second round

(11) Big Country, “In a Big Country”
OUTSMARTED
(14) Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love”
393-264
AND WILL PLAY IN THE SWEET 16

Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the aggregate of the poll below and the @marchxness twitter poll. Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/16/23.

SCOTT EDWARD ANDERSON: STUDIO LOG: THE TOM TOM CLUB’S “GENIUS OF LOVE,” A MEMOIR AND EXPOSITION IN 18 TRACKS

ARTIST: TOM TOM CLUB
PRODUCER: SCOTT EDWARD ANDERSON 
TITLE: “GENIUS OF LOVE”
DATE: MARCH 2023

TRACK 01: “MY NEW WAVE TRANSFORMATION” | DEADPANTS AND HEATWAVE

April 1980. My pal Doug and I make our way to NYC to check out the music scene. We arrive just prior to a major transit strike. Doug and I bonded over music through our high school Radio Club in suburban Rochester. This trip—where we also meet the street artist known as Adam Purple—is part of a musical awakening for me that started with Devo’s performance of “Satisfaction” on SNL in October 1978. (See Erin Belieu’s excellent essay on that song from last year’s MF.) Doug brought the record into school the following Monday so we could play it on the air. 
We’d heard about the Mudd Club and CBGBs and decided to check it out for ourselves. Up until that time, I’d been a hippie wannabe—born on the tail end of boomerdom, my musical tastes had been shaped by my baby boomer aunt and uncle, Liz (The Beatles) and Buzzy (70s glam rock); my father’s best friend Carl Boren, who moonlighted as a DJ known as “The Ghost,” and who had the most amazing record collection I’d ever seen (he was the first to turn me on to Harry Nilsson’s “Nilsson Schmilsson,” still an all-time favorite); and my father’s 45 collection (now in my possession) consisting mostly of 50s doo-wop, Elvis, Sam Cooke, Motown, and early rock and roll. My father also passed on his love of Johnny Cash, which somewhat ironically led me to an obsession with Bob Dylan after his appearance on Cash’s primetime TV variety show. My stepmother Sandra’s collection of iconic late 60s-early 70s LPs—Neil Young, CSN, CSNY, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, and the Woodstock Soundtrack—rounded-out my musical tastes, along with my friend Lindsay who turned me into a mid-to-late 70s Deadhead. All that is about to change with this trip to NYC.
Mudd Club, CBGBs, the grit and grime of New York, the stench of the urine-soaked subway, graffiti everywhere, and all the used record shops and bookstores and vintage clothing shops. I fall in love. I cut my hair, form a punk band we call Deadpants, and enter a battle of the bands at the Monroe County Fair in the Summer of 1980. (See reference below.) We take Third Place against some country bands by performing a butchered quasi-punk-Beatles take on Buddy Holly’s “Crying Waiting Hoping” and a song called “Surf Ohio,” which I wrote (under the pseudonym “Iggy Stamp”) with our drummer, who went by the nom de drum, “The Mouse.” I am 16 years old.
A funny thing happens later that summer: we meet Jan & Dean (of “Surf City” fame) at the House of Guitars in Rochester and pitch the song to them. They are interested, but Jan struggles with drug addiction and it never happens. Here are the lyrics to “Surf Ohio”:

Some say Honolulu is the place to be,
But Cincinnati and Akron will suffice for me.
Come on and go Surf Ohio
It’s the place to be!
Come on Surf Ohio
Won’t you come along with me?
Surf, surf, surf, Surf Ohio (oh, baby!)
Surf, surf, surf, Surf Ohio (place to be)
Surf, surf, Surf Ohio,
Come on baby let’s go down,
Let’s go surfing on the ground!

Some say California is the only one,
But give me Cleveland or Ol’ Dayton.
Come on and go Surf Ohio
It’s the place to be!
Come on Surf Ohio
Won’t you come along with me?
Surf, surf, surf, Surf Ohio (oh, baby!)
Surf, surf surf, Surf Ohio (place to be)
Surf, surf, Surf Ohio,
Come on baby let’s go down,
Let’s go surfing on the ground!

