Big Black bootlegs

Kerosene

Black Death Records 252 87 678

Allegedly a bootleg of a Blast First! Limited Release. According to all accounts, side one sounds great but side 2 sounds like shit.

Tonight We Walked With Giants

Live July 24, 1987 - Hammersmith Clarendon

"Heartbeat" featured Bruce Gilbert and Graeme Lewis of Wire as guests. At the end Albini says "...and tonight we walked with giants..." This is also the Pigpile show.

Big Black Live In Heaven

(Vienna, Austria 1987) Oblivion Records OR CD 9104

The following was written by Larry Roberts (lroberts@oacis.com) in a posting elsewhere:

I picked up a used copy of a Big Black CD boot that's unthroned Sound of Impact as the best Big Black bootleg. Actually, the last 4 songs on it are the same as the last 4 on Sound of Impact, which says that those songs are "live in clogland". (the other stuff on Sound of Impact is from the same Minneapolis show where the live "Cables" on Atomizer was recorded, and from a show in Indiana.) Sound quality here is better than Sound of Impact, strangely enough considering the rumored semi-official status of S.o.I. Actually, I think those 4 songs are the encore.

There's actually two versions of "Fists of Love", because they mess up and stop partway through the first, and so the track listing's off after that.

It's unfortunate that there's so few boots with recordings of songs from Racer X. This one and Sound of Impact have the same recording of "Deep Six", which I think is the only song off Racer X on any Big Black boot I've ever seen. (actually, other than Pig Pile and other boots of the same show, the only other vinyl boot I've seen is called Kersene, is red, white and blue, and is pretty bad, late shows and radio broadcasts.)

Selected banter quotes:

"That's what happens when you fuck around with machines."

"They make microphone stands differently here."

"So, do you like the Butthole Surfers? " "Yay..." "Good band."

"We'd like to thank you all for coming tonight, especially since we don't speak speak your language or anything."

"After a nuclear war, only two things will be left alive: cockroaches and Keith Richards"

"We've just been in England and the food is terrible, and no-one has showers in their apartment. We're really glad to be in a civilized country again."


Death Wish

Big Music Records BIG 049

From the liner notes:

It takes a lot to successfully transfer the American nightmare onto vinyl and then sell it to unsuspecting record buyers worldwide.  For five years in the mid-eighties, Chicago's noise terrorists Big Black held a mirror to the face of the low-life scumbags who plague America.  Powered by an out-of-control drum machine, the three piece turned feedbacking guitars played through a million distortion boxes into a new art form.  It was loud, it was ugly, noisy, brutal, un-nerving, (experience them live in a confined and overcrowded space and you wouldn't sleep for a week), but on
the whole, it was the truth.  The subject matter matched the corrosive sounds wrenched from their guitars, nobody was meant to be singing about child abuse, illness, bad people with bad lives, the horror of America as the sickness spread.  This was music for the apocalypse, the soundtrack to armageddon.  Steve Albini, Dave Riley and Santiago Durango also committed the greatest crime in the eyes of the lowlifes from the music industry by splitting up just as the band was reaching its peak.  The biggest "Fuck You" in the face of the music scene ever made and a good lesson for any
idiots who are thinking of making a "career" out of playing in a punk rock group.  No limits, no laws, no heroes, 'cos someday a real rain's gonna come down and wash all the scum back off the streets.  Who learnt the lesson given by Big Black?

Peel Session boot

King Dick Records 7"

(no info., but etchings say "shoot guns 1" and "eat pussy 2")

Recorded for BBC Radio 5/6/87

Sound Of Impact

(You got it all, Dad! We're gonna hit!)

Side 1 Muncie IN 1986
Insert Listing Actual Song
The Strong Ready Men
Big $ Rush Big Money
Elephant Joke?
Kill The Cow Cables
Yanomamo Indians
Bird Thang Pigeon Kill
Black Sab Crack Crack Up
Way Hap Y'All Rip
Toytown Daddy Oh! - Bino's
Big Dick Sound Jordan, Minnesota
Side 2 Minneapolis and Clogland [i.e. Holland] 1986
Firecrackers
Loud Cow Cables
Bird Bag Pigeon Kill
Gas Jockey Huff Kerosene
I Think I Fucked Your Girlfriend Once Bad Penny
Hey There
Big Truck Deep Six
People Like That? Rip
Bumbandit Rema Rema

NONE of the songs are listed by their actual names. "Firecrackers" is pretty self explanatory, and the rest of the tracks without "real listings" are just Steve yammerin'. The version of "Cables" on side 2 is the same on Atomizer, et al.