Black Is The Color, Music Is The Game

Big Black
Album: Atomizer
Song: Jordan, Minnesota

There's virtue in being first.  Monteverdi is generally credited with heralding the Baroque period in music, and his music lives on because of it.  But in fact, in the grand scheme of things, he's a lesser composer.  He was the first, but others did it better.  The Ramones were among the first to punk.  (I've just verbed punk.)  Others did it better, but The Ramones, well, did it.

Big Black were among the first industrial bands, and they made some of the most acerbic and confrontational music of the 80s.  I didn't know much about the band when I purchased their second album, Atomizer, at a used record store.  I liked the cover art.  Within a few seconds of putting needle to vinyl, however, I realized that Big Black was something wonderful.  The guitar work.  Crazy fucking good.  Brittle, jagged, insistent; the sound, as one critic put it, of shattering glass.  The band was led by the great Steve Albini, best known these days for his work producing albums by artists like Nirvana, Slint, The Jesus Lizard, Helmet, The Stooges, The Pixies, PJ Harvey, Low, Joanna Newsom, and others.  As you can see, much of my listening habits of the last 25 years have been shaped by his hand in one way or another.

Albini is also known for his role as a music industry pundit.  He has been highly critical of the industry and its poor ethical standards, charging in particular that this lax morality filters down to the independent labels.  On this topic he writes, "I don't give two splats of an old negro junkie's vomit for your politico-philosophical treatises, kiddies.  I like noise.  I like big-ass vicious noise that makes my head spin.  I wanna feel it whipping through me like a fucking jolt.  We're so dilapidated and crushed by our pathetic existence we need it like a fix."  Albini insisted that Big Black's music remain untainted by the corporate music industry.  The band maintained full creative control throughout their recording life and rejected several overtures from major labels.

In the late 80s and 90s other industrial bands did Big Black better than Big Black itself.  But Big Black was, and always will be, the first.  A virtue, indeed.

Oh, and they seemed as geeky and nerdy as Elvis Costello, David Byrne, and Arto Lindsay combined. Which is, needless to say, frigging awesome.