The drinking age there may be 21,
But stomping on the beach can be a lot of fun.
Come on and go Surf Ohio
It’s the place to be!
Come on Surf Ohio
Won’t you come along with me?
Surf, surf, surf, Surf Ohio (oh, baby!)
Surf, surf, surf, Surf Ohio (place to be)
Surf, surf, Surf Ohio,
Come on baby let’s go down,
Let’s go surfing on the ground!

Well, the Banzai Pipeline is for surfer fiends,
But give me a sewer on the Erie Scene.
Come on and go Surf Ohio
It’s the place to be!
Come on Surf Ohio
Won’t you come along with me?
Surf, surf, surf, Surf Ohio (oh, baby!)
Surf, surf, surf, Surf Ohio (place to be)
Surf, surf, Surf Ohio,
Come on baby let’s go down,
Let’s go surfing on the ground!

(lyrics copyright 1980 Iggy Stamp and The Mouse)

That is my first missed opportunity to be a “one-hit wonder.”

Later that August, Doug and I and a group of others drive North to Canada for the Heatwave Festival at Mosport Park outside Toronto, where we see Elvis Costello, the B52s, Talking Heads, the Pretenders, Rockpile, the Rumour (without Graham Parker), and Canadian bands Teenage Head and The Kings. The Clash are supposed to be on the bill as well, but rumor has it they get detained at the border for some reason. (Someone else says later the Clash were pissed that Elvis Costello got top billing and not them.) The festival is called the “New Wave Woodstock,” we are in post-punk heaven. I move to NYC that Fall and never look back.

TRACK 02: TOM TOM CLUB, “ONE-HIT WONDER OR….?”

People say I’m a one-hit wonder
But what happens when I have two? 

—Sharon Van Etten, “Every Time the Sun Comes Up”

Tom Tom Club had two hits, actually, so I’m not sure they qualify for the category of “one-hit wonder,” unless you restrict it to the Billboard Hot 100. “Wordy Rappinghood,” their first single for Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, made it to #7 in the UK.
Tom Tom Club was a side project of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, the drummer and bass player of  Talking Heads, and came about when David Byrne and Jerry Harrison decided to work on some solo projects after Talking Heads’ Remain in Light.

TRACK 03: “WORDY RAPPINGHOOD” | TOM TOM CLUB

Sometime in the summer of ’81. I walk into a club to hear someone tapping a typewriter over the PA, followed by a funky synth and steady, simple drumbeat. Then a bit of what sounds like Yoko Ono sing-saying, “What are words worth? What are words worth? Words.” Immediately followed by a monotone, Nico-influenced laconic “rap” about “Words in papers, words in books/ Words on TV, words for crooks,” then a bit of French thrown in. The rhymes are sometimes fantastic, sometimes forced. The beat is funky and synthy and fun. It’s catchy and I find myself hearing it in all the clubs, Hurrah!, Mudd Club, Danceteria, Palladium, Pyramid, and Club57. What is this? When I ask a DJ spinning the disc he tells me it’s a band called Tom Tom Club, which I later learn consists of one half of Talking Heads.

