Music / Big Black

"One, two, one, two - fuck you!"

Post-Hardcore band formed by Steve Albini in 1981 and dissolved in 1987. Became popular within the underground music community for their distinctive "clanky" guitar playing, the use of drum machine instead of a drum kit (predating its use in Industrial Metal), and their dark and explicit lyrical content.

According to Steve Albini, their name is "just sort of a reduction of the concept of a large, scary, ominous figure. All the historical images of fear and all the things that kids are afraid of are all big and black, basically."

Not to be confused with Christopher "Big Black" Boykin from Rob & Big.

Members

• Steve Albini - Vocals, guitar, Drum programming (1981-1987, 2006 Reunion)
• Santiago Durango - Guitar (1983-1987, 2006 Reunion)
• Dave Riley - Bass Guitar (1985-1987)
• Jeff Pezzati - Bass Guitar (1983-1984, 2006 Reunion)
• Roland - Drums (1981-1987, 2006 Reunion)

Discography

Studio Albums

• Lungs (EP) 1982
• Bulldozer (EP) 1983
• Racer-X (EP) 1984
• Atomizer (LP) 1986
• Headache (EP) 1987
• Songs About Fucking (LP) 1987

Compilations

• The Hammer Party (Combines Lungs and Bulldozer on LP, also throws in Racer-X on the CD version) 1986
• The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape (Combines Atomizer, Headache, and Heartbeat; CD Only) 1992

