Big Static: Big Black - Bulldozer + Racer-X

I'm often given a bizarre level of contempt for considering Big Black to be easily one of my favorite bands of the eighties, not one of the best, just one of my favorites. I'm well aware of how much fantastic music was released during that time and that many of you would be happy to differ with me on this. To be completely honest, I don't give two shits. Never have a band caused such uproar not with the general public, but with snobby underground elitists who would take frontman Albini's at times openly sexist and homophobic lyrics completely seriously. As he said himself, he took such glee in pissing off "hipsters". A group of people he openly showed to be overly touchy and unable to tell when someone was having a laugh at their expense. I'm not sure why, but I'll always have a soft spot for bands that happily make people look very stupid. But they wouldn't be one of my favorite bands by just having the ability to piss people off. For me "the joke" is a side note to the completely vicious post-punk noise that the band created. Albini needed to fashion a guitar pick out of sheet metal just to create the needed guitar effect. Yet within all this guitar mangling noise you'd be surprised there's actually an incredibly clever song structure as opposed to random noise. A large number of Big Black's songs are surprisingly, well, catchy.

Something I've noticed in the few conversations I've had with people about Big Black is their entire back catalogue seems to get over shadowed by their last full length "Songs About Fucking" which has now reached complete cult status. It was a masterpiece and a record that everyone should own. But if you dig just the slightest bit deeper you'll find another full length and a handful of EPs that deserve pretty much the same respect. So to prove this point I've given you some tracks from two of Big Black's earlier EPs.