Big Black was an American punk rock band from Evanston, Illinois, active from 1981 to 1987. Founded first as a solo project by singer and guitarist Steve Albini, the band became a trio with an initial lineup that included guitarist Santiago Durango and bassist Jeff Pezzati, both of Naked Raygun. In 1985, Pezzati was replaced by Dave Riley, who played on Big Black's two full-length studio albums, Atomizer (1986) and Songs About Fucking (1987).
Big Black's aggressive and abrasive music was characterized by distinctively clanky guitars and the use of a drum machine rather than a drum kit, elements that foreshadowed industrial rock. The band's lyrics flouted commonly held taboos and dealt frankly—and often explicitly—with politically and culturally loaded topics including murder, rape, child sexual abuse, arson, racism, and misogyny. Though the band's lyrics contained controversial material, the lyrics were meant to serve as a commentary or a display of distaste for the subject matter. They were staunchly critical of the commercial nature of rock, shunning the mainstream music industry and insisting on complete control over all aspects of their career. At the height of their success, they booked their own tours, paid for their own recordings, refused to sign contracts, and eschewed many of the traditional corporate trappings of rock bands. In doing so, they had a significant impact on the aesthetic and political development of independent and underground rock music.
In addition to two studio albums, Big Black released two live albums, two compilation albums, four EPs, and five singles, all through independent record labels. Most of the band's catalog was kept in print through Touch and Go Records for years following their breakup.
History
1981–1982: Formation and Lungs
Big Black was founded by Steve Albini in 1981 during his second year of college at Northwestern University. Albini had become a fan of punk rock during his high school years in Missoula, Montana, and taught himself to play bass guitar in the fall of 1979, his senior year, while recuperating from a badly broken leg resulting from being struck by a car while riding his motorcycle. Moving to Evanston, Illinois the following year to pursue a journalism degree and fine art minor at Northwestern, Albini immersed himself in the fledgling Chicago punk scene and became a devoted fan of the band Naked Raygun. He also wrote a controversial column titled "Tired of Ugly Fat?" for the Chicago zine Matter, publishing confrontational rants about the local music scene which polarized readers into either respecting or hating him. However, he was unable to find other musicians who could play the songs to his satisfaction, later stating in Forced Exposure that "I couldn't find anybody who didn't blow out of a pig's asshole." Instead, in the spring of 1981, he bought a guitar, borrowed a four-track multitrack recorder from a friend in exchange for a case of beer, and spent his spring break week recording the Lungs EP in his living room, handling the guitar, bass, and vocals by himself and programming the Roland TR-606 to provide the drum sound. Albini would come to dislike the album, regarding it as too "slavishly imitative" of personal favorites like the Cure, Killing Joke, and Cabaret Voltaire. The EP is described by Our Band Could Be Your Life author Michael Azerrad as "cold, dark, and resolutely unlistenable", with the lyrics describing child abusers and other controversial topics.
1983: Full lineup and Bulldozer
In early 1983 Albini met Naked Raygun singer Jeff Pezzati through mutual friends and convinced him to play bass guitar with Big Black. Pezzati recalled that Albini "knew a heck of a lot about, right from the start, how to release a record and get the word out that you have a record", and that "He jumped at the chance to have a band play his stuff." The two practiced in Pezzati's basement, and one day Naked Raygun guitarist Santiago Durango came downstairs and asked to play along. The trio clicked as a unit, Durango's ability to rework arrangements and tweak sounds helping to refine Albini's song ideas. According to Albini, "He ended up being absolutely crucial to Big Black." Albini achieved a signature "clanky" sound with his guitar by using metal guitar picks notched with sheet metal clips, creating the effect of two guitar picks at once. The Bulldozer EP was recorded with engineer Iain Burgess and released in December 1983, with the first two hundred copies packaged in a galvanized sheet metal sleeve in homage to Public Image Ltd.'s Metal Box. Many of the EP's lyrics depicted scenarios drawn from Albini's rural upbringing, such as "Cables", which described the slaughtering of cows at a Montana abattoir, and "Pigeon Kill", about a rural Indiana town that dealt with an overpopulation of pigeons by feeding them poisoned corn.
1984: Touring and label signing
Even with Bulldozer released, Big Black drew very small crowds in their native Chicago. They began venturing outside of Illinois to play shows in Madison, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Muncie, transporting themselves and their equipment in a cramped car and sleeping on people's floors. Albini handled much of the band's logistics himself, setting up rehearsals, booking studio time, and arranging tours.
