11th June 1983
|
Record Mirror 11th June 1983 |
|
|
| Page 1 · Page 3 · Page 4 · Pages 6 & 7 · Page 15 · Pages 20 & 21 · Pages 23 · Page 25 · Page 38 |
 Back to top |
Front Cover Features Haysi Fantayzee (main photo). Big Country (Stuart Adamson) (inset photo) Other features - China Crisis, Aztec Camera, Agnetha, Michael Jackson, Imagination, Robert Palmer, Shakatak. STUART ADAMSON pic by Steve Rapport |
 Back to top |
Page 3 Private Files by BETTY PAGE ...Beaming Bruce Foxton got a lovely big cheer, bigger than Phil Lynott's or Billy Currie's but was later forced to sit on Mike Read's team with the deadly combination of Dee Snider and Kelly of Girlschool. RM covergirl Jay Aston got tongue-tied but returned to fight another day with fellow Fizzer MIke. Oh, and Blancmange played a cracking good set. Photo of BRUCE FOXTON and PHIL LYNOTT. Trivia pix by Eugene Adebari. |
 Back to top |
Page 4 Gig Advert Big Country at the Hammersmith Palais, Monday 27th June 7.30pm Support from Second Thoughts & The Lotus Eaters All tickets 3.50 from Box Office & usual agents Big Country - Live at Hammersmith Palais 1983 in London - Radio Broadcast, uploaded by Raised On Radio |
 Back to top |
Page 6 TV AND RADIO Friday's 'Switch' (C4) wipes away those election blues and gets its full one hour's worth back. This week The Style Council, The Bluebells, Spear of Destiny, Aztec Camera and First Light all grace its stage with videos of Eddy Grant and The Beat as well as old Otis Redding footage. Saturday is mainly the domain of old buffers. Ritchie Blackmore is the subject of Radio One's 'Guitar Greats' while Cliff Richard and ex-Monkee Michael Dolenz are the captains on 'Pop Quiz' (BBC 1). Their teams are Cheryl Baker and Stuart Adamson battling for Cliff with Dire Straits' Hal Lindes and Nick Hayward stretching their minds for Micky, as he used to be known. Micky Dolenz- on Mike Read's Pop Quiz with Cliff Richard,3,1983, uploaded by soda06 Stuart: 1:10, 1:58, 4:30, 5:05, 5:18, 5:27, 5:42, 6:23, 8:55. Page 7 Singles MARILLION 'Garden Party' (EMI) Yes folks, the healthy alternative to all those videos of macho men in leather trousers making a nuisance of themselves on street corners. Grab a ride on the new cosmic roundabout and listen to Fish's enigmatic vocals and that luscious quirky rhythm. For goodness sake, this should be their first real chart hit at least. Don't let it slip away. Marillion Garden Party (Original Version HD), uploaded by James Roberts |
 Back to top |
Page 15 STAGE Thin White Rebuke DAVID BOWIE Wembley Arena, London ALL SMILES and superb dance routines, the Thin White Duke was back with a vengeance as the Thin Brown Duke and God... it was dull. Now, how much of this was Bowie's fault, I'm not quite sure. The sound that wafted up from an insubstantial PA made the band sound as if it was playing in a local public convenience — with a few roadies to pull the flushes at the same time. For the first time, Bowie almost looked human. From the opening strains of 'Star' and then 'Heroes' he looked on with a detached grin at the adoring masses below, his voice at least broke through the mire and he could at long last be himself. The only trouble is that himself is a pretty cool, almost cynical character. Trotting through all those songs you've loved in the past — 'Golden Years' with a director's chair as a prop for Mr Cool to seat himself in, a very dull 'China Girl', 'Sorrow' and 'Life On Mars' — he had the audience cheering through the brief five seconds it took to get into the next number. But, to be honest, he could have got the same reaction by blowing raspberries down the microphone. The strongest number in the first half of the show was without doubt 'Let's Dance' (surely his most powerful number in years). It was hard, human and distinctive and even managed to upstage a pretty powerful rendition of 'Fashion' which again had the clout to fill the overgrown shed. It took a few stage props in the second half to elevate the show above the level of a massive anticlimax. Numbers like 'Scary Monsters' sounded absolutely horrible with its backing of screaming auditorium style musicianship normally deployed by the likes of Toto and Styx, while 'Hang On To Yourself' might have had Bowie grinning away again but the song blundered forward at breakneck speed without the slightest regard for subtlety. It wasn't until a reworked 'Ashes To Ashes', with Bowie singing in a veiled tower which slid to the front of the stage like a creeping Dalek as he crooned the song that things got moving. And after that the song that really got 'em, you guessed it, 'Space Oddity' in all its simplicity, was the number which had us all weeping and looking aghast with our hands over our mouths. The unfortunate message was that a man with Bowie's cool really needed all those props of yore. He doesn't play rock and roll, the show has no real climax, and nor do the songs. The stadium circus which was all the rage in the seventies was the one that punk tried to destroy, yet here it was again in all its cynical and facile splendour without even the spontaneity to make it all take off. When those human touches