Big Stick-Crack 'n Drag (1988)

 


Artist: Big Stick

Title: Crack 'n Drag

Label: Blast First

Format: LP 

Cat #:  BFFP 25

Year of Release: 1988

Country and Year of Edition Issue: UK 1988

Sold Price: $4.99

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 10/9/20

Discogs Last Sold: 8/2/20 M/M $5.00

Low: $3.83

Median: $6.49

High: $10.39

Current low price: NM/VG $4.00

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 41

Have/Want: 240/43

Where Sold: Sunset Beach, CA

Time it took to sell: 4 years

Where and When Bought: Boston, Nuggets used around $1.99 in the early 90's

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B+

Sad To See It Go?: No

This is a British compilation of 2 Big Stick EP's, the first side, 1987's Crack Attack is a stone cold classic, the B-side Drag Racing, from 1985, less so.  When you talk about  Crack Attack, the title track in it's 2 mix splendor .

NYC had a hardened approach to it's underground.  Crime, street drugs, squalor was the backstage.  NYC artists marketed this to the world as the price you pay for freedom.  And worth it.  Yes, of course it was.  But it wasn't all Mondo New York, Tompkins Square Riots and young Italians taking a break from tending the pigeon coup to hang at CBGB's.  The seed of gentrification, the "yuppie" was planted, and the weed grew and grew and grew and grew until Sex and the City brought a new generation to town and begat the transformation of the millennium.  

So the social commentary that was "Crack Attack" may seem reactionary, or even racist, but it was born out of a multi-racial melting pot, living in squalor and newly impacted by a cheap street drug that killed many people either directly or indirectly.  It also certainly made some people rich enough to afford an apartment on the LES today.  Now it just lurks in the backdrop just like every other cheap vice past it's publicity run. And so does Big Stick.

Big Stick, revered by some,  combined art, noise, and industrial against that backdrop of the Urban Wasteland, real or imagined.  A wasteland wasted on Crack.  Some want a refund.  Some will abstain.  Some will be more susceptible through no fault of their own.   The sample of "Crack Attack" tells us repeatedly in hypnotic fashion.  And tells us again in a remix.  The UK remix devolved into a house music approach.  The other big hit on the EP was "Billy Jack Paddy Wack" which has a feel not unlike 45 Grave.

This was a used promo $2 find at Nuggets, my record "hang" in Boston's Kenmore Square when I lived in the Fenway.  My heavy play was the EP in my WICN teen years in 1987-8.  I probably played this once after buying and filed it away.  Those tracks were part of the NYC trash aesthetic siren song that brought me to NYC at the tail end of the Dinkins era.  Not for dope or depravity, but for the sense of freedom.  And I needed a god damn job.


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