TRACK 04: “NATURAL SOURCE” | GILDA RADNER

Spring 1981. One of my first jobs in New York is as a baker’s assistant at Natural Source, a small upscale bakery on West 72nd St and Columbus Ave. Most of my time is spent running baked goods from the kitchen on 71st and hand-trucking tubs of ice cream from the basement to the shop on the corner.
The early 80s are a potent, gentrifying time on Columbus Avenue and the Upper West Side. New York Magazine dubs it the “New Left Bank,” pointing to Charivari’s high-end fashion store, the original Silver Palate restaurant, numerous galleries, and even a Texas bootery called “To Boot.”  (I still have a pair of Noconas they threw out because of a tear in the snakeskin.)
I learn a lot about baking from the baker, a woman named Lesley who later went on to work for Sarabeth’s Kitchen. (We sold Sarabeth’s marmalade when she was still making it out of her apartment.) I also learn a valuable lesson about customer service.
Occasionally, during my runs I find the shop crowded and offer to lend a hand at the counter. The counter crew don’t like a bakery “runner” crowding in on their territory and tips, so I do it sparingly. One time, a woman dressed as a bag lady comes in. No one waits on her.
“Can I help you?”
“I’ll take the ugliest pastries you have,” says the woman. 
“We don’t carry ugly pastries, lady,” the impatient counter help replies. “Why don’t you try another store.”
The woman looks annoyed. I step in and offer, “If you want ugly pastry, come back with me to the kitchen. We’ve got a bunch that will just be tossed otherwise.” Counter-help glares at me.
She follows me to 71st Street. I explain the situation to Lesley, and she gives me a paper bag full of discards. Back on the street, I hand it to the woman.
“Thanks, sonny,” she says, adding, “Do you know who I am?” She looks familiar, but I can’t  place her. Frankly, she looks like every other bag lady on the Upper West Side. I shake my head. She tosses hers back and shouts, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
After that, whenever the “bag lady,” Gilda Radner, comes by the shop, she asks for me (she always calls me “Sonny”) and I bring her the ugliest pastry discards I can find. I never tell anyone at the store who she is; it’s our little secret.

TRACK 05: ORIGIN OF “GENIUS OF LOVE” (TAKE 1)

“Tina wrote some amazing words in tribute to our favorite soul, funk, and reggae artists, but wanted a third verse,” Chris Frantz writes in his memoir, Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina. “I gave her these closing lines: ‘He’s the genius of love, he’s got a greater depth of feeling. Well, he’s the genius of love. He’s so deep!’ She loved it and declared me a genius!”

TRACK 06: “GOSSAMER WING” | THE BREAKFAST CLUB

Another early job of mine in NYC. I’m working for the design company Gossamer Wing in the Garment District, hand-painting silk for Mary McFadden and Anne Klein dresses, and chamois shirts for Ralph Lauren. One of the designers, Dan Gilroy, has a band called the Breakfast Club, for which a young Italian American woman from Michigan plays the drums. Madonna Ciccone tells everyone, including me, that she’ll be famous one day. Yeah, right, I think. Me too. 

TRACK 07: ORIGIN OF “GENIUS OF LOVE” (TAKE 2)

Tina Weymouth sings and co-wrote “Genius of Love,” but she didn’t play the bass on the recording even though she wrote the bassline. “When it was time to do that track my whole right arm seized up in a terrible cramp, and I couldn’t play,” she told Bassplayer.com. “I had never played in the studio around the clock like we were doing, so I didn’t even know that could happen. I ended up waking the assistant engineer—he was asleep under the console—and I showed him the part, and he played it. Chris was mad, but I really couldn’t play; my hand wouldn’t even close.”

TRACK 08: “GOTTA DANCE (DANCE IT AWAY)” | ACTIVE DRIVEWAY

Early ‘82. My own band, Active Driveway, for which I play bass and sing, this time under the pseudonym Dash Beatcomber, releases a cassette-only single called “Gotta Dance (Dance It Away),” which gets a lot of airplay on WFUV and WFMU. This is as close as I get to being a one-hit wonder. The song is a curious mashup of post-punk, Nina Hagen, and The Cramps. We never get a record deal.
Here’s our entry from the web page, “Lost Rochester Bands”—I still don’t know who wrote and posted it (https://rocwiki.org/Lost_Rochester_Bands):

