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Big country in concert 1982 to 1987.

Posted April 10, 2012 by vintagerock in Big Country . Tagged: blues , concert , concerts , folk , gig , gigs , music , pop , prog rock , punk , R&B , rock , rock n roll . 2 Comments

big country tour 1982

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Posted by Mick Wilson on April 12, 2012 at 4:28 am

I am stunned at your blog! It brings back many great memories of punk/new wave/other gigs I also attended in the “Toon”. I now live in Sydney, OZ and have to say that the years 77-88 in Newcastle, were some of the best I have ever had. Fantastic bands and this instilled a passion for music which has not diminished to this day.

I have a question tho, I have a flyer for the Newcastle Guildhall which was for John Cooper-Clarke in 78, (a gig I attended) and which also lists Joy Divison as playing (they didn’t). Never seen any record of this, even in the JD concert listing (cancelled shows or otherwise), have you ever seen this?

Keep up the fantastic work! Mick

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Posted by vintagerock on April 12, 2012 at 4:36 am

Hi Mick Thanks for the encouragement. I can’t recall the John Cooper Clarke gig at the Guildhall, sorry. I saw him a few times, but not at the Guildhall as far as I can remember. I attended a lot of punk/new wave gigs in Newcastle in 77/78 including The Clash, Jam, Damned, Buzzcocks, Penetration, Stranglers, Ramones, Television and the Pistols in Scarborough and Whitby. Will get around to reporting on them all. Best wishes Peter

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Big Country came into view at the start of the 1980s with a tartan soul-stirring sound that reinvented the Celtic tradition in rock music.

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Big Country came into view at the start of the 1980s with a soul-stirring sound that reinvented the Celtic tradition in rock. Wearing their Scottish heritage as a fiercely defining musical badge of pride, they wrote and recorded tartan rock anthems of passionate character and unshakeable integrity. When they put out their compilation album, Through A Big Country: Greatest Hits , in 1990, it boasted no fewer than 16 UK chart singles, at which point they bravely struck out in a new direction setting their songs against the musical backdrop of an even bigger country – America. The commercial decline and eventual break-up of the group, followed by the suicide of the singer and leader Stuart Adamson in 2001, is one of the darker and less-told stories of rock lore.

Big Country emerged from the aftermath of the UK punk scene in the late 1970s. Stuart Adamson had been the guitarist in the Dunfermline-based group the Skids, one of the first Scottish acts from that era to make the transition from local heroes to national chart success with hits including ‘Into The Valley’ and ‘Working For The Yankee Dollar’. In keeping with the spirit of the times, Adamson moved quickly on, putting together his own band as featured singer together with local guitarist Bruce Watson and a rhythm section of London session musicians Tony Butler (bass) and Mark Brzezicki (drums).

Their first single ‘Harvest Home’, released in 1982, was a harbinger of the hits to come – a chanted chorus, driven along by skirling guitars, a galloping drum beat, and ancient folk wisdom: “Just as you sow, you shall reap”. The song remained a perennial live favourite, even though it was the only one of their early singles which failed to reach the chart. The first album, The Crossing , released in 1983, refined and defined the band’s unique approach. At a time when British pop was dominated by synthesizer bands from Depeche Mode to the Human League , The Crossing  produced by Steve Lillywhite (who also produced U2 and Simple Minds ), swam defiantly against the tide. The band’s twin guitar attack, with its high-pitched tone and distinctive, Caledonian cadences, was often likened to the sound of bagpipes – an unusual comparison which underlined the group’s distinctive sound and Celtic folk roots. Housing the hit singles ‘Fields Of Fire (400 Miles)’, ‘In A Big Country’ (the band’s only US hit) and ‘Chance’, The Crossing  was certified platinum in the UK and established the band as a new driving force in a British rock scene that had rather lost its way.