broke out, as in 'Young Americans' and Lou Reed's 'White Light White Heat', the Bowie look carried the whole show forward towards a worthwhile end, the simplicity allowing his tremendous panache to shine through. Yet at the end of the evening, the only special thing about the show was seeing Bowie in the flesh. A sort of confirmation that yes, he has got style, and yes, he can sing. It's doubtful that this show will be any different to the countless others across the world. In typical Bowie style it's all been carefully crafted and carefully balanced, but what was sadly lacking was any sense of immediacy — what live music, surely, is all about. I'm afraid that even without his elaborate costumes, Bowie remains an icon, and icons need all the splendour and pomp they can get to remain that way. Even with fine singing the human side of Bowie remained as cool as if he still was an idol. He displayed little of the human quality of the songs when at last he had the chance to do just that. And for that reason, above all, the show was a disappointment. Simon Hills David Bowie Wembley Arena London june 3 1983 SOUNDBOARD( audio ), uploaded by DB and TM David Bowie London 1983 - Heroes, uploaded by dosbcn ("News at Ten" footage, with nip-slip!) |
 Back to top |
Page 20 I Say A Little Prairie IT MAY seem a trifle odd for a fine, upstanding, athletic young Scotsman to forsake an eyeful of the Cup Final to partake of the finest quality Pekingese braised duck with your humble reporter, but partake he did. Stuart Adamson is indeed a footers fan, but just so happens to think that interviews are more important than a small leather balloon. Stuart and his band of merry Big Countrymen have their priorities just right; although quite shy and retiring, the oft-knickerbockered one likes to assert his views. I kicked a few questions midfield and he headed a few answers back. Here's a rough translation from greater- spotted Dunfermlinespeak. You treat Big Country very much as a career, don't you? "Not in a business sense, but in a personal sense it is, yeah. Totally. I think you can be serious without being po-faced as well. If I don't care about what I'm doing musically, then who else is going to care? So I think you've got to pay a lot of attention to it. I think it's awfully easy to get yourself led astray into areas that have nothing to do with that at all - nothing to do with what I wanna do anyway." You put a lot of feeling into your songs, so do you find it a strain to have to keep justifying yourself all the time? "I also think that if people are interested enough to want to come and speak to you, you should speak to them. But the whole thing about putting feelings into songs is that you want to communicate them, it's not to exorcise them from yourself. I don't think music's that important that it can change the shape of the world as we know it. The best thing is that certain songs can make you feel sad and thoughtful or up and want to dance, or just up in an optimistic sense." Do you see what you're doing at the moment as fairly unique? "I think some of the things we do are quite original. But two guitars, bass and drums isn't exactly an original format, though we try and push that to its limits, I hope. I don't think there's anyone else doing things in a musical sense like us, but I can see us getting tied up with other people in the spiritual sense of how much passion is actually in a song. I think it's important to follow your own course, play what feels natural rather than taking a slice of this and that and come out with the empirical formula for the hit single. I much prefer groups that do stand slightly on their own ground." When you started Big Country did you honestly belive it would be commercially successful? "I hoped it would be, that I could still make that connection with people in records with spirit and passion, that I could speak my heart on them and have them sound the way I wanted and they'd still connect." A lot of people must've thought you'd be lumbered with the 'cult following' tag? "I haven't really been thinking about how big the market's going to be. I get much more satisfied knowing the group is operating in a manner which I see fit, that the songs are still giving me a shiver up the back and that we're treating people with respect. A lot of groups don't do that at all. Once you allow yourself to be dictated to by outside forces them you're not being honest with yourself." Is communication all important to you? "We are very close with people who come and see us, we try and share as much as possible though live work. We do run our own more magazine, which is a communciation point as well, where we can talk about things with people that want to know. We actually write articles for it and people write in with articles and reviews of gigs. It's great to have that contact. The thing is it's very hard to show people we not some form of demigod, we're just normal and stupid - sometimes extremely stupid human beings who do things that everyone else would do if they were in certain situations." Have you actually encountered any sort of teenmania? "Yeah, a little