Looking for better distribution of their records, Big Black negotiated a deal with Homestead Records. Gerard Cosloy, who had befriended Albini through writing for Matter and gone on to work at Homestead, negotiated an unorthodox deal for the band: Big Black merely licensed their recordings to Homestead for specific lengths of time, rather than the label retaining the rights to the recordings as was typical. The band members figured that if a record company were going to cheat them, they would be able to do so with or without a contract because the band could not afford to defend themselves. The lack of a drummer also meant one less member to split profits with, and since there was no drum kit the band did not have to rent a tour van to fit all of their equipment. Durango, meanwhile, opted to leave Naked Raygun to commit full-time to Big Black. In Chicago he joined a band called Savage Beliefs, and his playing style impressed Albini and Durango, who invited him to join Big Black as they were recording the songs that would make up the band's first full-length album. The band had already begun writing new songs by the time Racer-X was released, stating in the last sentence of the EP's liner notes that "The next one's gonna make you shit your pants." Big Black's first LP, 1986's Atomizer, found the band at their most musically developed and aggressive level yet. One of the album's most controversial songs was "Jordan, Minnesota", about the 1983 scandal in Jordan, Minnesota that saw a large number of the rural town's adults indicted on charges of involvement in a huge child sex ring. Riley explained that the song was about the effects of boredom in rural America: "There's only two things to do: Go blow up a whole load of stuff for fun, or have a lot of sex with the one girl in town who'll have sex with anyone. 'Kerosene' is about a guy who tries to combine the two pleasures." Big Black secured a European distribution deal for their records through Blast First, a label recommended to Albini by Sonic Youth, and met enthusiastic responses to their shows on a 1986 European tour.
The compilation album The Hammer Party, combining Lungs and Bulldozer, was also released through Homestead Records in 1986, but later that year Big Black had a falling out with the label and its distributor, Dutch East India Trading. According to Albini, Dutch East India's accounting practices were "always fucked. They would do every sleazy, cheap trick to avoid paying you, like send you a check that wasn't signed or send you a check that had a different numeral and literal amount."
1987: Headache, Songs About Fucking, and breakup
Big Black's first release for Touch and Go was the Headache EP in spring 1987. A sticker on the EP's cover read "Not as good as Atomizer, so don't get your hopes up, cheese!" Durango later remarked that "I was feeling tapped out ideawise. At that point I think we had tried everything that we wanted to try, musically and in the studio."
Through their aggressive guitar playing and use of a drum machine, Big Black's music served as a precursor to industrial rock.
- Released: May 7, 1986
- Label: Homestead
- Format: LP
|-
|1987
|Songs About Fucking
- Released: September 10, 1987
- Label: Touch and Go
- Format: LP, CD
|}
Live albums
{| class ="wikitable"
|-
!Year
!Album details
|-
|1987
|Sound of Impact
- Released: 1987
- Label: Walls Have Ears
- Format: LP
|-
|1992
|Pigpile
Compilation albums
{| class ="wikitable"
|-
!Year
!Album details
|-
|1986
|The Hammer Party
- Released: November 12, 1986
- Label: Homestead
- Format: LP, CD
|-
|1987
|The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape
- Released: December 1982
- Label: Ruthless
- Format: EP
|-
|1983
|Bulldozer
- Released: December 1983
- Label: Fever
- Format: EP
|-
|1985
|Racer-X
- Released: March 10, 1985
- Label: Homestead
- Format: EP
|-
|1987
|Headache
- Released: May 22, 1987
- Label: Touch and Go
- Format: EP
|}
Singles
{| class ="wikitable"
|-
!Year
!Release details
|-
|rowspan="2"|1985
|"Rema-Rema"
- Released: 1985
- Label: Forced Exposure
- Format: 7"
|-
|"Il Duce"
- Released: January 26, 1986
- Label: Homestead
- Format: 7", 12"
|-
|rowspan="2"|1987
|"Heartbeat"
- Released: July 13, 1987
- Label: Touch and Go
- Format: 7"
|-
|"He's a Whore" / "The Model"
- Released: July 13, 1987
- Label: Touch and Go
- Format: 7"
|-
|1992
|"In My House"
- Released: October 5, 1992
- Label: Touch and Go
- Format: 5"
|}
I "Rema-Rema" is a Rema-Rema cover included as a one-sided single with issue No. 9 of Forced Exposure, and limited to 500 copies.
II "In My House" is a Mary Jane Girls cover that was included with copies of the Pigpile video.
- Released: 1992
- Label: Touch and Go
- Format: VHS
|}
Other appearances
The following Big Black songs were released on compilation albums. This is not an exhaustive list; songs that were first released on the band's albums, EPs, and singles are not included.
{| class ="wikitable"
|-
!Year
! style="width:300px;"|Release details
!Track(s)
|-
|1984
|The Middle of America Compilation
- Released: 1984
- Label: HID Productions
- Format: LP
|
- "Big Payback" (premix)
- "Hunter's Safety (Tommy Bartlett Dies in Pain)"
|-
|1986
|God's Favorite Dog
- Released: 1986
- Label: Touch and Go
- Format: LP
|
- "Every Man for Himself"
- "Crack Up"
|-
|1987
|Happiness Is Dry Pants
- Released: 1987
- Label: Chemical Imbalance
- Format: 7"
|
- "Burning Indian Wife"
|}
See also
- You Weren't There: A History of Chicago Punk 1977-1984 (dir. Joe Losurdo and Christina Tillman) (2007) - Documentary