Active Driveway - early 80s post-punk band that emerged from the ashes of Deadpants (“Surf Ohio”) and that bands’ triumph at the Monroe County Fair in the summer of 1980. Active Driveway featured the pseudonymous Dash Beatcomber (fretless bass, lead vocals), Dora Brilliant (vocals), Joshu (guitar), and Keith Fraemont (drums, tape effects) and had a popular post-punk song, “Gotta Dance (Dance It Away),” which was in heavy rotation on WFUV (90.7, NYC) in 1981-82. The unique vocal styling of Beatcomber and Brilliant was influenced by Nina Hagen, Lene Lovich, Yoko Ono, the Flying Lizards, and Public Image, Ltd., while Fraemont and Joshu were the musical backbone of the group. The duo brought a heavy guitar and drum sound to Active Driveway’s cover of The Who’s “My Generation” and early “sampling” experiments utilized on “Can You Teach Me to Fly Like That? (Jonathan Livingston Seagull).” While associated with the Rochester scene, the band also had tentacles in New York City and Cleveland, Ohio, including possibly opening for the Psychedelic Furs. Their exploits were frequently covered by Rockstop Magazine, which was started in part to promote this and other projects of Beatcomber’s alter-ego. Active Driveway recorded and released their music (“Active Driveway: Do Not Stop”) on the cassette-only indie label, Sorry Kitten Records. They disbanded in 1985 after recording now-lost versions of an original “Blondes On Bikes” (Beatcomber/Joshu) and a [sic] early alt-country cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”

TRACK 09: ORIGIN OF “GENIUS OF LOVE” (TAKE 3)

“For ‘Genius of Love,’ Tina played the Prophet 5 part, the dee-deet of bar one, then the dee-deet of bar two, and repeated that two-bar pattern for the whole song,” Chris Frantz writes in Remain in Love. “I then added the corresponding syncopated deet-deet that led back to the downbeat of Tina’s dee-deets of bar two. Simple, but powerful. We made a pretty good team.”

TRACK 10: ORIGIN OF “GENIUS OF LOVE” (TAKE 4)

“After building a number of basic tracks, we invited Adrian Belew down to Compass Point to play some guitar,” Frantz writes in Remain in Love. “Monte [sic] Brown came to the studio again to play a lilting Bahamian-style rhythm guitar part on ‘Genius of Love.’ This sat well in the groove along with Adrian’s snaking, slithery picking part.”

TRACK 11: ORIGIN OF “GENIUS OF LOVE” (TAKE 5)

“It probably took two 16-hour days to complete, but once we had the bass and drums, we already knew we had a hit,” Chris Frantz said in an interview for Songfacts. “Usually, you wouldn’t say, ‘This is a hit,’ because you don’t want to jinx it, but I think everybody in the room knew it.”

TRACK 12: “WHEELS OF STEEL” | 434 COPY CENTER

Summer of ’82. I’m the manager of 434 Copy Center on 6th Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets. Actually, I’m co-manager, sharing duties with Renée, a young Black woman from BedStuy. We are an eclectic, mixed-race crew and, after closing, a bunch of us often go over to the Roxy, where Kool Lady Blue hosts her “Wheels of Steel” parties. We dance the night away to early hip-hop like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” “Planet Rock” by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, and reggae-influenced New Wave like Blondie’s “Rapture” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police. There is one song, however, that we can’t stop grooving to: “Genius of Love” by Tom Tom Club.
The record came out in the Fall of ‘81, yet the previous summer discs imported from the UK started making the rounds. (They sell over 100,000 copies of the single as imports before getting a record contract in the States.) Soon it is everywhere, spilling out of boomboxes on the basketball courts on West 4th St., on subways, and anywhere that plays WBLS. 
Later that year, the song’s captivating groove starts showing up in samples on other songs. Sampling is a new technique we’d experimented with in Active Driveway (as alluded to above) by taking a spoken-word record of Richard Harris reading from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, for our track called, “Can You Teach Me to Fly Like That?” 
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde’s “Genius Rap” is among the first to sample “Genius of Love,” along with Grandmaster Flash’s “It’s Nasty.”
“Genius of Love” is still, after four decades, one of the most sampled records, including songs by such artists as Mariah Carey, the X-Ecutioners, Snoop Dog, Busta Rhymes, 50 Cent, Ice Cube, 2Pac and the Outlawz, Warren G, and even, most recently, Latto with “Big Energy.” Ziggy Marley also used it—with the help of Weymouth and Frantz, who produced the record, a remix of “Tumblin’ Down,” for his Conscious Party album.

