Nothing But Words

“How can someone find me if no one knows I’m lost?” – You Dreamer, Big Country

If Stuart Adamson – the former frontman of my favorite band Big Country – were still alive, today would be his 50th birthday. But he died alone in a hotel room 7 years ago, in an apparent suicide while on an alcoholic binge, in the wake of his 2nd divorce. It’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature that the most creative and talented among us are more often than not tortured souls. As Wikipedia puts it, “In many ways, Adamson was the sound of Big Country, supplying much of its distinctive guitar work, as well as being lead singer and main songwriter (both music and lyrics). In terms of being an instrumentalist, a vocalist, and a prolific songwriter, he is matched by very few contemporaries…”

I wrote a post about his guitar skills and songwriting a couple years ago, so I won’t repeat myself here. Instead I’ll link you to two remarkably different live versions of The Storm, one of my favorite Big Country songs. I love the epic sweep of the lyrics. They capture a compelling sense of grim determination in dark times. The scene of communal loss conjured up by the song is timeless – it’s a story that could have taken place a thousand years ago or yesterday. And the guitar work is pretty cool too (I remember my college roommate being flummoxed by all the chord changes as he tried to figure out how to play it).

The first is an acoustic version, and the second is an electric guitar version (note the second one doesn’t really get going until about two minutes in).

This makes me both happy and sad: Kohl’s is using a cover of the 1983 hit In A Big Country in their latest ad. I’m happy to see my favorite band get some (posthumous) publicity, but the cover version they’re using makes me cringe. The demographic obviously being targeted here is my age group. But, y’know, we’re all in our mid-thirties and early forties now, and – while we have fond memories of the electric guitar rock of our youth – we’ve all mellowed with age, and hearing it again in its original form would just hurt our aging, sensitive ears. We’re much more likely to shop at Kohl’s if they play a slower, more wistful version of the song for us.

And to think I listened to Big Black’s Atomizer on the way to work this morning.

Update: Some in the Big Country discussion forum were wondering if the surviving band members get any royalties from this sort of thing. The answer is no – Mercury owns most of their back catalogue and can do whatever they want with it, with no payment to the band. Since I’ve already mentioned Big Black in this post, I’ll quote their former frontman Steve Albini (who went on to produce albums for the Pixies, Breeders, and dozens of others) on the matter:

“Starting with Jefferson Airplane and The MC5 and going right up to Sonic Youth and Husker Du, it’s never worked. In 30 years no band has ever come out of the system alive. They get signed, they get arm-wrestled into spending too much money on their records, they get into debt to the record company, they spend 18 months trying to get out of it, it doesn’t work and the band breaks up. That has been such a constant that I can’t believe anyone still falls for it…”

Steve gazes calmly into the hell that is corporate rock. “It boggles my mind that everyone thinks they can pull the wool over the eyes of a company that’s had 30 years’ experience in dicking rock bands. Now that means that bands are being arm-wrestled into sounding like Nirvana; and the only way record companies can imagine doing that is by hiring Nirvana’s producer, so every band on a major label has been remixed by Nirvana’s producer this year…and I just don’t have any interest in being part of the continuum.”

Stuart Adamson was the singer, lead guitarist, and primary song writer for Big Country, my favorite band. I’ve always been dazzled by his guitar work, but not being a musician myself, I was never really able to find the right words to describe what I was hearing. When I meet folks who play guitar, I always have to recommend they give a listen to Big Country, as most are not familiar with Adamson’s work, but I’ve never been able to explain exactly why he’s so good. The other day I came across Tom Kercheval’s blog – he’s an independent musician – and not only is he a Big Country fan, he listed Adamson as his primary influence, and unlike me, he’s able to explain Adamson’s talent:

…the thing that always struck me about Stuart’s playing was not so much his lead playing (although it was great) but his rhythm guitar playing, particularly the odd chord structures he came up with. To this day, he’s one of the few guitar players that gives me fits when trying to figure out what he’s playing. His use of droning, open strings when playing chords was so appealling to me, and the Scottish/Celtic sound of the playing as well. He is so underrated. Beyond belief underrated. I still think the album Steeltown is a guitar masterpiece. Listen to that one with headphones and just hear the guitar symphony that is going on on most of those songs – tons of parts interweaving with each other, creating a huge, totally unique sound. Just brilliant. Like no one else.

