STUART FREW.COM

Big Country, Rescue Rooms, Nottingham.

Friday, 17th August, 2007.

It was a friend north of the border who gave me the heads-up about this impending gig in the heart of Nottingham?s Studentland. The gig and tour are being carried out as a twenty-fifth anniversary commemorating the band?s brilliant debut album. ?The Crossing?. Sadly of course, the band?s singer, main songwriter and twin lead guitarist, Stuart Adamson is no longer with us after his desperate loss through his suicide in Hawaii in 2001. His influence on the band and it?s music is still evident though. So is the love and respect for him from his former friends in Big Country.

Big Country in 2007 consists of the remaining three members, Bruce Watson (guitar), Tony Butler (bass and lead vocals) and Mark Brzezicki (drums). The band felt Stuart to be irreplaceable and I have to say I am in agreement with this. It seemed fitting that the three should celebrate the band?s major, landmark success from all those years ago.

Big Country remained something of an enigma in the eyes of much of the music world. Perhaps one might even refer to them as having a cult following. Irrespective they achieved great success in record sales, particularly in their earlier career and gained a huge reputation as a terrific live band.

It was my first visit to Rescue Rooms and at first I was a little surprised at how small the venue is. Nevertheless it?s a good venue that feel comfortable with people in the various nooks and crannies drinking and socialising, happily much of it outside on a warm-ish night. We entered in the midst of what I hoped was the opening tune and took our place near the back of the crowd. The crowd demographic was an interesting one with many people of an age group that had them marked as fans of the band from way back. It was a good-natured crowd too.

Tony Butler mentioned a few words about Stuart Adamson and the reason they were back playing in front of us on this occasion. He also explained that they had written some new material to ?get them motivated?. As one might imagine, many of the old favourites were there, ?Look Away?, ?The Teacher?, ?Fields of Fire? and ?Chance?, spread amongst a healthy amount of hitherto unheard material, some of which sounded promising. A personal high spot came at the band choosing to play ?Restless Natives?, written as part of the soundtrack for the movie of the same name.It was Tony Butler?s job to recite the memorable opening words

?Alone among the hills and stone
Through summer sun and winter snow
The eagle he was lord above
And Rob was lord below?

I wondered how many of the audience understood the relevance of those words: ?Two-hundred-forty years we lived, without hope and without pride?. Probably quite a few I reasoned. How well Stuart understood what it is to have a Scottish heartbeat and to feel the constant pull of those beautiful mountains and glens of our homeland, the love that is forever a corner in all of our hearts and will never die.

?I?m not expecting to grow flowers in the desert.

But I can live and breathe and see the sun in Wintertime?

Although a great fan from the past, I had never actually managed to see the original Big Country. Even so I had a strange feeling about the three playing up there on stage without Stuart. It was almost as if one expected him to run out on stage at any moment. Of course the loss was felt but that is meant in no way derogatively against the remaining members who toiled a little at times over the new numbers but excelled in the old ones.

The crowd lapped up every minute of it enthusiastically and the end came all too soon. I don?t believe the love and affection for this band will ever die. It certainly won?t in my mind. Apart from the Scottish sound which appeals to me for obvious reasons, I enjoyed the songwriting of Stuart Adamson, the way he tackled historical issues from his traditional, folk-inspired consciousness and the way he championed ordinary, working-class people and their trails and oppression. As well as THAT sound, that?s what Big Country and Stuart Adamson mean to me.

Just one encore of the expected ?In a Big Country? to a rapturous reception and the band were gone into the dark, inky night.

Will we ever see their like again?

Stuart Adamson, 1958-2001. Rest in Peace.

?In a big country, dreams stay with you, like a lover?s voice fires the mountainside, stay alive?

God Bless Scotland

Although a now rather overdue admission for the Lowdham Book Festival, I thought this event was well worth recording. The event itself had been moved from the Women's Institute Hall down the road, having fallen prey to the inevitable floods the village and surrounding area had been experiencing. On a damp and soggy day then, my partner and I skipped into the talk just a minute or two into proceedings

Mike Atkinson of the 'Troubled-Diva' blog gave an extremely informative, lively and humourous account of the world of blogging. Blessed with the light-hearted style his blog is written with, he recounted tales of this relatively new phenomenon. Notable was his tale of a serious blog stalker who was actually prosecuted for her misdemeanours towards a fellow female blogger. This talk however covered the subject most comprehensively and would have appealed to people who had an interest in beginning a blog, and expert 'first wave' blogger alike. Mike covered the thorny subject of book deals for bloggers and the jealousy that can arise between fellow bloggers due to this. He maintained that there was no easy way to achieve acclaim in this idiom as blogging is strictly a meritocracy.

The small group of people that braved the inclement weather to hear Mike talk will have been singularly impressed. It was unfortunate and no one seemed more perturbed than Mike himself that he finally ran out of time and had to abbreviate much of his prepared talk. I dare say that the majority of the audience will have been as disappointed as myself not to have heard the balance of the material in full. Mike did not disappoint however and, as promised, has posted up the notes he prepared on Troubled-Diva for all to peruse.

I can heartily recommend dropping by Mike's blog, which has deservedly been nominated for an award or two. His main focus is music but if it isn't yours don't let that put you off as there is much in his several years of archives present to maintain your interest. For those of us who share the same city as Mike and myself, Nottingham, his entry series entitled 'Nottingham, My Nottingham' is a must-read. Rarely have I ever read such a comprehensive review of some of the lesser-know delights of the city which one would have to experience intimately to be aware of.