TRACK 13: ORIGIN OF “GENIUS OF LOVE” (TAKE 6)

The funky groove of “Genius of Love” owes a lot to Zapp’s “More Bounce to the Ounce,” which came out the year before, and is matched by the cute white-girl rapping of Tina Weymouth and her sisters, paying tribute to Black singers and musicians like Bootsy Collins and George Clinton of P-Funk, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Sly and Robbie, Kurtis Blow (“who needs to think when your feet just go?”), and disco drummer Hamilton Bohannon (himself a one-hit wonder with his 1975 single, “Foot-Stompin’ Music,” which hit the Billboard Hot 100), and, of course, James Brown. The lyrics were as catchy as the riff. 
“It’s beyond an earworm,” as Chris Frantz told Vanity Fair. “We got lucky.”

TRACK 14: ROCKSTOP! MAGAZINE AND MTV | DASH BEATCOMBER

Fall 1982. I launch a magazine (really, a ‘zine) called Rockstop! (which I maintain you can interpret two ways: “Rock’s Top” or “Stop Rock,” take your pick) mostly to promote Active Driveway (see reference above). We take the name Active Driveway because there is free advertising on garage doors all over New York City—we don’t stop to consider that no one will realize it’s advertising for a band.
The shop owners at 434 let me print copies of the magazine in our off hours, which we distribute free in the same record shops, used bookstores, and vintage clothing shops I’d discovered on that trip two years earlier. I even enlist my UK friend, Shabir, who we’d picked up hitchhiking to Canada on our way to the Heatwave Festival back in 1980 (he got stopped at the border because his passport was stolen in Texas), to write about the British music scene, turning our readers onto what was happening across the Pond.
Creativity is in the air, despite it being the Reagan Years or perhaps because it is the Reagan Years, and the threat of the Cold War and Nuclear annihilation still looms. What else do we have? One of the regular customers at 434 is the design team that creates the logo for MTV, which has just launched. I get chummy with one of the designers and they ask me to appear in a commercial they are shooting for MTV-branded merchandise. Somewhere in a vault (I hope not!) is a video of me sporting a red hoodie with a yellow MTV logo, acting as a sports team coach complete with a clipboard and a whistle. (Years later, I become that coach when I take the helm of my kids’ Little League teams.)

TRACK 15: “GENIUS OF LOVE” ON THE CHARTS

• #1 Billboard Disco Top 80

• #2 Hot Soul Singles Chart

• #31 Billboard Hot 100

TRACK 16: FOUR STAND-OUT PERFORMANCES OF “GENIUS OF LOVE” WORTH CHECKING OUT ON YOUTUBE:

1. The original music video for the song (apparently one of the few music videos Frank Zappa liked), featuring original drawings by Jimmy Rizzi.

2. Jeffrey “Twirlee Dee Lite” Dollison spinning and juggling a basketball to “Genius of Love” on Soul Train.

3. Tom Tom Club’s appearance in the film Stop Making Sense. They performed on that tour during a costume change for David Byrne to put on his famous “big suit.”

4. The group’s Tiny Desk concert acoustic version for NPR, which also includes “Wordy Rappinghood” and “Only The Strong Survive.”

TRACK 17: “WHO FEELIN’ IT” | TOM TOM CLUB

1999: Tom Tom Club release a kind of sequel to “Genius of Love,” called “Who Feelin’ It,” updating their list of influences to include the Beastie Boys, Grandmaster Flash, the Fugees, Al Green, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Fela Kuti, Afrika Bambaataa, Manu D’Bango, Bernie Worrell, and Lee “Scratch” Perry, who they wanted to produce the original “Genius of Love,” but their signals got crossed and it never happened.

TRACK 18: “WHILE THE CAT’S AWAY” | THE BROTHERS FROM THE SAME MOTHA

Late 1986. I quit music and move to Germany and Paris. While I’m away, one of my brothers sells my guitars, basses, and amps; another brother steals a large part of my record collection, which he still has, although he denies it. They think I’m never coming back? Tom Tom Club is one LP not pilfered. “Genius of Love” is Track 02.

