So Uncle Tony’s seen that pipsqueak’s latest column. Tony figures he can cut the column in half. So here’s the column without the bullshit:
Life. Shit happens. Something we’ve known for a while. Been meaning to write about Big Country. Today is Thursday.
Caught the band back in the ’80s, don’t know when. Loved the clip of ‘em chasing chicks in Scotland. So I got me their first album. Distinctive sound. Guitars as bagpipes. Serious shit.
The lead singer Stuart Adamson wrote about Old Scotland, paying attention to old values. All the songs were panoramic, even the love song “1000 Stars.”
The inner sleeve kicked ass. Black and white. Cool compass. What was this? Songs about the land. I felt transported. Even the videos submerged you in another place. Big Country had balls. They were unapologetically corny, unlike U2.
Big Country came when synths put guitar gods on the dole. Spaceship rock. Corny music. Of course! Neat, polished, spoonfed, little, yellow, Nuprin. Order. Easy listening. Like fasces. But we like.
Fortunately, Big Country. Difference. Good times. The Epic Album. The Crossing. Nough said.
Became a fan. Black man with Scottish accent. Goofy! Forget the music. Consider their plaid-shirt image.
So I wore flannel, bitch. Was I Scottish? Years later, was I black?
Live shows good. “I just want to say…” over and over. Then music. Cute.
No more U.S. hits. Change of fashion. And nobody remembers Big Country, despite Adamson’s suicide. Former manager blew me off.
No moral here. Join us. And if you don’t, you’ll commit suicide like Adamson because you disagree with me.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Would it be possible to run all of Eggers’s prose through the Cliftonator? That would be as much of a public service as tutoring underprivileged kids.
Hemingway wrote about bullfighting because it was important to him and it seemed to let him say things he couldn’t say any other way. Eggers writes about Big Country for the same reason.
Hemingway killed himself. So did Stuart Adamson. Maybe Eggers will. There’s no moral here. I’m just saying.