Troubled-Diva:

http://www.troubled-diva.com/

Shaggy Blog Stories. A collection of top blog entries compiled into a book my Mike Atkinson. All proceeds to Comic Relief.

http://www.lulu.com/content/739873

The inaugural event of the Lowdham Book Festival, 2007 then and it very nearly didn't happen at all. As for much of this soggy summer, Lowdham and it's surrounding villages had been the victim of a huge deluge late afternoon and early evening before Brian's event was due to kick off at 7.30. An apt time one may have imagined due to the subject matter under discussion this evening, and one that almost became a 'match abandoned'. Finding that the stream in the field where the marquee for the night sat had been all but two inches from overflowing it's banks and therefore sabotaging the evening was the first information imparted. Apparently the good people that labour to run the village event had to search around furiously in the locality for sand bags to keep tonight's entertainment running. This was again exacerbated by the large rivers of water cutting Lowdham and other nearby villages off.

To our relief the event began, a little later than scheduled but one could hardly complain. Certainly the event on offer tonight gave most people great enjoyment ans was a rich pastiche of the great football manager's life and times. Curiously bitter-sweet and all the better for it, the talk began with Marcus Alton, webmaster of www.brianclough.com who had many interesting tales to offer about Brian Clough, his family, and importantly the progress being made to commemorate the master manager's achievements here in Nottingham and elsewhere by way of a statue.

I remember quite early in Brian's long stay in Nottingham there was inevitably much speculation as to how long he would be persuaded to remain on Trentside by Nottingham Forest. His answer was a blithe 'I'll be here longer than Billy Walker', referring to the former Forest chief who had spent twenty-six long years at The City Ground. Well Brian didn't quite manage that but he did stack up eighteen years of startling achievement, wisdom, fun and great entertainment in the Lace City. It seemed for most of us here that he had been, and would remain, here forever. How we would have wished that to happen. I think even some of the more rabid Notts County fans would have even said that in the cold light of day.

The evening moved onto perhaps it's most entertaining period. Stephen Lowe, playwright of 'Old Big 'ead - In the Spirit of the Man' began to talk and occasionally engaged the excellent Colin Tarrant who played Clough in the production to great effect. Stephen, with credits including Coronation Street, explained that he had be asked several times to write something about the great man but had always refused. When he did finally relent he decided on a different tack - to show Brian having passed away to the 'other side' where in customary fashion he ruffled the feathers of two other distinguished men of Nottingham, General Booth and D. H Lawrence!

Most moving were Colin Tarrant's thoughts on Brian. Colin recounted how he had been a local boy from Kirkby-in-Ashfield 'where they only dug coal to make electricity for the country's lights' he pithily added - a sentiment that was not lost on the audience about the strictly working class town of his roots and it's importance. The man who played Clough reiterated in our minds that Brian was very much a working-class hero, that were no Cloughs these days (was there ever another?) The way that Colin reached out to the audience about football and therefore life itself being a 'team game', reflecting the integrity, love and honesty he believed that Brian showed to us all by his actions and words, was beautifully portrayed. It certainly formed a large lump in mine, and I know my friend's throat. Colin reached down into the very depths of the man and what he stood for, decency, fairness and honest-to-goodness graft to achieve the best one can. The way he identified with Brian manifested the way many of continue to mirror his views on life, and made it easier to understand this very complex man and why we associated ourselves with him.

Finally, and one can never be sated by talk of Brian Clough I find, Duncan Hamilton, journalist and author of a new book about Brian, 'Provided You Don't Kiss Me', appeared for the second half of the evening. Duncan had the enviable (but not always he explained!) job of following Nottingham Forest and particularly Brian Clough around for the Nottingham Evening Post. Duncan, as one might expect told many illuminating tales about his good times and sometime difficulties with the mercurial Brian. Once he had been banned from the City Ground by an irate Clough for some imagined slight but soon welcomed him back as a prodigal son as if nothing had happened!

An interesting question and answer session ensued for a short period after the final talk. There was hardly the sometime lack of people coming forward to ask questions. Still there is much to know about the complexities of this wonderful man and it seemed almost unspoken that this evening's entertainment had been only the most recent attempt to understand what made him so great and what made us all love him.

An exceptional event for the Lowdham Book Festival then. What else might one expect about a truly exceptional man.

Almost a couple of weeks in and it's been interesting to observe some of the changes since the smoking ban came about in England on July 1st. Being a person not adverse to visiting the odd public house or two I of course as a non-smoker welcomed that fateful day when I and my friends would be able to catch our breath in a public bar and other public places.

I've always tried to live and let live with smokers as we all have our own particular vices. This has not detracted from my dislike of going home smelling of stale tobacco after every evening out, nor the displeasure at struggling to draw breath, especially in some bars with low ceilings. The latter is a frequent occurrence as the pubs I often visit tend to be older, more historic buildings with just such a construction. It's been a source of resentment to me that some of those places I would no longer visit because of that problem. Now no longer however.

There have been a few problems with the fallout from the ban. Outside every public building there now appears to be an ugly pile of disused cigarette ends from the groups of people taking a desperate drag outside. One also has to fight through a thick smog to get into those same buildings sometimes. The litter bins are often draped with discarded cigarettes, balanced precariously in lines across the edge of the bin, uggh!

Another development has been the types of constructions pub managers are setting up outside their businesses. These range from a few 'martini trees' with strategic outdoor heaters to full blown marquees. The latter plastic abominations often look incongruous stood outside some of the more handsome old pub buildings and have fallen foul of the authorities. One of my locals, The Four Bells at Woodborough, Notts found itself with a visit from the police one evening for an illegal marquee stuck on the front of the attractive old pub. Apparently it had three sides to it which constitutes a need for planning permission one presumes.

After trying to accede to people's need to smoke for practically ever, it dismays me to hear smokers referring to themselves as 'victims' now. What on earth do they think the rest of us all were for all those years whilst being forced to inhale their smoke second-hand and smell like a dirty ashtray after an evening out?