Scott Edward Anderson is an award-winning poet, memoirist, essayist, and translator. He is the author of Wine-Dark Sea: New & Selected Poems & Translations (2022), Azorean Suite/Suite Açoriana (2020), the Nautilus Award-winning Dwelling: an ecopoem (2018), and two books of nonfiction, including Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances (2019) and Walks in Nature’s Empire (1995). Find him @greenskeptic

adam o. davis on “in a big country”

I’M NOT EXPECTING TO GROW FLOWERS IN THE DESERT

This may be true. A long time ago, a group of intrepid Scots, fed up with Viking pillaging and English incursion, built a boat and sailed west into parts unknown. After months of seafaring, the unknown part they encountered was what would come to be called Florida. Paradisical as it may be to the contemporary European tourist, it was not then to those wanderlusting Scots. This was before Miami, before DEET, before Epcot. The weather was too hot and the alligators too dragon-like. So said Scots got back into their boat and headed north where they found a craggy outpost of frigid rock and, finding it so much like home, named it Nova Scotia. New Scotland. And there they remained for centuries in a familiar cold far, far away from the prospect of vacation rentals and fan boats.

I CAN LIVE AND BREATHE AND SEE THE SUN IN WINTERTIME

The title of Big Country’s biggest hit, “In a Big Country,” achieves the rare feat of namechecking the band that performs it without sounding trite (consider how poorly U2 might have fared with “With or Without U2” or Queen with “Queen Will Rock You” or Def Leppard with “Pour Some Sugar on Joe Elliot”). It creates a kind of aural Droste effect: Big Country plays a song about being in a big country which may be Big Country. Or, the land is the band is the land. And the band is of the land. Formed in 1981 between the Firth of Tay and Firth of Fourth—right where the upper teeth would be in the anthropomorphic mouth of the old Walker’s crisps adverts—Big Country sounds Scottish. Deeply Scottish. But it ain’t because of the bagpipes. Namely because there are none.

IN A BIG COUNTRY DREAMS STAY WITH YOU

Scotland is an iconoclastic country. Idiosyncratic and proud. Where Cola-Cola comes in second to the national soda of choice, Irn-Bru, whose famously rusty hue (“Made in Scotland from girders”)—the result of two colorants that require a warning label about the potential for causing ADHD in children—is so potent at staining carpets (and everything else) that it has, according to The Scotsman, “become the liquid of choice among unscrupulous individuals looking to fool their insurance firms.” This mixture of national pride and stubborn defiance is something of a Scottish hallmark. The kind of polarity that makes for potent mixture of myth and commerce, particularly when applied to the more unique aspects of Scottish culture. Say Scotch. Or bagpipes. Or tartans. Or Nessie, haggis, Robert Burns, shortbread, Irvine Welsh novels, the proper maintenance of dilithium crystals, and the best James Bond ever. In this, there’s something indisputably tangible about the idea of Scotland in the things of Scotland—or, at least, the ideas foreigners have about Scotland (particularly those foreigners who, like me, claim Scottish ancestry). An idea that has something to do with longing. Longing for old places. And for new ones.

THAT’S A DESPERATE WAY TO LOOK FOR SOMEONE WHO IS STILL A CHILD

My middle initial stands for Ogilvie. The name of the Scottish clan my ancestors belonged to. They had a castle (in ruins), a tartan (quite tasteful), and a motto (“a fin,” Latin for “to the end”). They were, I’ve been told, horse thieves and priests. The horse thieves were hanged. It’s upon this past that I hang my hedging ways—he who’d love to be a bankrobber if only he could handle the guilt. But there’s another version of this story. One without piety and executions and in their place a bit of social climbing, a man looking to move up in the world by adopting his wife’s name as his own. A tale of aspiration rather than expiration. Less fun that the first but more honest. How a person finds their way out of one life and into another. What they give up to get somewhere better.