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A stand-alone single, ‘Wonderland’, restating the theme of an honest life lived in the great outdoors, sailed into the UK Top 10 at the start of 1984. Then, in October, the band’s second album Steeltown , again produced by Lillywhite, entered the UK chart at No.1. The title track told the story of the Scottish diaspora of 1935 at the height of the Great Depression when workers reluctantly sought employment in the newly-opened steelworks in Corby, Northamptonshire. “All the landscape was the mill/Grim as the reaper with a heart like hell,” Adamson sang as the band pumped out a beat like a great, industrial steam hammer. With its Soviet propagandist cover artwork, the album captured the oppositional mood of the times in the UK during the Thatcher years when the industrial landscape was blighted by mine and factory closures.

Although invited to perform on the Band-Aid charity single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, Big Country missed the session (they added a spoken message to the B-side). More significantly, despite being an obvious fit, they did not perform at the televised Live Aid concert in 1985 – other than joining the impromptu mass-choir finale of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. This historic event created a new pop aristocracy overnight. While their contemporaries U2, Simple Minds and many other prominently featured acts smoothly moved into a new global superstar bracket, Big Country stayed where they were.

Which wasn’t a bad place to be. The band’s third album, The Seer , released in 1986 found Big Country at the peak of their powers, exploring their now-familiar brand of Celtic rock with supreme panache and confidence. Adamson engaged in an animated duet with Kate Bush on the title track, a song which dug deep into the soil to expose the band’s folk roots, while ‘Look Away’ became the highest-placed single of Big Country’s career, peaking at No.7 in the UK and going all the way to No.1 in Ireland. The Seer  reached No.2 in the UK, prevented from reaching the top only by Madonna’s True Blue .

To mark the release of their 1988 album Peace In Our Time , Big Country’s management invested heavily in a promotional visit to the Soviet Union, flying more than 250 media folk on an expenses-paid junket to Moscow, where the band staged a series of self-promoted concerts at the Palace Of Sports. It was a bold and unprecedented idea which guaranteed an impressive crescendo of news exposure around the world. It also landed the group with a vast bill which their record company was prepared to foot only in part.

The album, produced and recorded by Peter Wolf in America, had a distinctly trans-Atlantic gloss. But although the sentiment was timely and well-intentioned, the Peace In Our Time  campaign was a promotional catastrophe. Released as a single, the title track was sold with postcards included for fans to send to the White House and the Kremlin demanding immediate action to secure world peace. Whatever impact this may have had on world leaders, it was not enough to lift the single beyond No.39 in the UK chart or to galvanise sales of the album, which made a brief appearance in the UK Top 10 before fading swiftly from view. Ironically, little more than a year later the Berlin Wall was demolished and the iron curtain lowered. Maybe those postcards had not been entirely in vain, after all.

Big Country returned from their Moscow adventure exhausted, dispirited and virtually bankrupt. The group officially split up, and even though they reconvened within a few weeks, Brzezicki would only re-join as a paid session man. The checked-shirt, bagpipe-guitar tag had turned into an artistic straitjacket well before this point and the band made a radical musical departure with their 1991 album No Place Like Home . The first single ‘Republican Party Reptile’ was more dustbowl blues than Highland fling and other tracks featured the banjo, mandolin and honky-tonk piano as the band explored an assortment of Americana traditions including country, folk and Southern blues. There were some fine moments on this underrated album, notably ‘The Hostage Speaks’, a song about Middle Eastern politics with an eerie, desert-baked riff that was at least a decade ahead of its time. But somewhere between Moscow and the Madrassas, the band had left behind a substantial chunk of their audience.

Having abandoned the formula which generated the mass-market sales of their heyday, Big Country embarked on a string of artistically rewarding but commercially underperforming albums including The Buffalo Skinners (1993), Why The Long Face (1995) and Driving To Damascus (1999). Looking back over this period, Watson declared it to be “The happiest time of our career. It was just the four of us, jeans, T-shirts, playing good rock music and being appreciated for it.”

