{"id":43115,"date":"2014-10-19T18:00:56","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T23:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43115"},"modified":"2014-10-19T18:16:57","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T23:16:57","slug":"when-the-heats-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43115","title":{"rendered":"You Have No Thought Of Answers, Only Questions To Be Filled"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was thirty years ago today that Steeltown<\/a>\u00a0by Big Country was released.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Of course, people who were <\/em>of music-listening age in 1984 might, might<\/em>, remember Big Country for its single real American hit, “In A Big Country”, from their debut album The Crossing<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 The follow-up passed with nary a whisper, but for maybe a few days’ worth of airplay for the one US single.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the other side of the pond, it was another story, of course; Big Country was a major headliner in Europe, especially Scotland, for the rest of the decade; they were one of the Rolling Stones go to opening acts for most of the decade, which ain’t haggis. <\/p>\n

But except for a brief flash of FM airplay, Steeltown<\/i> came and went, and marked Big Country’s demise in the US market (except for a brief return to college and album radio in the early nineties with The Buffalo Skinners<\/i>, which, again, was mostly for the big fans). <\/p>\n

It’s a shame – because if anything, Steeltownwas a better record than the hit The Crossing<\/i>; harder-edged, it started somewhere and went somewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, being a Scottish pop-culture production from the middle Thatcher era, it started on the political left and stayed there.\u00a0 It should be unsurprising that Steeltown <\/em>was a stridently anti-Thatcher\/Reagan\/conservatism\u00a0record.\u00a0 The opening cut, “Flame of the West”, was a pretty by-the-numbers swat at Reagan; the title cut, a burly poison pen note about the decline of the (newly-privatized) British steel industry; the medley “Where the Rose is Sown\/Come Back to Me”, a post-Falklands war broadside at militarism and jingoism and, in the second half, the lot of the discarded disabled\u00a0veteran (both presented and reduced, of course, through First World War-vintage imagery) .\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’ve wondered over the years; maybe I latched onto the album as hard as I did because I was clinging to the idealistic, overheated post-adolescent liberalism I’d always believed in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or maybe because the music was just so damn good.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, it was mostly the music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here’s the title cut – a live version from the height of the band’s era.\u00a0<\/p>\n