Big Dipper…did you miss this one, too?
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I’ve been getting kind of down on music, the inevitable by-product, I think, of reviewing 4-5 CDs a week and sometimes 6, for weeks and weeks on end. So the yellow manila envelopes that used to be almost like Christmas, every single day of the week, have been starting to feel like obligations. Great, another fucking record. Thanks. It’s a sickness. But anyway, these sorts of ruts are not uncommon, and all it takes is one really great CD to pull me out. This week, I got three great CDs from the people at Merge, in the form of a comprehensive triple-disc reissue of the works of Big Dipper.A word of explanation. Big Dipper was a Boston band, hard to classify but incorporating elements of both post-punk and jangly college rock. There were four of them, coming from bands like Volcano Suns (Burma’s Peter Prescott and Bob Weston were also in this band), Dumptruck, The Embarrassment, and XS. They were active between 1985 to 1992, precisely the years that I was paying the absolute least amount of attention to rock and roll for a variety of boring personal reasons. So I missed them. And now I get to make up for lost time. The three CD set includes all of Boo-Boo, Heavens and Craps, some unreleased bonus tracks and the long lost major label album Very Loud Array, recorded for Epic just before the band got dropped and never released. It’s all wonderful, and hard to choose a favorite, but here’s “She’s Fetching.” There are three reunion shows planned so far:April 24 at Maxwell’s in HobokenApril 25 at Southpaw in BrooklynApril 26 at Middle East in CambridgeYou might see me at the last one…give me a shout if you’re going, okay?
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