But the journey was not so straightforward for Adamson. He moved to Nashville in 1996 where he teamed up with songwriter Marcus Hummon to form an alt.country duo called the Raphaels. Their debut album, Supernatural , was released in August 2001, by which time Big Country had already played a ‘Final Fling’ farewell tour before formally disbanding in October 2000.

As a recovering alcoholic who had remained sober for a decade, Adamson could not have chosen a worse moment to fall off the wagon. At the age of 43, he found himself without his band, estranged from his wife (who was filing for divorce) and due in court to face drunk-driving charges. He hanged himself in a hotel room in Honolulu on 16 December 2001.

Adamson’s life was celebrated at an emotional memorial concert in Glasgow in 2002 by his former bandmates from both Big Country and The Skids. And more recently his musical legacy has been revived in Big Country reunion tours in 2007 and 2010/11. A new Big Country album, The Journey , was released in 2013, written and recorded by a line-up comprising Brzezicki, Watson and Watson’s son Jamie on guitar, together with singer and guitarist Mike Peters (of The Alarm) and bass player Derek Forbes (of Simple Minds).

Words: David Sinclair

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Date ,  Location ,  Venue

O2 academy leicester, leicester , england, bath , england, wychwood festival, cheltenham , gloucestershire , england, alexander's live, chester , england, northern kin festival, thornley , durham , england, party at the palace, linlithgow , west lothian , scotland, tilford , farnham , england, the factory live, worthing , west sussex , england, swg3 galvanizers, glasgow , scotland, queen's hall, edinburgh , scotland, the foundry, sheffield , england, middlesbrough town hall, middlesbrough , north yorkshire , england, bury st edmunds , suffolk , england, swindon , wiltshire , england, limelight 2, belfast , northern ireland, dublin , rep. of ireland, cyprus avenue, cork , rep. of ireland, dolans warehouse, limerick , rep. of ireland, walsall arena, leamore , walsall , england, valĂšncia , spain.

Sophisticated Pop Tour. Support: China Crisis, The Blow Monkeys, & The Alarm

Sala La Riviera

Madrid , spain, sala razzmatazz, barcelona , spain, sala santana 27, bilbao , spain, boscombe , bournemouth , england, exeter , devon , england, princess pavilion, falmouth , cornwall , england, marine theatre, lyme regis , dorset , england, buckley , flintshire , wales, warrington , cheshire , england, keele university, newcastle-under-lyme , nr. stoke-on-trent , england, brewery arts centre, kendal , lancashire , england, old fire station, carlisle , cumbria , england, dorking halls, dorking , surrey , england, the brentwood centre, brentwood , essex , england, the engine shed, lincoln , england, hitchin , hertfordshire , england, perth concert hall, perth , scotland, aberdeen , scotland, the cresset, peterborough , cambridgeshire , england, the rockin' chair, wrexham , wales.

Moved from 3rd May.

Glen Pavilion

Dunfermline , fife , scotland.

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big country tour 1982

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big country tour 1982

IMAGES

  1. Big Country

    big country tour 1982

  2. Big Country Collection 1982-1988

    big country tour 1982

  3. Big Country at The Peppermint Lounge 1982. 5th ever show for the band

    big country tour 1982

  4. Big Country

    big country tour 1982

  5. David Rose's Gig Diaries: 4 BIG COUNTRY, Swindon Brunel Rooms

    big country tour 1982

  6. Big Country

    big country tour 1982

VIDEO

  1. In A Big Country (Live At Hammersmith Palais / 1983)

  2. The Big Country 1958

  3. The Old House

  4. Big Country

  5. The Big Country

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COMMENTS

  1. 1982

    Support for Alice Cooper's Armed Force's tour : 12 February 1982: Original lineup breaks up. Record demo tape for Phonogram Records. Stuart Adamson, Guitar /vocals. Mark Brzezicki, Drums. Tony Butler, Bass. ... 12 May 1982: Big Country sign recording contract: 22 May 1982: Start recording the first album with Chris Thomas, Bill Price and ...

