Elly Roberts reviews
Big Country: At Rockpalast – Live In Concert
Distributed by
WDR through Wienerworld
- Cat.no: WNRD2355
- Released: January 2006
- Format: 2*DVD 9
- Rating: 4/10 (Disc 1), 8/10 (Disc 2)
- Running time: 85 minutes (Disc 1), 112 mins (Disc 2)
- Region: 2, PAL
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 / Stereo 2.0
- Classification: E (Exempt)
- Languages: English & German
- Retail price: £17.99
For the first time ever on DVD,
come two Big Country concerts from Essen and
Bonn in Germany. Disc 1, Essen 1986, shows Scotland’s very own quartet
storming the Rockpalast with their inimitable fusion of punk and jangly
guitar work.
Frontman Stuart Adamson born in Manchester in 1958 formed the
band in Dunfermline in 1982 after the demise of the Skids in 1980. He took
Big Country on a 16 year journey of 23 top 100 hits. Despite their huge
popularity, the highest they peaked in the UK, was no.7 with Look Away in
’86. They did score a chart-topper with album Steeltown in ’84.
Garbed in a silver suit, the easy-going Adamson charmed the pants off the
fans. His often faltering voice was overshadowed by their trademark
bagpipe-like sound, pioneered by guitarist Bruce Watson, which, by the
latter ‘80s had lost its appeal.
Rolling out 8 singles and numerous album
tracks, it includes a preview of forthcoming anthemic single Look Away,
their biggest hit. When they reach song 9, the crowd has effectively taken
control – stomping and clapping prefix their most sublime song, Chance, from
three years earlier.
In A Big Country, proves to be another crowd pleaser as the jangly guitars
go into overdrive. The formulaic portfolio ends with a lacklustre cover of
Smokey Robinson’s Tracks Of My Tears.
Six years later promoting new album No Place Like Home which failed to
impress, Disc 2, catches them in Bonn. Adamson, now donning black leather
pants, quaffed hair and sideburns, opens with a very different sound powered
by a smooth synth-player and rockier edge on We’re Not In Kansas. Soon
adopting familiar territory, though not an obvious template, Look Away is
transformed into a funkier rendition.
Republican Party Reptile, an out –and- out rocker, complete with bottle neck
intro (a la Jimmy Page/Led Zep on In My Time Of Dying) shows an added
dimension to their new found repertoire.
We still get a mixed bag of hits, with a request type interlude where
Thirteen Valleys wins hands down. An encore brought the rockers in them – a
pulsating cover of Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy, impressively signing - off
with Neil Young’s Rockin’ In A Free World. By this time they had evolved into
a more polished act that took them right to the end in 1999. Suffering from
alcohol depression, Adamson left his hometown of Nashville. He was found
dead in a hotel room in Hawaii, 2001.
The full list of tracks included are :
Review & concert pics copyright © Elly Roberts, 2004-2010.