YOU CAN’T STAY HERE WITH EVERY SINGLE HOPE YOU HAD SHATTERED

Big Country is a tale of two bands. The first—the Skids—begat the second—the aforementioned B.C. Despite commercial success and opening for The Clash, Stuart Adamson was frustrated by the lack of creative control he had in the Skids, so he gave it up and found new bandmates—guitarist Bruce Watson, bassist Tony Butler, and drummer Mark Brzezicki—and named his new band Big Country. In doing so, he named the sound and the weight of his ambition. Something epic, something Scottish, something that would redeem the dreams he held for the sonic landscape in his head. Knowing this, in “In a Big Country,” I believe Adamson’s singing to Adamson, exhorting himself Mickey Goldmill-style to rise up from off the floor screaming and fulfill his musical promise. To keep striving against the odds. To succeed. The plea is equal parts desperation, defiance, and hope. And it worked. And then it didn’t.

SO TAKE THAT LOOK OUT OF HERE IT DOESN’T FIT YOU

If there was a shadow over Big Country, it was U2 though, ironically, U2 had initially been in their shadow—or at least debt. If Adamson’s first band was an inspiration to U2 (who covered their song, “The Saints Are Coming,” with Green Day in 2006), his second band was their doppelgänger. Outside of the Edge’s jangling atmospherics there’s no more iconic guitar sound from the 1980s than that of Stuart Adamson’s Fender Stratocaster filtered through many a foot pedal. And in the beginning it seemed that the scales of success were tipped in Big Country’s favor. John Peel, the legendary British musical kingmaker, rejected U2’s advances but praised Adamson as “a new Jimi Hendrix.” Even the Edge went on to claim at Adamson’s funeral that Big Country wrote the songs U2 wished they had written. Both bands even the same producer—Steve Lillywhite—who in 1983 produced U2’s War, Simple Mind’s Sparkle in the Rain, and Big Country’s The Crossing. There was no doubt this band could deliver. And they did. And then, somehow, it wasn’t enough. Part of it was timing. Burnt out by the band’s success and drinking too much, Adamson threatened to quit Big Country in 1985. Though he may not have been serious, gossip turned it definitive and Bob Geldof, believing they’d broken up, didn’t invite them to perform at Live Aid where U2 played to tremendous results. Their star ascendant while Big Country’s faltered, perhaps also thanks to the flexibility they had that Big Country didn’t. Though deeply Irish, U2 never sounded Irish in the way Big Country sounded Scottish. They slipped musical skins while Big Country proudly grew further into theirs. They were the country and the country was them.

CRY OUT FOR EVERYTHING YOU EVER MIGHT HAVE WANTED

How to create a hit Scottish single:

Exhibit A: The Proclaimer’s “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”

Exhibit B: Travis’ “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?”

Exhibit C: Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out”

Exhibit D: Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping”

Each song is a stone-cold Caledonian classic whose beat is that of a military tattoo (sometimes lilting, sometimes lashing) and whose chorus is that of a Hibs match. But none of them surpass the anthemic beauty of “In a Big Country.” None can touch its ecstatic folk harmonies whose ear-blistering guitarwork threatens—but never falls into—anarchy. Though the aforementioned songs pack plenty of punch—The Proclaimer’s charmingly irreverent ambulatory romance, Travis’ rousing faux-miserable ode to precipitation, Franz Ferdinand’s stomping kata-like plea for love or assassination, and Chumbawamba’s deathless near-cyborgian promise of resurrection despite all manner of drink (be it whiskey, vodka, lager, or cider)—none can hold a candle to Big Country’s barbaric yawp delivered by way of an MXR Pitch Transposer (I repeat: There are no bagpipes in this song) that’s the musical equivalent of, God help me, William Wallace yelling alba gu bràth for four straight minutes. The song is pure rabblerousing joy. A cathartic scream against insignificance, against despair. A demented highland jig (see: the jaunty fling two be-denimed lads conduct onstage during a live performance by the band on The Tube) blasted out of a cannon as soon as the drums—rat-tat-tata-tat! rat-tat-tata-tat!—kick in. And that twin guitar attack. It’s like eagles. Like how eagles would shriek. If they were electronic and joyfully aflame.

