The new set omits the disappointing Epic album Slam, which is fine with the band. (Besides, it sells for as little as one cent on Amazon.) Epic promised Big Dipper the world and pushed them into over-polishing the album; then their A&R guy was fired and the album died. “I remember them saying the album had five hits and that we’d be the first big band of the ’90s,” says Waleik. “Then I remember how the guy at Epic who heard the last demos we did put his feet on the couch and said, ‘I don’t hear a single here.’ I wanted to take him apart.”
So Big Dipper have something to prove. And there are other reasons for the reunion. “I’ve got 20 years of adrenaline ready to come out,” says Oliphant. “When your kids start getting older, it’s easy to regain chunks of your former existence,” Waleik adds. “So if we sound furious on stage, you’ll know that a lot of diaper changing and days at the office went into that.”
Related:
The 40 greatest concerts in Boston history: 13, Legendary Harte, Boston music news: March 30, 2007, More 
- The 40 greatest concerts in Boston history: 13
Mission of Burma | the Bradford Ballroom | March 12, 1983
- Legendary Harte
Rick Harte literally suffered to stake out his role in Boston music history.
- Boston music news: March 30, 2007
Drummer Billy Beard saw a young band called the Everyday Visuals at the Lizard Lounge last year and was knocked out.
- Bouncement 3
Lately it’s seemed like Old Home Days for Toneburst, the influential artcore junglist collective that was a locus of Boston’s underground dance scene in the mid ’90s.
- The old is new
Birdsongs of the Mesozoic bring back Roger
- Idol hands
The band, as always, sounded fantastic, especially if you’d been listening to the record all week in preparation.
- Psalms For The Deaf
Sage Francis addressed the densely-populated crowd at Rock the Bells at Comcast Center last weekend: "This song helped get a friend of mine out of jail. Thank you to all who donated. This song is called 'Conspiracy to Riot.' Strange Famous fucking Records, Providence."
- Re-geeing
Birdsongs go back to the drawing board
- Sick sense
We've been told there's no such thing as a new idea, but that may well be bullshit. The new ideas are out there, they just need bands like Bunnies to root them out.
- Mission completed
This article originally appeared in the January 18, 1983 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
- Guest lists
What small, private lists like this remind us is that big, honking institutional lists are largely fictions, mirages of a consensus that no longer exists, if it ever really did in the first place.
- Less
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Music Features
, National Public Radio Inc., Roger Miller, Mission of Burma, More
, National Public Radio Inc., Roger Miller, Mission of Burma, Superchunk, Less
