Preface To Howard Gently Year Four: Big Country

(image from Discogs)

This week on the show I am continuing my remembrance/celebration of my dear friend Russell whom we lost nearly two years ago. He appeared for years on Self Help Radio in improvised bits as my "spiritual mentor" The Rev Dr Howard Gently. I have almost finished his first three years as the character - he always felt we would run out of funnies with him but we never did.

& it's funny when you think about a person & their obsessions & what delighted them. Russ was utterly blown away by the debut album by Big Country. When it came out he was in his sophomore year in high school & I in my freshman year. & he all but made me go out & buy it. He talked about it endlessly, saw the band when they made it through Dallas, & followed them up until lead singer/songwriter Stuart Adamson's death.

What made me think about them is the song I'll play at the beginning of the show, a Russell original which has a Big Country-like guitar sound. I have so many memories of Russell talking about the album & its songs - there's one song where Adamson sings something like "aay yee yi yo" & Russell would joke about how educational the song was, seeing as it taught you all the vowels, & he would jokingly sing "aay yee yi yo yu sometimes y."

But perhaps the most poignant memory is what he wrote in my high school yearbook that year. I don't have the yearbook in front of me but I can remember it pretty clearly. He probably referred to me as "Dicker-bud," which was a kind of nickname he gave me, but almost certainly he wrote something like, "Remember, in the words of Big Country, 'stay alive.'"

Gosh I miss him so much.