I'd never heard of Big Dipper until this past June when Jim DeRogatis talked them up on Sound Opinions. I probably hate 99% of the music I hear. The 1% I do love, I pretty much fall in love with instantly. Needless to say, as soon as I heard Big Dipper's combination of big, surfy guitars and oddball lyrics, I rushed home and downloaded everything of theirs I could find on soulseek like the horrible bastard that I am.
Big Dipper formed in Boston during the mid-80s, put out a few albums, including one on a major label, and then broke up in 1990. I'd say the best way to describe their sound would be Weezer, but with balls, or as this really terrible music website which I hate but find myself checking from time to time puts it, "they sound kinda like early R.E.M., but nerdier and with more heft."
This year, Merge Records released a collection of the band's work titled Supercluster:The Big Dipper Anthology on which both the songs I'm posting ("Loch Ness" followed by "When Men Were Trains") appear.
Luckily, some dude in 1988 had the foresight to record an entire Big Dipper show with his crappy camcorder. They're pretty low quality, but about the only Big Dipper videos to be found on the innernett. Enjoy.
2 comments:
This song reeks of Osman. Holy crap. I really like the first of the two songs. There's a really cool little guitar part around the 1min 50sec point.
I don't really hear the REM comparisons, but i'm also extremely defensive of REM, and i don't like people throwing their name around.
I actually really dig "When Men Were Trains". Perhaps it's because I too remember when men were trains....
I hear the Cure in that one. Maybe it's just the guys vocals. I also really dig that guys tight pink tee. Spiffy.
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