Perhaps no album in my collection stands as important to me personally as Big Country's first album "The Crossing". I still remember when I purchased this album in early 1984, when I was still pretty young, and I somehow had managed to save up enough dollars (probably a quarter at a time) to buy this on cassette from a catalog company store along the lines of a Service Merchandise. Back in those days, coming up with $6 - $7 was serious business for a 12 or 13 year old with no allowance, and so it took days and weeks of thought and pondering before making a final decision to move forward with an album purchase, or what I considered an "investment" in a band. And then, there was the finagling of my parents to somehow get them to drive me to a location that would have the album in stock. I actually got fairly smart; I learned what each store had in stock beforehand, especially places that my parents would go to more often, and then act like I needed, say, some grocery item when really I was simply sneaking off to buy a new cassette. It also wasn't completely out of the question that my parents would go to a store for a certain item and I'd wander off to a nearby store that had music stock. You had to be crafty in those days.
Big Country absolutely changed my life. To say that I loved Big Country is putting it mildly, and I purchased this album shortly after getting my first U2 album which was "War". I was finally finding my own way musically and Big Country felt like "mine", at least at that time, and no one else I knew in school listened to them. Of course, kids being kids, I got teased relentlessly for liking "country" since their name was in fact Big Country. I was a bit resentful about this at first but quickly chalked it up as a loss for the stupid kids that I went to school with who were too busy arguing over which Van Halen album was best, etc. As a side note, I remember those same kids telling me that U2 would never amount to anything significant. Hmph.
Obviously, Big Country was pivotal with their timing since they released this album when MTV was at its peak. I still remember seeing the video for "In a Big Country" for the first time and not knowing what to make of it, a video that was a curious mix of presumably the band riding ATC's and then playing in an on-stage like setting. It seemed so odd in a way, with unusual sounding guitars that mimicked bagpipes, but there was something very likeable about the band themselves and after a bit of time the song really grew on me.
In buying the cassette, I was introduced to the Ebow, something I had never heard before in my life nor had really anyone else. Upon first hearing it, I couldn't even wrap my head around what instrument was making that bizarre sound and it wasn't until I saw their live concert on MTV later that year that I knew for a fact that it was a guitar. Needless to say, the Ebow was my very first effect that I promptly bought when I learned to play guitar a few years later, and even then, by around 1988, no one had ever heard of it at my local guitar shop so it was a special order.
Song wise, "The Crossing" is super strong and satisfying all the way through. It was only recently that I actually read through most of the lyrics of the album and I was quite blown away by how strong they were simply in reading alone. There was a lot of "...oh, that's what he's saying..." realizations, if you know what I mean. I've always been a phonetic based singer/listener and simply go after the vowels and consonants rather than worrying about actual words, and it was partly this peculiar habit which made the transition much later in life to world music quite easy for me. For this particular album, though, I was jaw droppingly shocked by how dark the lyrics were as well as cleverly put together in phrases.
It's hard to pick out best tracks on this one but most certainly "Inwards", "Chance", "The Storm", and "Lost Patrol" have always been mega favorites of mine. And, of course, the hits are wonderful as well and need no mentioning here. One of my true highlights in life was meeting Big Country on a lazy afternoon in Tempe, AZ, at Zia Records where they played a handful of songs acoustically, one of them being "Chance". Sadly, hardly anyone was there but it then allowed me more time to get signatures and actually say a few coherent words to them. I will say that I've never met a band that was more gracious and seemed overjoyed with the fact that I was so overjoyed, and after the unfortunate early loss of Stuart Adamson, which absolutely broke my heart, I have only treasured my signed 12 inch EP that much more.
Big Country "The Crossing" is one of the true great and necessary albums of the early 1980's. If you don't already own it, you owe it to yourself to seek it out and place it in your collection.
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