In A Big Country

Holy shit! I had no idea that the dude from Big Country killed himself….nearly seven years ago! 2001, particularly the last half of the year, is pretty much a blur in terms of notable events. Everything seemed to take a back seat after the towers fell.
Big Country seemed to take a back seat also immediately after that debut album, The Crossing, went gold. Listening to it now, I am reminded that it wasn’t that bad of an album and perhaps two things were working against the band: the silly bagpipe sounding guitar tones that’s throughout The Crossing (ironically, one of the reasons why they were noticed to begin with) and the band’s penchant for yelling “Ha!” during their most dramatic moments.
Neither one of these minor complaints are enough to throw away the band’s catalog.
So where is it? Why isn’t it more readily available? The copy that I download is obviously from the vinyl version of The Crossing. Believe me, it’s not the “romantic” kind of transfer either, as a few spots shows the snaps of the grooves to be too audible and the record actually skips on few occasions. I’m sure that this album was available on cd at one time, so what gives?
And what’s the deal with the singer, Stuart Adamson, getting so depressed that he hung himself in a cheap Best Western hotel room in Hawaii? Who knows. But what is know is that Adamson wrote a note to his son at their home in Nashville over a month before actually killing himself stating that he’d be back on the next Sunday. Sunday came and went, Adamson apparently watched a soccer match in Atlanta before disappearing until six weeks later when he was found dead in that Hawaiian hotel room.
The last I heard of Big Country was one of their frequent comeback albums, this one from the late 80’s, where all of their trademark sounds had been whittled away leaving only a similarity in name alone. The song was fairly unremarkable and the album itself even more so.
That’s the thing about the 80’s, particularly with the MTV-era bands, lots of success was made to virtual unknowns but relatively few of them were able to maintain it after the first video was played to death. Even if a band wasn’t a one trick pony, the video hinted at it.
I’d love a series that merely shows what some of these bands are doing now. Not the “Bands Reunited” thing (which I loved, by the way) which puts people in that uncomfortable position of having to deal with people that you separated from. Just a show that shows what the band is doing nowadays, what they look like, and if they still hold a grudge against anyone in the band.
I can probably figure out why Big Country called it a day, but it would have been telling to try and see why one of the members had a heart so heavy that he decided to check out early.