Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Big Country
The Crossing
(Mercury, 1983)
"In a big country, dreams stay with you..."
There were few things we agreed on during that family touring holiday of Scotland in 1983, but one of them was the in-car entertainment. Purchased on tape, from Woolworth's, at a Crack Down price, on the day of release, Big Country's The Crossing became, thanks to a faulty car radio aerial, the sole musical soundtrack for a ten-day sightseeing trip into the Scottish highlands. As a result, The Crossing has become one of those albums that, through a strange combination of Proustian hoodoo and the healing balm of memory, bypasses the critical faculties. Yes, I hear Mark Brzezicki's horrible gated drums, and Steve Lillywhite's grand, eager-to-please empty-ballroom production on opening track, In A Big Country, I just choose not to acknowledge them, or allow them into the hazy, romantic glimmerings where the cloud-capped mountains, ruined castles and vast mist-shrouded lochs of the A82 are forever sound-tracked by the Cinemascope grandeur of Stuart Adamson's bellowing Braveheart vocals and the cold-wind skirl of Bruce Watson and Adamson's E-bow driven guitar harmonics. Perhaps inevitably, listened to again for the purposes of this DOTD, The Crossing also reveals itself to be a deeply melancholy album, an album for ever in search of sunlight, wide skies and open spaces yet burdened with the milled shackles of ill weather, ancient myth, John Buchanesque supernatural curses, and romantic misfortune. Adamson was found dead in a hotel room in Hawaii on 16 December 2001. 7000 thousand miles away from the deep, dark landscape of The Crossing, but still, clearly, under heavy clouds.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 06/01/2011
Further Listening
The Skids – Scared to Dance (Virgin, 1978)
Big Country – Driving to Damascus (SPV, 1999)
Aztec Camera – High Land, Hard Rain (Rough Trade, 1983)
Previous Disc of the day
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-
Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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-
Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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Comments
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Well done Mojo, that wasn't so hard was it?! ;-)
Posted by Simon Cowell at 5:17 PM GMT 06/01/2011 Report Abuse
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A well deserving Disc of the Day selection. I'll be diggging this and Driving to Damascus out to play tonight.
Posted by Bokonon at 7:32 PM GMT 06/01/2011 Report Abuse
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Yes this was a great album. Stuart is a sad loss.
Check out Bill Nelson's tribute to the man (For Stuart - Trimuph and Lament)
Posted by Alan Legge at 7:01 PM GMT 05/06/2011 Report Abuse
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Yes this was a great album. Stuart is a sad loss.
Check out Bill Nelson's tribute to the man (For Stuart - Triumph and Lament)
Posted by Alan Legge at 7:03 PM GMT 05/06/2011 Report Abuse
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