home life (this scene from Boogie Nights was literally any day or night of my life in high school). And their second album came out just around the time I got up the nerve to ask the future Mrs. Wibble out on our first date.
So to hear those songs played by a young and hungry band wasn’t sad at all — on the contrary, it was invigorating.
WARNING: Mark Brzezecki and one of those lousy replacement singers are doing the Lost 80s tour as "Big Country" now too. They sound bloody awful, judging from the clips I've seen. The outfit I saw are touring the UK and Europe in the fall, so just be sure you're seeing the five-man official band, and not "From Big Country."
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