Old Enough to Forget

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 em...

My journey with U2 started with the band's second album October , and soon after I picked up a copy of Boy . I put both of those albums on a single cassette. My first car, purchased from my parents, was a giant green 1973 Mercury Marquis Brougham that only had an 8-track player, so I bought an adapter from Radio Shack. The cassette lived there for a long time. When the 12" single dropped early in 1983 I eagerly snagged a copy, and then waited for the album. The title track was definitely U2, but it was different too. It was more like what we'd later know as U2, though it was hard to put your finger on exactly what at the time. Whatever it was, it was awesome. Then there was the very rough "Treasure (Whatever Happened to Pete the Chop)," which remains to this day a lost track for the band. I suppose this was a rough mix, and it was more reminiscent of their first two albums. Stylistically it would have been an odd duck going forward. The second side contains live ...

For a while, producer Steve Lillywhite was a machine. From his earlier work with Peter Gabriel to U2, where I first read his name in their liner notes, the guy was at the helm of some incredible albums. Then, in the summer of '83, a very strange song hit the airwaves. "In a Big Country" was big and bombastic and had these melt-your-face electric bagpipes. A lot of people really liked this song. It was a big hit, going top five here in Canada, and the album went platinum here and in the UK and gold in the US. Being the contrarian I was, I treated their hit the way I treated songs by Culture Club. I just turned it off or changed the station. Still, there was a begrudging respect. These guys were proud Scots, and their mix of traditional and rock music was, quite frankly, pretty freakin' awesome. One of the cool things now, in listening to this album in its entirety for the first time, is how cohesive the songs are as a listening experience. I love that the credits actua...