Big Dipper

  • Big Dipper
  • Boo-Boo EP (Homestead) 1987 
  • Heavens (Homestead) 1987 
  • Craps (Homestead) 1988 
  • Slam (Epic) 1990 

Boston’s Big Dipper came together in 1986 when bassist Steve Michener and guitarist Gary Waleik (both from the original lineup of the Volcano Suns) joined up with former (and future) Embarrassment vocalist Bill Goffrier and local drummer Jeff Oliphant. The six-song Boo-Boo is an extremely jovial combination of retro-punk guitar and loopy rhythms and vocals. It bounces like a goddamn superball.

The Heavens LP, which shows the group beginning to rely more heavily on layered vocals than string-croak, features such college-rock classics as “Younger Bums” and “All Going Out Together.” (The cassette appends one song; Boo-Boo is contained on the CD.)

Subsequent recordings have seen Big Dipper move even further into the college-rock hard-pop mainstream (Slam contains an ambiguous cover of Mott the Hoople’s “All the Way from Memphis”), and their initial, odd bite seems to have softened.

[Byron Coley]