  2. Big Country Concert & Tour History (Updated for 2024)

    Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. May 31, 2024. Upcoming. Buy Tickets. Wychwood Music Festival. The Feeling / The Hoosiers / Big Country / Pip Blom / Esther Manito / Andrew White / Stornoway / Barrioke / Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer / Noasis - a Trib. to Oasis / Junior Jungle. Cheltenham Racecourse. Cheltenham, United Kingdom. Apr 27, 2024.

  3. Big Country Concert Map by year: 1982

    1982 (38) Tours. Show all tours. 25th Anniversary Tour 2007 (19) 80's Invasion (15) Best of Tour 2017 (36) Crossing The Country Tour (19) Crossing The Solent Tour (1) Dreams Stay With You Tour 2011 (30) Driving to Damascus Tour 1999 (12) ... The Best of Big Country Tour 2015 (56)

  4. Big Country Tour Statistics: 1982

    The Best of Big Country Tour 2015 (56) The Buffalo Skinners Tour 1993 (76) The Crossing 35th Anniversary Tour (29) The Crossing Tour 1983 (103) The Crossing Tour 1984 (36) The Final Fling Tour 2000 (28) The Journey Tour (95) The Seer 30th Anniversay Tour (30) The Seer Tour (82) Through a Big Country Tour 1990 (13) US Tour 2020 (8)

  5. Big Country in Concert 1982 to 1987

    Big Country in Concert 1982 to 1986 Stuart Adamson formed Big Country after leaving the Skids, and in my view their work far surpassed his earlier band. The Skids were a fun live band, very much a product of the punk era, whereas Big Country were much more innovative and adventurous. It was clear that Stuart was the musical driving force behind ...

  6. Big Country

    Big Country are a Scottish rock band formed in Dunfermline, ... The culmination was a concert at the Glen Pavilion in Dunfermline and an interview with BBC Radio Scotland where the CBS Studio demos were utilised. The band then played live with Alice Cooper's Special Forces tour for two concerts in February 1982 at Brighton and Birmingham.

  7. Big Country Average Setlists of year: 1982

    The Best of Big Country Tour 2015 (56) The Buffalo Skinners Tour 1993 (76) The Crossing 35th Anniversary Tour (29) The Crossing Tour 1983 (103) The Crossing Tour 1984 (36) The Final Fling Tour 2000 (28) The Journey Tour (95) The Seer 30th Anniversay Tour (30) The Seer Tour (82) Through a Big Country Tour 1990 (13) US Tour 2020 (8)

  8. Homepage

    The Collection 1982-1988 Best of Big Country In A Big Country Master Series Kings of Emotion (A Diverse Collection) Under Cover Millennium Series One In A Million Greatest 12" Hits ... BIG COUNTRY TOUR DATES ----- LATEST PAGE EDITS ----- New Release!!! Why The Long Face (Record Store Day LP) The Great Divide Podcast Episode 98 ...

  9. Big Country

    Live at the Brixton Ace, December 16, 1982 supporting Spear of Destiny, from the TV show 'Whatever You Want', this was Big Country's first TV appearance. Foo...

  10. Big Country

    Big Country came into view at the start of the 1980s with a tartan soul-stirring sound that reinvented the Celtic tradition in rock music. ... released in 1982, was a harbinger of the hits to come ...

  11. Official Website of Big Country

    Big Country celebrate the 40th anniversary of 'Steeltown', their acclaimed second studio LP, along with very special guests The Icicle Works. Tickets on sale NOW! 👉👉 bit.ly/BigCountry-Steeltown More shows to be announced soon. ... Big Country 'Return To Steeltown' Tour with special guest support The Alarm's Mike Peters. Get tickets 👉 ...

  12. 1983

    Bradford. Caesars. 24 April 1983. Start recording 1st album for the second time at RAK and The Manor Studios. This time with Steve Lillywhite producing and Will Gosling engineering. Chegger's plays Pop - In a Big Country. Top of the Pops - In A Big Country. GMTV - In a Big Country. The Switch - Chance, The Storm.