In regard to Steeltown, I would add that it is also a masterpiece lyrically. Unfortunately, despite a 4-star review from Rolling Stone when it came out, it went nowhere in the pop charts. I think the album was musically too intricate, and lyrically too dense, to stand a chance on pop radio. But those are the qualities that have given it staying power – more than 20 years after it’s release, the opening track Flame of the West can still send chills down my spine.

This bio piece provides a good explanation for what inspired his songwriting, and what gives it the rare quality of being deeply personal yet political at the same time:

My mum and dad also had some great friends who played folk and country music (my mum does a mean Patsy Cline) and they would come to our house after the bars were closed and people would sing through the night. This made me aware of the power of the song and how music was interwoven with the lives of the working class Scots I grew up amongst. I would watch these big rough, hard men declare their love of family and the land — emotions they would be embarrassed to admit to in conversation — in songs old and new. I realised a lot of my schooling was solely aimed at my learning to accept my place in the British class system and railed against it. I believe the measure of a man is in his actions and not his social background (maybe this is why I like the US…another disenfranchised Celt)… A lot of the darkness of the Steeltown album comes from remembering my first experiences of the prejudice of class and nationality and the obvious truths that little had changed in my adulthood. The desire to write initially grew out of just wanting to be a “real” band and then I found I was driven to communicate some of the joy and frustration of the human experience…

Those are the people I grew up amongst and I could see the beauty in such simplicity as well as the anger and beaten acceptance. I think that frustration and learned apathy is the daily bread of the great majority of people in the world and as such represents the greater part of life experience, certainly in the western world and is to me a fertile source of inspiration.

I’m sure that those of you who know me well are astounded and amazed that I didn’t debut the “Song of the Week” on my blog with a Big Country song. And that I even resisted the urge for a second week. But I can resist it no longer.

This week I have for you a song that has been one of my favorites since high school: The Sailor. It is the last song on the third Big Country album, The Seer. It meant enough to me that I even sang the first half of it at my wedding reception (the first and probably last time I’ll ever sing in public).

When I started my toppa.com site, back in 1996, one of the first things I did was put up some Big Country pages (fan sites were a novelty then). I also managed the Big Country email discussion list for a few years. I no longer update my Big Country pages, but I recommend looking at the first page if you want to get a sense of why I like this band so much. At that time there were a few other fan sites as well, and we actually ended up in an email fight with Ian Grant, the band’s manager. He was threatening to go after us for copyright infringement for using the band’s logo, etc. He thought the only Big Country web site should be the official one, which of course didn’t exist yet (and wasn’t finally created until, I think, 2000). We ultimately just ignored him and he left us alone. He simply didn’t get the web at all – instead of realizing the potential for free marketing from enthusiastic fans, he just wanted us to take our sites down. The sad thing is, we probably would have done anything he wanted, except that.

A few months ago I did a big cleanup and updating of toppa.com, but there were two areas that I didn’t get to: the “Huh?” pages, and the Big Country pages. I’ve finally finished cleaning up the Big Country pages, and I added two polls: a best song poll, and a best album poll. I announced them the other day on the Big Country email list, and I’ve gotten about 30 responses so far.

I managed the Big Country email list for a few years, but I gave it up in 2000 when my ISP’s majordomo server crashed and they decided not to fix it. Back then there weren’t all these free web tools for discussion forums, and my enthusiasm had waned by that point anyway, so someone else took it over. The list lives on now as the Yahoo Big Country group.

For those who may not know, Big Country was very active until Stuart Adamson commited suicide in 2001. They recorded a total of 8 albums. The last couple were not as strong as their early albums, but 1993′s “Buffalo Skinners” was as good as their work from the early 80s.

Now for those “Huh?” pages….