Walk Softly & Carry a Big Stick

 

Dan the OlderMusicGeek left me a comment over on a post from 2007 called I…I…Iowa. I had said I would re-upload two Iowa compilations, then utilized my usual filing system of writing a note on a small slip of paper & then putting the paper…somewhere.

So this weekend I had to find said albums, re-rip them from vinyl, & all the rest that is involved in getting files ready to re-up. Usually I post up stuff I've recently been listening to, so I kinda know if there are any problems, so speaker tuneage is sufficient, but re-ripping, I have to listen closely (headphones) to the albums to hear if there are any problems & try to fix them if possible. It almost turns listening to music into WORK. So I try to have some just FUNTIME! music loaded up to listen to for aural relief. This weekend that auditory salve came from those fun-loving Drag Racing Underground crazies Big Stick.

 

Big Stick were probably the most obscure band that slithered up from the NYC noise-art rock underground in the mid-80s. They were worlds apart both stylistically & sonically from the noise-damage darlings of the junkie punk scene they emerged from: Pussy Galore; White Zombie; Sonic Youth; Swans; or Foetus. Unlike these bands, John Gill & Yanna Trance, who make up Big Stick, were never ones to wear their art-school background on their sleeves. Being big drag-racing fans, the band wallows in white-trash-exotica with their tongues surgically implanted in their cheeks. They perform wearing ridiculous elaborate masks, gaudy plastic jewelry, antlers, & hair extensions made out of colored strips & feathers.

 

John & Yanna brew up their crazed sonic schemes in their very own secret headquarters, explaining little & revealing less. Their sound is a cut & paste mixture of growling swamp rock, noise-rock, teen trash, electro, & hip-hop. Adding to this awkward mix, they seem not to care about sound quality or any sort of proper mixing or rhythmic coherence. Drum machines are not programmed, but played by hand, & all edits & overdubs are done in the most amateurish way possible. Just the formula for sticking it to a four-letter word like WORK, replacing it with the godhead three-chord word FUN!!!

If you don’t like this stuff, too bad for you. This is not a song, this is a THREAT.

Big Stick – Hoochie Koo Time 10”, Blast First BFFP 83, 1991.
decryption code in comments

Side A –

Hoochie Koo Time

On the Road Again

Bionca Blast

Side B –

California Dreamin’

Hokey Pokey Girl

A Threat (Drag Racing Underground theme)

Enjoy,

NØ