At Rockpalast - Live In Concert - Big Country DVD Review

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DVD Review

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.

Elly Roberts