  13. New dates for 40th Anniversary Tour

    @BigCountryUK 'Return To Steeltown' 40th Anniversary Tour 1984-2024 + Special Guests: Mike Peters of @thealarm đŸŽ¶ Big Country will be performing songs from the album as well as the classic hits and live favourites!

  14. Big Country

    On March 9, 1982, Big Country laid down what would be the first ever recordings with the 'classic' line up.What you're hearing here is basically Stuart and B... On March 9, 1982, Big Country laid ...

  15. Big Country Concert Setlist at Wembley Arena, London on December 2

    Big Country Wembley Arena, London - Dec 3, 1982 Dec 03 1982 Big Country Wembley Arena, London - Dec 4, 1982 Dec 04 1982 Last updated: 22 Jan 2024, 18:06 Etc/UTC

  16. The Gigs

    @BigCountryUK 'Return To Steeltown' 40th Anniversary Tour 1984-2024 + Special Guests: Mike Peters of @thealarm đŸŽ¶ Big Country will be performing songs from the album as well as the classic hits and live favourites!

  17. Travel to Russia, Tours & Vacation Packages 2024

    We are glad to provide the biggest pack of guided tours to Russia with 87 destinations including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Karelia, Siberia, Kamchatka, Baikal, Altai, and many other popular regions. Book one of 6100+ tours from local organizers and visit Big Country to take inspiration from its beauty. Big Country Travel is a national tour ...

  18. Index of Releases

    Big Country Lyrics, Discography & More. Home; Lyrics. Originals; Covers; Solos (Alphabetical by Song) Solos ... Crossing The Country (2012 Tour USB Series) ... At The BBC ƒ 1982-08-12 ƒ 1983-03-09 Æ 1983-06-27 Æ 1983-08-26 Æ 1984-06-28 Æ 1988-09-21 Æ 1989-01-23:

  19. Stavropol

    The name Stavropol (Russian: ĐĄŃ‚Đ°ÌĐČŃ€ĐŸĐżĐŸĐ»ŃŒ) is a Russian rendering of the Greek name, Stauropolis ( Greek: ÎŁÏ„Î±Ï…ÏÎżÏÏ€ÎżÎ»Îčς 'City of the Cross'). According to legend, soldiers found a stone cross there while building the fortress in the city's future location. [14] It is unrelated to Byzantine Stauroupolis (ancient Aphrodisias ...

  20. THE BEST Things to Do in Svetlograd

    Things to Do in Svetlograd, Russia: See Tripadvisor's 12 traveler reviews and photos of Svetlograd tourist attractions. Find what to do today, this weekend, or in April. We have reviews of the best places to see in Svetlograd. Visit top-rated & must-see attractions.

  21. Tours to Stavropol territory 2024: Adventurous Trips and Vacation

    Discover the untamed beauty of Stavropol territory, Russia with Big Country Travel. As the official tour operator for incoming tourism, we offer comfortable and active tours in Russia. Book your adventure today and immerse yourself in the wild wonders of Russia! We are looking for long-term partnership with foreign travel agencies. ...

  22. Big Country Concert Map by year: 1984

    1982 (38) Tours. Show all tours. 25th Anniversary Tour 2007 (19) 80's Invasion (15) Best of Tour 2017 (36) Crossing The Country Tour (19) ... The Best of Big Country Tour 2015 (56) The Buffalo Skinners Tour 1993 (76) The Crossing 35th Anniversary Tour (29) The Crossing Tour 1983 (103)

  23. Big Country Tour Statistics: 1985

    View the statistics of songs played live by Big Country. Have a look which song was played how often in 1985! setlist.fm Add Setlist. Search Clear ... 1982 (38) Tours. Show all tours. 25th Anniversary Tour 2007 (19) 80's Invasion (15) ... Through a Big Country Tour 1990 (13) US Tour 2020 (8) Under Wraps UK Tour 1987 (14)