BIG BLACK: SOUND OF IMPACT (1987)
1) Ready Men; 2) Big Money; 3)
Elephant Joke?; 4) Cables; 5) Yanomamo Indians; 6) Pigeon Kill; 7) Passing
Complexion; 8) Crack Up; 9) RIP; 10) Jordan, Minnesota; 11) Firecrackers; 12)
Cables; 13) Pigeon Kill; 14) Kerosene; 15) Bad Penny; 16) Deep Six; 17) RIP;
18) Rama Rama.
An «un-unofficial bootleg»: the album was
originally released on a UK indie label rather than Big Black's own Homestead
Records, and whatever was the reason for that, legal trouble was avoided by
leaving not only the band's name off the packaging (which consisted mainly of reprints
of black box transcripts, hence the «title»), but even the song titles
(currently restored, the 18 tracks were first denoted by completely different
monikers, although retaining some connection with the originals — for
instance, ʽCablesʼ was ʽKill The Cowʼ, and ʽPigeon Killʼ was ʽBird Thangʼ).
Since then, however, the record has occasionally been re-released, and generally
features as an integral part of Big Black's discography.
And for good reason, too, since Big Black are
one of the few artists in the whole punk/post-punk pool that really deserve to
be heard live. Pigpile gives a
better general impression of a classic Albini show, but Sound Of Impact, recorded in two different locations (which is why
some of the tracks double each other), is a bit more of a «glorious mess», a
little less loud and a little more prominent on stupid, but memorable Albini
jokes. Anyway, even despite the fact that they mostly play the same songs on
both albums, owning both is not an exercise in redundancy.
The funny thing is that it takes a good listen
to a live Big Black album to properly understand that the band does pay a lot of attention to proper
mixing and even melodicity of sound on their studio records — in the live
environment, Albini's and Durango's guitars omit or blur some of the subtle
twists of the originals (e. g. ʽDeep Sixʼ), greedily going for more noise, power,
and energy, just the way it befits a good old-fashioned rock'n'roll performer.
But where they lose in complexity and subtlety, they expectedly gain in blowing
your brains out. With a little extra distortion on the «clang» tone, the songs
are transformed into walls of ferocious white fire — if the bass is at regular
volume, as on ʽKeroseneʼ or ʽPassing Complexionʼ — or black fire, if the bass
is turned all the way up, as on ʽBad Pennyʼ or the second of the two ʽPigeon
Killsʼ.
In between the firethrower blasts, Steve
entertains the not-too-grateful listeners with «shocking» stories, such as the
one about the mouse with the BMW and the elephant with a big dick (ʽElephant
Joke?ʼ), or one about certain violent and sexist customs of particular Indian
tribes (ʽYanomamo Indiansʼ), or introducing ʽBig Moneyʼ by saying "we
stole it from Rush", or finding some other way to come across as a
shock-oriented prankster. It does add some personality to the show, but what
sort of personality is up to you to decide. I'm still trying to figure out why
his unfunny jokes do not annoy me — whether it is a Monty Python sort of way,
with absurdism compensating for the occasional unfunniness, or maybe I'm just
a covert fan of artistic rudeness.
Of the setlist, the only big surprise is the
closing track, a cover of an obscure composition by the short-lived post-punk
band Rema-Rema (mostly famous for its guitar player Marco Pirroni, who would
later become a close associate of Adam Ant) — nothing special about it, and it
was probably played for an encore to confuse the audience even further; then
again, like every respectable indie prophet, Albini did have this hunch for
dragging out obscurities (being as he was, to a large extent, an obscurity
himself). But this record is not about surprises, it is about putting the «Big»
back in «Black», if you get my drift, and it does that fairly well and it gets
a thumbs up
and you can't get it anywhere legally, not even on iTunes, so Steve Albini
welcomes you to break the law in this particular case.
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