The Real 100 Greatest Rock Albums of All Time, No. 89:
Big Stick- Crack 'N' Drag (Blast First, 1988)

This might actually be considered cheating, since Crack n’ Drag is actually a re-release of Big Stick’s first two singles, Drag Racing and Crack Attack, slapped together on one righteous slab o’ hot wax, but what the hell- my list, my rules. Just about any Big Stick record could’ve made it, really, but this is the one currently spinning around on my turntable, so let’s run with it.

Big Stick slithered up from the NYC art rock underground in the mid-80’s like brightly colored lizards, worlds apart both stylistically and sonically from the noise-damage darlings of the junkie punk scene they emerged from- Pussy Galore, Reverb Motherfuckers, White Zombie- or their high profile big mean daddies in Sonic Youth, the Swans, or Foetus. Sure, they were just as druggy, and probably even snottier than their deathtripping brethren, but they had style, baby, and a sense of showmanship long abandoned by the then-reigning Feedback Mafia. Sorta like the more playful, less genocidal version of Jim Thirwell and Lydia Lunch, John Gill and Yanna Trance were a live-work-fuck-kill together couple who brewed up their crazed sonic schemes in their very own secret headquarters, explaining little and revealing even less. They performed wearing elaborate masks, and all known press photos were similarly mysterious affairs, shrouding their true identities in a veil of feathers and wigs and antlers. It was crazy but sexy, and the secret-squirrel gag was the perfect compliment to their bizarre cut and paste electro-skronk.

The music that Big Stick played simply did not exist before they did, and whether directly or otherwise, their dizzying, junkdustrial, urban warfare psychedelia was the seminal first step in at least a couple of today’s so-hip-it-hurts rock sub-genres. Their abrasive pastiche of distorto-punk guitars, drawling slacker-rap, and cheapjack drum machine beats is pretty much the blueprint for the electro-clash movement that’s currently making Satanic superstars out of Peaches and A.R.E. Weapons, and the concept of a two-man (or woman) primitive blues-punk racket, pioneering when Big Stick did it, is now a guaranteed recipe for at least 15 minutes of rock radio-baiting success. Oh yeah, and disco punk? Ask the Electric Six how that’s working out. If being a dozen years ahead of your time was at all profitable, than Gill and Trance would be zillionaires by now. But it’s not, is it?

Fact is, although they did receive their share of accolades from the taste-makers and scene creators and edgier rock-journo hacks of the day, Big Stick existed at a time where you could pretty much do whatever the fuck you wanted. If it was good, well, enjoy the spoils of the rock and roll war, baby. And if it wasn’t, well…maybe you were just too cutting edge, or something. At any rate, the musical climate was vastly different in the mid 80’s. Rock and Roll was a free-for-all, a vast upturned umbrella that caught all the crazy people as they crashed down to Earth. Believe me, it was pretty wild. In these sad and sorrowful days, rock and roll has become rigidly defined by self-imposed sub-genres and marketing niches that Big Stick would’ve fallen right through the cracks with their whacked-out lowbrow art damage. Just ask Ape Has Killed Ape, the closest cousins to Big Stick currently on the circuit. Ape Has Killed Who? Exactly. Sure, there’s plenty of great rock and roll out there these days- probably more now than ever before- but very rarely do bands just go ahead and let it all hang out, like Big Stick did. They’ve all got to be something, whether it’s stoner punks or emo simps or whatever. Something readily definable, at any rate. John Gill and Yanna Trance, on the other hand, were more interested in being the exact opposite of something- they were nebulous, chameleon-like, confounding, enthralling, and possibly evil. And Yanna wore tube tops, which is always a plus.

Well, at least she claimed to on “Drag Racing”, Big Stick’s first single. Released in 1986 on mini-label Recess, Drag Racing was a sleazy ode to pit bunnies and door slammers fueled by a blown-out drum machine, a disorienting stream of car crash samples, and Yanna’s monotone, baby-voiced declaration- “On Sunday, I put on my tube top, and Eddie takes me to the drag races”. And that’s pretty much it. It’s a minute and a half of loopy trash culture that completely deconstructs the standard format for a ‘rock song’ and puts it back together all wrong, with leftover pieces scattered everywhere and glue dripping all over the edges. It’s sexy, scary, dumb, and brilliant, all at once. I bought my copy for $3 from an ad in Maximum Rock and Roll, and played it over and over again. There was an air of undeniable, indefinable cool about it, and whatever it was that John Gill had, I wanted in.