bit. What we always try and do in that situation is just stand and talk to people. I thinkt that's much better than jumping on a bus and sodding off somewhere, even though it gets a bit scary sometimes. We just don't want people to think we see them as merchandising points." I'm sure you must have noticed how everyone's picked up on the Big Country look? "The tartan shirts... it's amazing, every time you pick up the music papers there's more groups... I spotted Depeche Mode, Martin Kemp and another group that's just won Battle of the Bands wearing them. I was wearing one when I was in the Skids anyway, then Bruce quite liked them so he got one, then Tony got one, and it started like that. Some people must think we're some kind of bastardised country and western group! I don't mind at all, if people wanna wear them - everybody can buy them, it's not like they're designer-made! Next year you'll see the Gloria Vanderbilt range of designer tartan shirts, as used by navvies and brickies throughout the world, sponsored by the Duke of Edinburgh Award! I wear 'em 'cos they're really comfy, they cover your body like clothes are meant to, and they go with anything... except swimming trunks... they don't look very smart with swimming trunks!" Do you find it strange being a pop pin-up? "Yeah, totally. Raising myself as some sort of media character, a figurehead. But I'd rather people stuck posters of us up on their walls than some others I could name. I hate the thought that people might be thinking about me in a different manner to the way I really am. Sometimes it feels like we're expected to be like all the other groups. I get awfully wary of it sometimes, 'cos I know there's something really special about us. I'm not trying to be bigheaded, I just think there is, you can feel it when we go onstage." Say you wanted to try something radical and the record company didn't want to spoil the winning formula, what would you do? "That's something I cannot understand, 'cos 'In A Big Country' is totally and absolutely different from 'Fields Of Fire' or anything else I've ever written 'cos it's written as a song, it never started off as a guitar riff and it shows totally. That was a big change for me. I just think it's the best thing I've ever worked on, right from when I first started writing songs when I was 13. I'm so pleased with it it's no' real. It's such a great song. And I'm going to be embarrassed now..." What would you most like to achieve with Big Country? "First of all to keep as honest as we can about things, secondly to give people hope in themselves and encourage them. That's about it really. I think it'd be really good if a group like us could make it not just in Britain, but across the world. If it happens, it happens - I won't rush off and commit suicide if it doesn't." Do you think you'll still be doing this in ten years' time? "That's the big question, do I still want to be doing this when I'm 30? No, I don't think so. I think I'd feel pretty stupid if I was playing 'Fields Of Fire' onstage when I was 30. I wouldn't mind if I'd changed my musical thing altogether, but I've never seen myself as a spokesperson for a generation anyway, all I've done is put down my feelings in the music and lyrics I write. I've got enough questions myself without supplying everyone else's answers!" Pics by Steve Rapport |
 Back to top |
Page 23 Last Weeks's 45s 11, 12, 2 - Money Go Round, Style Council, Polydor ^ 18, 34, 2 - In A Big Country, Big Country, Mercury ^32, -, -, - We Came To Dance, Ultravox, Chrysalis VOX1 44, 37, 11 - Let's Dance, David Bowie, EMI America 59, 62, 3 - The Wheel, Spear of Destiny, Epic 93, 84, 2 - Fields Of Fire (400 Miles), Big Country, Mercury (This week / last week / weeks in chart) * = fast mover Big Country - In A Big Country (Official Video), uploaded by Big Country Last Weeks's LPs 3, 4, 7 - Let's Dance, David Bowie, EMI America 37, 43, 13 - War, U2, Island 38, 46, 10 - The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie, RCA International ^ 40, 51, 11 - Script For A Jester's Tear, Marillion, EMI 49, 49, 4 - Hunky Dory, David Bowie, RCA International ^ 60, 76, 4 - Diamond Dogs, David Bowie, RCA International INTS5068 67, 37, 4 - Chimera, Bill Nelson, Mercury ^ 74, 84, 4 - The Man Who Sold The World, David Bowie, RCA International 80, 75, 6 - Pin Ups, David Bowie, RCA International (This week / last week / weeks in chart) ^ = moving up Compiled by Gallup |
 Back to top |
Page 25 Top 12" Singles 12, 20 - In A Big Country, Big Country, Mercury COUNT312 71, 59, 4 - The Wheel, Spear of Destiny, Epic (This week / last week) Big Country - In A Big Country (Pure Mix), uploaded by RETROREMIXES1 |
 Back to top |
Page 38 Top Singles as reviewed on Top Of The Pops Week ending June 11, 1983 ^8, -, -, - China Girl, David Bowie, EMI America EA157 13, 11, 3 - Money Go Round, Style Council, Polydor 17, 18, 3 - In A Big Country, Big Country, Mercury 24, 32, 2, - We Came To Dance, Ultravox, Chrysalis VOX1 54, 44, 12 - Let's Dance, David Bowie, EMI America 71, 59, 4 - The Wheel, Spear of Destiny, Epic (This week / last week / weeks in chart) Compiled by Gallup |