Saturday, July 24, 2010

It Feels Like I'm Going Backwards




To me, "All Going Out Together" always seemed like a nice enough song about a bunch of friends getting ready to hit the town, until I figured out later that it was actually about everybody dying in a massive disaster and then it became that much better. A lot of Big Dipper's lyrics were twisted like that, which is one of the things that separated them from run-of-the-mill college rock, even if occasionally you could find them being extolled by the same people who bought crappy BoDeans records.

I would've posted a lot more Big Dipper along the way except the re-ish put the chill on that, although I still have all of their earlier records. This particular one I found kicking around in a used bin at Looney Tunes up in Boston for six bucks; it wasn't until I took it out of the sleeve that I found out it was a test pressing (the piece of tape on the back cover probably held the info sheet, before it was ripped off). "He Is God", which later found its way onto Homestead's "Human Music" comp, is another twisted Big Dipper lyric, about finding out that your friend who's been passing around bread and stuff is really Jesus. The untitled "hidden" track at the end of side two is a mash-up of a couple of different versions of "Faith Healer" (including a somewhat hysterical attempt by Shonen Knife), along with some crackly old recordings about the space program and the Loch Ness Monster and what have you. It's barely kinda neat, but it's also not on the re-ish, so there.




Big Dipper -

"All Going Out Together"

"He Is God"

"(bonus track)"


5 comments:

Jonathan said...

Crazy, I just ran across a copy of their Craps LP in a discounted bin of records just last week and picked it up for practically nothing.

Thanks for this too, as I didn't have these tracks.

Brushback said...

Yeah, Craps doesn't usually go for much (I think I originally paid less than $3 for the copy I've got). Not a great album, still worth owning and better than Slam though...

Tom W from Columbus said...

Was one of about 10 people seeing them on a Monday night in Athens, OH on the Heavens tour. One of the best shows I ever saw. Never understood how those guys made Slam.

Brushback said...

Yeah, it's funny when you think back to all of the amazing bands back in the '80s who were on Homestead and Touch and Go and whatever, and none of them drew... the scene was so small back then.

Brushback said...

The mp3 files are now inactive.