Big Flame
Big Flame integrated self-reflection and intellection into the substance of their songs. Then they set the whole mess ablaze, cutting a panoply of antipop slogans with slashing-machete guitar and precise stop-time rhythm bombs. Like some of the very best mid-80s British postpunk groups, Big Flame unleashed its attack on pop through a small label called Ron Johnson Records. Plenty of the label’s bands–the Shrubs, Jackdaw With Crowbar, the Noseflutes, Splat!, and Twang–are still in need of CD reissuing. The only Ron Johnson band to make a small peep in the industry at large was Stump, who disbanded shortly after their initial big-label flop, A Fierce Pancake. Now Chicago’s own upholders of independent ideals, Drag City Records, have done today’s alternative industry a favor it probably doesn’t deserve by reissuing everything Big Flame ever released. Rigour 1983-1986 is a labor of love; it took around four years to put out and comes packaged complete with all the original graphics, lyrics (some handwritten), and, as with each Big Flame release, bits of encouraging or provocative propaganda. These include, for instance, a hysterical creation-myth broadside proclaiming that Big Flame was Wham’s original backing band.
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The alternative music industry doesn’t encourage its worker bees to consider their life span finite or to maintain such a pass-the-torch mentality. As with mega-popstars, success for alternative musicians is taken to mean endless possibilities. The successful band is eternal, even if pathetic: witness the way that Dinosaur Jr. increasingly seems like the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Big Flame burned bright, hot, and fast. They weren’t concerned with staying alive, they just wanted an alternative that didn’t shit on you.
