Big Country - Steeltown

Big Country hit it big in 1983 with their debut album The Crossing. The album would go gold in the US, and platinum here in Canada. "In a Big Country" was huge, and frankly to most of us is the one hit we know by the band. Audiences are fickle, and who knows why the band's follow up Steeltown didn't resonate outside of the UK where the album would hit number 1 and go gold. I don't remember anything being played on the radio. My buddy Otto had a cassette copy of the album and I remember playing it a couple of times and thinking it was pretty cool.

Steve Lillywhite was producing, and comparisons to U2 were inevitable. There were some sonic similarities at times but the bands could not have been more different. U2 were Irish and Big Country were Scottish.

One of the things that sucks about getting old is having the time to let music percolate. It's one of the reasons most of us are so drawn to the music of our past. We have a deeper connection and more of an emotional attachment. Songs are associated with the past in a way new stuff will never be. This came out when I was 21 ... now I'm older, a lot older and my brain is a little slower and there are fewer connections to be made with the music. It's one of the reasons I can remember "In a Big Country" but can't remember anything else from The Crossing, an album I finally heard a couple of years ago, despite listening to it several times over the course of a few days. All I remember is that I liked it a lot and was pretty happy.

Here I am with Steeltown and it's an album that doesn't have any baggage other than a disassociated memory of being in Otto's truck cranking the cassette but I can't recall any of the songs. Just a feeling that I liked it, but not so much I went out and bought it. I've played it a couple of times now, and I like it (I seem to say like it a lot). The songs hold up. Stuart and Bruce are still a wicked combination on guitar. They pull off their sonic wizardry sparingly, which is a good thing. The whole electric bagpipes thing is cool, but needed to be applied with care.

I still found myself listening for those moments where the band would pull it all together. You know, THE BIG SONGS, the singles, the stuff that would go on a mix-tape. On the first side they got close with "Come Back to Me". It stopped me in my tracks and I perked up. I love being blown away. The second side yielded the musical kissing cousin to their big hit in "The Great Divide" that really got me.

I spend my days listening to music and despite my best intentions, more often than not I appreciate what I'm hearing, enjoy it, and then can't remember what I've heard. I'm glad the album had the inner sleeve with the lyrics. There's nothing like an inaugural listen while reading along while Stuart sang to me. I'm quite sure that as I listen more other songs will strike my fancy only to be forgotten. This isn't me being dismissive of Steeltown, this was really good and boy howdy I'll stand by my assessment this is good. It's not them, it's me.

Steeltown is a Big Country record. That is not damning the band with faint praise. They managed to do what many bands never accomplish: Have a distinct musical identity. All of the songs here are good, sometimes very good, but sadly I also know that they're not memorable enough to sink in. I'm too old, I'm a long way from 21. However, while this is playing, it's playing loud. I also know the next time I play the record I'll really enjoy it ... it'll be new to me all over.

Who said getting old sucked?

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continued to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self-titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner, who had been with Gary from the b...

Old Enough to Forget

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