Made in heaven (Big Country) (LP 196-197)

Big Country At the BBC, The best of the BBC recordings (CD - BBC, 1996) ****
Big Country Restless Natives and Rarities (CD - Mercury, 1998) ***

Genre:  Scottish pop/rock

Places I remember:  HMV (Stratford Mall, London) and Real Groovy (Auckland)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: On The Shore (RN), Lost Patrol (BBC) - at the Hammersmith Palais 1983  






Gear costume:  Winter Sky (RN), Porrohman (BBC) - and anything else on the BBC album.

Active compensatory factors:  Strictly speaking, these aren't the kinds of compilations I have chosen not to include in my album run down. Did that make sense? 

Rather than being greatest hits albums, instead, each of these CD collections looks at the band's back pages. 

Restless Natives is all about blind alleys, B sides and choice cuts. The great (honest) liner notes by Stuart Adamson are worth your hard earned cash on their own!

Like all these types of alternative history anthologies, there are plenty of interesting tracks amongst the ones that didn't make the cut.

As for the BBC one - there is ample proof throughout this collection to prove that LIVE is where Big Country thrived. The big songs, the big sound, the big hurdy gurdy presence, the Big Country extravaganza!

Where do they all belong? That's it for my Big Country collection. Love this band! Best band of the eighties? Maybe. Long may they reign - they have a permanent place in Scottish rock history and in my heart.