ANOTHER PROMISE FALLEN THROUGH ANOTHER SEASON PASSES BY YOU

On December 29th, 1993, Big Country played a show at Glasgow’s Barrowlands. After thanking the audience and before launching into “In a Big Country,” Stuart Adamson says “I’ve got just one more thing to say. Stay alive.”

LIKE A LOVER’S VOICE FIRES THE MOUNTAINSIDE

Not shot in the Big Country itself but Dorset, the music video plays like a low-budget The Goonies. The band is on a treasure hunt. The treasure: a box marked BIG COUNTRY. But keeping Big Country from finding Big Country is a suitably emo PVC-clad woman who spends three-minutes-and-forty-five seconds committing robbery, setting houses on fire, punching the lead singer in the face for no reason, and totally smoking the band on their Zodiac raft as she blasts by on a Sea-Doo (have I mentioned how vehicle-heavy this video is?). But then she finds herself stranded in a cove where Adamson rescues her by abseiling (that’s rappelling to you Yanks) down a cliff for which he receives a chaste hug and some handholding. But! The drummer discovers the stolen box in a kelp bed. The band has found the treasure. The treasure of themselves. In the background of all this, the band performs in the kind of smoky, laser-lit netherworld all Thatcher-era bands were contractually obliged to film videos in. They play on as the song fades in that classic 1980’s way that suggests the song never ends. Which, in the case of this song, it never does. No matter where you might find yourself in the world, it’s on the radio somewhere. 

I THOUGHT PAIN AND TRUTH WERE THINGS THAT REALLY MATTERED

When considering the suicide of an artist the question inevitably arises: Did their work point to their end? Such thinking often provides for a kind of grieving hagiography whose emphasis on a throughline from art to death isn’t for the artist’s benefit but the audience’s. Ah, we say, now it all makes sense. Now we can move on. But “In a Big Country” isn’t a song you can move on from. There’s something tidal about it, the way it ebbs and flows between joy and despair—a tension that, when balanced right, makes for timeless tunes. How the propulsive, arpeggiated drive of the melody nearly overwhelms the lyrical darkness whose growing pleas to cry out for everything you might have ever wanted become more triumphant the more desperate they grow. A song that’s as much war cry as cry for help. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. As the band’s drummer, Mark Brzezicki told Classic Rock, “Only in hindsight I’ve started looking at the lyrics and I’m starting to go, ‘Hang on a minute—the writing’s there. This guy was saying it all along.’ Or was he? I don’t know.”

I NEVER TOOK THE SMILE AWAY FROM ANYBODY’S FACE

Roughly 300 million years ago, Scotland was a volcanic vacation spot slowly making way for the incoming Atlantic Ocean. Where once it had been fused to America and Europe, it would eventually head north where its tropical temperament would be cooled by ice sheets. Both Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat sit on extinct volcanoes so Oahu must have looked strangely familiar to the boy who had grown up in Dunfermline near the Lomond Hills. So far from home and yet home, this Scotsman seeking paradise. This Scotsman who, suffering increasingly from alcoholism, found the sun in wintertime. On December 16th, 2001, nearly a month after being reported missing, Adamson would be found dead in his Honolulu hotel room.

BECAUSE IT’S HAPPENED DOESN’T MEAN YOU’VE BEEN DISCARDED

Countries are ideas we give bodies to. Those bodies ideas we call home. Songs, too, are like countries. They speak to who we were before we became who we are and who we hope we might still become. Ambition and reality filtered through the alchemy of a name. “In a Big Country” is a country unto itself. A great country, this song-shaped country. That it was Big Country’s only top 20 American hit doesn’t diminish it—it makes it all the more precious. We have to hold tight to such miracles, such songs that demand, like Rilke demanded, that we change our lives. That we get up screaming. That we stay alive.

Adam O. Davis learned to read and write in Scotland. He’d also drink an Irn-Bru over a Coke any day of the week. He’s the author of Index of Haunted Houses (Sarabande, 2020), the recipient of the 2022 Poetry International Award and the 2016 George Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his work has appeared in The Believer, The Best American Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. More at www.adamodavis.com.