I mean, Gill is a white man- even with a turkey mask on, that much is evident- yet he sings like some boozy cross between Yaphet Kotto and Redd Foxx. He sounds like some guy out in the sticks of Alabama who owns a BBQ joint/bait and tackle shop, and spends all day on the porch, hollering at passerby. He’s the snake handler that’s been bitten one too many times, the rain maker that can’t keep the citizens from drowning, the snake oil salesman who starts believing his own pitch. I don’t imagine that Gill would spout off his Lord Buckley meets Iceberg Slim jive at the local bodega -at least not twice in a lifetime- but when he’s in the cozy confines of the Big Stick bunker and he gets that mojo working overtime, there ain’t a more convincing sinister minister on any pulpit this side of Jonestown. He takes over vocal duties on the b-side of the “Drag Racing” single, and it’s got to be the most brass-balled display of wicked white trash debauchery since Thirwell’s apocalyptic pig slicer was let loose on “Nail”. “I Look Like Shit” sounds pretty much like it’s title would suggest. A ragged guitar slices and grinds through a muddy wall of drum machine that sometimes switches direction mid-beat. In that signature hellbilly snarl, Gill spits out his dirt farming philosophy on life like it’s used-up tobacco juice. “I might be ugly as shit, I might be dull as shit, and you can make me sleep in the barn if you want to, ‘cuz I don’t give a shit, as long as I got this goddamn guitar.”

I mean, how the fuck do you argue with that? You don’t, man. You just give that shit all the room it needs, and do your best to avoid eye contact. “Hell on Earth” was the other track on this seminal single, and followed a similar crooked path as “Drag Racing”, full of squiggles and bleats of white noise and crumpled-up rock and roll guitar. Somewhere in the din, you can hear “Suicide homicide mud-flesh criminals with an explosive urge to kill”, which might be Sirhan Sirhan-like hypnotic suggestions, so, you know, watch out. Certainly, their Drag Racing follow-up would imply an inclination towards presidential assassination conspiracies.

Actually, I don’t remember which came first, the 7” or the 12”. Logic would dictate the big hole came first, but logic doesn’t mean much in the realm of Big Stick. At any rate, somewhere in 1986, punk label Blast First released an expanded version of “Drag Racing” featuring two additional tracks.

“(I’m gonna) Sh**t the President”* is just about the most jaw-droppingly insane song title I’ve ever heard, especially when you consider that Ronald Reagan was in office at the time. And sure, other people not only wanted to shoot him, they were actively acting on it; but just the public declaration is enough to get your phone tapped. With that crazy, zig-zagging guitar as his sole accomplice, Gill growls out his grievances like a manic street preacher with a crackling megaphone and an axe to grind. “If I can’t find a job, if I don’t get laid”, he warns, “If my sister dies, if I don’t get paid, I’m gonna pull the trigger…” Without really being ‘punk’, or even rock, for that matter, “Sh**t the President” is about as punk rock as you can possibly get. An anti-social classic. The other additional track was “Jesus Was Born (On an Indian Reservation)”, another bizarre, stuttering, noiseadelic diatribe. I’m not really sure what it’s about, but I do know you can dance to it, particularly if you can’t dance at all. Oh, and it’s opening line is the kind of off-the-cuff salvo that just begs repeating in inappropriate company at any given chance- “Jesus was born on an Indian reservation, and that ain’t no jive, Charlie Brown”. Indeed.

Crack Attack was released a year later in 1987, when crack mania was in full swing. I know it’s difficult to imagine a world without crack, but it was a lethal new high at the time, and came on like a plague of locusts, punching big ugly holes into urban communities all over the country, and especially in New York City, where Big Stick got to see the damage done, first-hand. Crime went through the roof, and people were getting strung-out and dropping dead all over the place. The nightly news hyped it as the infernal menace it truly was, and the half-assed “War on Drugs” was on. In this midst of all this madness came “Crack Attack”. It was part social commentary, part enraged protest, part mocking sarcasm, part shock rock, and part hip-hop. It was controversial and crazed and dead-on, it was mean-spirited, and blunt, it was wrong-headed, but righteous. That’s an awful lot of things for one song to be, which is probably why their were 6 different versions of it.

