Dreams stay with you

I wondered what I would write about today but it seems that there has been a lot pushing me in this direction for a while.
It was 1983, Margaret Thatcher's dismantling of the industrial life of Scotland was well under way. I had just left school into a bleak jobs market where even 7 'O' Grades and 5 Highers couldn't get me a job. I suffered the embarrassment of walking to sign on every two weeks and after three months it began to depress me.
I searched for answers, I searched a way to lift me a way from my bleak feelings. Music was always a refuge for me but one song changed my attitude. One song which expressed a hope and belief that things could be better.
That song was "In A Big Country" by the Fife-based band, Big Country. The lyrics were powerful and reached into my soul and shook me out of my bleakness.

"So take that look out of here, it doesn't fit you

Because it's happened doesn't mean you've been discarded

Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming

Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted

I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered

But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered."


It remains a defiant, strident lyric of hope. A lyric that young people need to hear once again as our politicians and business leaders fail miserably to provide the leadership we need.
These are my very personal feelings regarding this song which comes from one of the best and most overlooked albums of the 1980's. If you would like to understand a little bit more about the band, the album and the music you should read this amazing blog by Anis Waizi who has written an analysis more erudite and poetic than I could ever achieve. Flowers In The Desert
On Saturday in Dunfermline, the lead singer, guitarist and soul of Big Country, Stuart Adamson, will be commemorated in his home town. A memorial bench will be unveiled decorated with some of Stuart's lyrics. I only know this because two weeks ago I responded to a tweet which contained a picture of Stuart. From there I was contacted by Gwenda Matthews who was the driving force behind the fund-raising to see this memorial erected. It seems that fate was trying to ensure that I would be there to pay my own small tribute to a man that I never had the chance to thank. I am only sorry that his own words could not light his dark place the way they did for me.
In a Big Country, Dreams stay with you.