Live Albums

• Sound of Impact (Official Bootleg) 1987
• Pigpile (Live Album + VHS) 1992

Tropes

• Affectionate Parody: On their "He's A Whore / The Model" single, both sides of the album art parody of the cover art of the albums the songs are originally found on. The "He's A Whore" side◊ has the members of Big Black dressed like Cheap Trick and posing similarly to them on their debut self-titled album.◊ Likewise, on the back side◊ the band parodies The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk.
• All There in the Manual: The liner notes provided background information on many of the songs. This was removed for The Rich Man's Eight-Track Tape, a CD compilation combining Atomizer with Headache and the "Heartbeat" single. This was in line with Steve Albini's dislike of CDs and digital recordings.
• Ambiguously Brown: The subject of "Passing Complexion."
  He'd been white
  He'd been black
  They asked him
  "Black like that?"
• And I Must Scream: The song "L Dopa"'s lyrics don't seem to make much sense until you read what they actually mean in the album liner notes... Don't get it? It's about a girl that got sleeping sickness (encepalitis lethargica) in her teens and woke up as an old woman after being given L-DOPA. She wanted to die, and she was not allowed to.
  daisy went to sleep at 15 and woke up many years later. she, being perfectly sensible, decided she ought to die, since she had literally slept away her entire productive life. the medical profession, in her absence, had decided that all life must be preserved, regardless of worth to its owner, and prevented her from performing the only noble act she was capable of.
• Animesque: The cover of Songs About Fucking.
• Anti-Love Song: "Pavement Saw."
• Badass Boast: The spoken word segment of "Bad Penny."
  I think I fucked your girlfriend once
  Maybe twice, I don't remember
  Then I fucked all your friends' girlfriends
  Now they hate you
• Companion Cube: Albini's Roland TR-606 was nicknamed Roland and credited as such under "Drums".
• Cover Version: Several, including Kraftwerk's "The Model," Wire's "Heartbeat," and Cheap Trick's "He's A Whore."
• Creature of Habit: A very dark version of this trope drives "Bad Houses."
• Darker and Edgier: Big Black's music opted to become this to Heavy Metal and Hardcore Punk.
  "Heavy metal and stuff like that didn't really seem intense to me, it seemed comical to me. Hardcore punk didn't really seem intense most of the time — most of the time it just seemed childish. I guess that's how I would differentiate what we were doing from what other people were doing."
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Alluded to on the cover of Atomizer.
• Evil Gloating: Combined with Post-Rape Taunt in "Jordan, Minnesota".
  "This will stay with you until you die
  And I will stay with you until you die
  This is Jordan, we do what we like"
• Gorn: The cover of the 1000-copy limited edition of the Headache EP. It is a close-up of the head of a suicide victim who Ate His Gun and split his head in half. Only a mini body bag was appropriate to package it.
• Incendiary Exponent: "Kerosene" is about someone applying this to sex.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: Part of Steve Albini's signature sound is putting the vocals further back into the mix than most bands, often burying them under the guitar. This makes the already near-unintelligible yelling on heavier songs that much more difficult to make out. It doesn't help things that he never printed lyrics in the liner notes of any of his band's albums and instead merely described what the song is about.
  • Annoyingly, whoever did transcribe the lyrics online and let them spread from lyrics site to lyrics site simply put "mm mm" over words they couldn't decipher. Seriously, go look up the lyrics to any Big Black song with the vocals low in the mix. You'll find whole sentences replaced with "mm mm mm mm mm".
• Intentionally Awkward Title: Not incredibly apparent on the actual song titles, but their second and final LP was named Songs About Fucking. And boy, was it an appropriate title.
  • Except for "The Power of Independent Trucking", which isn't about fucking... initially.
  • That Albini's next band had the hentai-derived name Rapeman tells you how much he enjoys this trope.
• Intercourse with You: Thoroughly subverted; When you see an album called Songs About Fucking, you'd better believe that they're not pulling any punches in their lyrics.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: "Fists Of Love"
• Murder Ballad: "Fish Fry," and "Kasimir S. Pulaski Day" to an extent.
• Nothing Is Scarier: "Bad Houses" sports one of the least explicit lyrics in the band's catalogue, yet is deeply unsettling for precisely that reason.
• Parental Incest: "Jordan, Minnesota". With a five-year-old.
  SUCK DADDY!
• Pass Fail: "Passing Complexion", about a black man who "could mix with ordinary white company" without being noticed as long as the subject of his race never came up in conversation.
• Refuge in Audacity
• Scary Musician, Harmless Music: Inverted; the band themselves looked like average joes, but their music was very harsh and brutal.
• Self-Deprecation: The Headache EP had a sticker saying "Warning! Not as good as Atomizer, so don't get your hopes up, cheese."
• Shout-Out:
  • As noted, the Title Track of Racer-X is about the Speed Racer character. In the EP's liner notes, the band and their engineer give themselves nicknames based on other anime from The '60s (Astro Boy Albini, Tobor (Eight-Man) Durango, Gigantor Pezzati, Kimba Burgess).
  • Atomizer's album cover is one to Looney Tunes, specifically Marvin the Martian and his dynamite-operated weaponry.
• Signature Style: Heavy, distorted guitars that play a blend of punk and noise rock backed by a drum machine that adds a vaguely industrial flavor with lyrics usually about dark subject matter.
• Small Town Boredom: "Kerosene" and "Cables" are both about the extremes that people go to in combating this.
• Take That!: The band had several aimed at CDs and other digital recordings, often on the CD editions of their albums; this being in line with Steve Albini's notorious dislike for digital media. For example:
  • From the liner notes on The Rich Man's Eight-Track Tape:
    YOU PUSSIES CAN SUCK OUR COCKS [...] This compact disc, compiled to exploit those of you gullible enough to own the bastardly first-generation digital home music system, contains all-analog masters. Compact discs are quite durable, this being their only advantage over real music media. You should take every opportunity to scratch them, fingerprint them and eat egg and bacon sandwiches off them. Don't worry about their longevity, as Philips will pronounce them obsolete when the next 'phase' of the market-squeezing technology bonanza begins.
  • On the CD itself:
    When, in five years, this remarkable achievement in the advancement of fidelity is obsolete and unplayable on any 'modern' equipment, remember: in 1971, the 8-track tape was the state of the art.
  • On the CD for Songs About Fucking:
    This compact disk is made from analog masters recorded without noise reduction. Half the tracks, in fact, were recorded in a dismal, cheap basement eight-track studio with puddles of water on the floor. Digital technology will now faithfully reproduce those noisy, lo-fi, unprofessional masters for you at great expense. Feel stupid yet?
• Truth in Television: Many of the songs were based on events Steve Albini encountered in his youth living in the Midwest.
  • "Cables" is about two of his classmates in high school who would go to slaughterhouses for entertainment.
  • "Pigeon Kill" is about a town dealing with a massive pigeon infestation using poisoned corn.
• Villain Song: "Jordan, Minnesota" is from the perspective of a child rapist.
• Villainous Incest: "Jordan, Minnesota" is, again, about parents raping their children.

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