With only a thudding disco beat and the odd guitar skronk as instrumentation, “Crack Attack” took it’s musical cues from Run DMC, right down to the rattling cowbell (or whatever the incessant ringing is that permeates the track.) I dunno if it’s John Gill doin’ his best Huggy Bear on vox, or maybe it is Huggy Bear, but whoever the druggy fella up-front is, he sounds like he’s missing a couple of front teeth, and even if he is crazy, he certainly sounds convincing. “If your mama’s white and your daddy’s black, you’re more susceptible to a Crack Attack”, he explains, as the distorted drums clang away. “Dig in Mama’s wallet, just to get the cash, so you can buy a vial of crack/Crack Attack, I want my money back” he repeats, the throbbing beat building in intensity. “Crack may seem cool, it may seem good, but it’s the quickest way to kill a neighborhood.” Things get a little crazy from there, with lines like “C-R-A-C-K is how we spell the quickest way to nigger hell” that probably wouldn’t have come away un-bleeped in today’s ultra-sensitive, "PC" culture. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time Big Stick said something outrageous in a song for it’s shock effect, but it’s striking just how much the cultural climate has changed over the past two decades- at the time, I didn’t even notice the liberal use of the “N Word”, pretty much because we didn’t refer to it as the “N Word”, back then. Now, it sounds completely outrageous, which just goes to show that in our dogged pursuit of ‘political correctness’, we’ve given all the power back to racial slurs.

Anyway, maybe Big Stick were trying to prove a point, or maybe they were just being assholes, but Crack Attack remains a highly-charged, highly effective 80’s artifact. The b-side was more ‘experimental’, which is to say, it was completely, and utterly, fucked up. “Billy Jack Paddywack” is a swirling electrical storm of noise and nasal ranting, a self-referential ode to to JG's own bad-assness, with Gill screeching “When you see me with my mask on, it’s a gas!” over and over. “I’m Amazed” is slightly more tuneful, with a twisty guitar line and their signature tin-can drum sounds. Yanna drones “I’m amazed” but sounds anything but, as John declares his love for her with phlegm and volume. Final song “Friends and Cars” is a live track recorded at Folk City. It’s an acoustic tune, just Gill and his strumming guitar, and he sounds like he’s trying to out-beatnik all the espresso sipping hipsters in the joint. “I had plenty of friends, and I had plenty of wives” he explains in a breathy, sub-Lou Reed sing-speak, “I can’t really get used to it/I can’t stop thinking about all my close friends/ who had a problem with their car/Oh, it’s a cigar.” The track doesn’t wait around for the applause, but I can only imagine there were some snapping fingers and a few “Right on, daddy-o’s” going on.

All of these tracks were eventually re-released in 1988 as the “Crack and Drag” EP, a sort of ‘story so far’, on either Blast First or Buy Our Records (there’s so many label logos on the thing, it’s kinda hard to tell). Big Stick continued on through the 80’s and 90’s, eventually changing their name to Drag Racing Underground to avoid some vague (to me, anyway) legal/contract hassles. As DRU, the released the amazing “Hedonist Chariot” (Albertine records) in 1994, one of the most outlandish, snarliest, gnarliest disco-punk/garbage rock records you will ever hear, featuring the classic “A Threat (DRU Theme)” which contains the immortal line “You go save the Rainforest and help the homeless, just stay the fuck away from car.” Righteous beyond belief. In 1996, they went back to calling themselves Big Stick and released “Pro Drag” (Pow Wow) a true-to-form cut n’ paste rocker that includes, among many other notable tracks, the pop-disco-dirge almost hit “Girls on the Toilet” and the perfectly titled “Do Not Rape My Sister at the Municipal Pool”. According to their official website, Big Stick are recording a new album as we speak. So, you know, this might be a good time to catch up with this seminal shock n’ roll band. “Crack and Drag” is probably their version of Ziggy Stardust at this point, the ‘one that everybody remembers’ (and, conversely, the one that no one will let ‘em forget), but all it takes is a blown-out drum machine, a bellyful of venom, and some horrible epidemic, and Big Stick just might out-Crack themselves. Lord knows there’s plenty of material for them to chew on these days. One thing’s for sure, they don’t come more unhinged- or more unforgettable- than these two mysterious creatures. Do yourself a favor and get hipped to their unearthly delights. It’s not as cheap as crack, mind you, but the effects last longer.

*The Lunatic we've got in office now is even bigger with the thought police than Reagan was, so I'm omitting the letters. They're "O's", tho.

-Sleazegrinder