BIG BLACK

LONDON HAMMERSMITH CLARENDON

"ONETWO! F**K YOU!" The accumulated repetition of Big Black's song intros amuses even the security men. Everyone else is amused by the lost punks down the front, cartwheeling over their friends' heads and staggering out bloody and exhausted from accidental self-damage. Big Black's Steve Albini engages lager throwers in debate. "Hey! I f**ked your girlfriend once! Maybe twice! I f**ked your friends too! Now they all hate you!"

Big Black look like The Feelies after a night out corpse-molesting, or all the kids who ever got beaten up in American teen movies, returning to disembowel the football teams. They're about to split up, presumably the better to plant child-sex magazines in Ollie North's house.

In their wake they leave London in ruins, for between the "ONE TWO! F**K YOU !"s was a lot of killer noise. Big Black are a less complex form of death than the twisted rhythms of Sonic Youth, and indeed a more nerdy sound altogether, but this is still the heavy monster apocalypse as dreamed of by the million and rarely achieved.

Two specky baldies, one meaty man and a very clean drum machine, the quartet mark out certain areas for their own; they are a galloping train beat, a deep rattling bass, a guitar that just does loud things, a singer who, like The Thing, is out there and pissed off, and the terrible Other Guitar. The Other Guitar is terrible because it's just a clean, blank noise, a white sheet of volume which fills the room and stuffs up every orifice of the body. The Other Guitar bears a vague resemblance to the Guitar in Husker Du, but only in the way that Orca the Killer Whale resembled Flipper the Friendly Dolphin.

Big Black are, by and large, the Other Guitar, a pure, colourless migraine that you can dance to, except they have funnier sleevenotes. They terminated their last London night by performing Wire's 'Heartbeat', forcing Bruce Gilbert to join in on the guitar. "We have walked among giants tonight," shouted Albint, and vanished, leaving us to the horror of our own company.

David Quantick

BIG BLACK
Clarendon, Hammersmith

MOURNING the passing of Big Black, realism personified, may seem fitting, but it is pointless. The bravery of termination should be applauded. Surely they had lived long enough and therefore deserved to die, thus preventing any later foulling of such a pristine reputation? Thank God they're doing the indecent thing. Celebrate that void.

There loomed old mutha Riley, in the Bruce Willis mode, his bass begging foregiveness, mirrored by Santiago "I Am (Suddenly) The Law" Durango, grooving like a burning deckchair. There too stood that haven of hormonal confusion, Steve Albini. PURE SEX. (From the feet down.) An audience pined, but pondered. Guess who's come in your dinner? "One, two, f**k you!" Albini gingerly, grimly announced, provoking each number to desperate heights, and that's all we f**king heard, all f**king night long. F**K!

A tenacious affrontery, ensuring that the malicious microsurgery forestalled any tedium of brutality. The totality of their radium, with songs as big as their ears, became a magnificent monotony; never thrashing, always threshing, squeezing from within. Tube trains tottering behind the building became engulfed by multiple orgasm, as headcases inside danced like revolving doors.

Strangely, Big Black shut up shop by inviting the suspiciously tidy Wire out, conspicuous by the absence of any audible contribution, for an anti-climactic encore of "Heartbeat" and that was almost that. When they'd first announced the shock disbandment we'd all gone "ooh!", like you do, but imagine our surprise at the literal nature of their split; brewer's drays moving in opposite directions, "Rest In Pieces" daubed on their flanks, being employed to rip them limb from limb. A final masterstroke, a presumptuously public suicide, that was cheered relentlessly as we stood in the dank blood and screamed "Good riddance!" to one of the finest bands that ever quivered.

The remains were raffled.

MICK MERCER

I got these from unattributed clippings. This show was recorded and released as Pig Pile.