Night hangs on the city like a blanket on a cage

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

09/10/83 : The Crossing - Big Country

"What?!?" I hear you all cry "You've already written about this album - it was the one that kicked it all off, way back in November '20!".  And yes, you're right, but - my circus, my rules.  OK?  I know (or at least I think I know) how to do these things these days - so I'm going to write about it properly, OK?   If I skipped over it you'd miss out on all the extra fascinating facts I ALWAYS supply about albums, which I know you'd miss.

I didn't buy this one immediately - I think it was after I bought "Chance" as a single which has a great version of "Tracks Of My Tears" ("Seein' as how it's party time...") as the b-side ("Daaaad - what's a b-side?") that I was tempted to buy the album - and a lifelong appreciation was started (although, as Mr Hitchins will tell you, I need to spend more time on their later albums).  I like the singles, but it's actually the lesser known tracks on this that I really love where the guitars are giving a bit more swirl (it's a technical term) - "The Storm", "Lost Patrol" and "Porrahman" (which has a great intro).  But basically, I just love this album - I'm not the man to write about it dispassionately.

And yes, I very much own this album (I really wanted the red cover, but had to settle for the blue one), bringing us back up to 50% at 6/12.  As does Mrs Reed (but we won't claim two points) and she first saw them live in a leisure centre in Belfast in 1986, approximately 25 years before I first did - and they are also the last band we saw live together. 

We're at #4 in the charts on their 11th week out of a 68 week run and it managed 13 more weeks on four later runs, the last one being in February '12 (and I have absolutely no idea why that happened!).  It never made it higher than #3 (where it was for the three weeks before this one) but it managed 23 weeks in the top 20, so definitely had some staying power.  Above it in the charts this week were Genesis (a new entry at #1), Paul Young and UB40 - the only other new entry in the top ten was Cliff Richard at #7 with Silver (I can't say I'm sad to miss this)

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album but does include a great review by Rolling Stone which starts "Here's a big-noise guitar band from Britain that blows the knobs off all the synth-pop diddlers and fake-funk frauds who are cluttering up the charts these days".  The album did better than I expected in the US getting to #18 - "In A Big Country" was their only top 40 US single.

"Customers also listened to" The Alarm, Psychedelic Furs and Big Audio Dynamite - oh yes, some fine old names to take you back there.  As are Big Country and they're still hanging in there - and it's just mad they'll probably be doing a 40th anniversary tour for this album next year!  Where does the time go?

02/10/83 - An enjoyably conflicting listen
16/10/83 - Dull, dull songs