Big Black - Influence

Influence

Musically, Big Black's insistent drum machine rhythms, abrasive textures, and obsessively repeated riffs provided a major part of the blueprint for so-called industrial rock. Their bracingly intense music aside, the saving grace of the band's often obnoxious approach was that it was thought-provoking. Big Black set a standard for freedom of expression and forthrightness that has been emulated to varying degrees ever since.

–Michael Azerrad

Through their aggressive guitar playing and use of a drum machine, Big Black's music served as a precursor to industrial rock. Aesthetically, the band's firmly-held ideals, staunch independence, insistence on creative control, and stark lyrical topics had a significant impact on the developing independent rock community. "Big Black was a band that went where few bands dared to go (and where many felt bands shouldn't go)," writes Mark Deming, "and for good or ill their pervasive influence had a seismic impact on indie rock." Albini summed up several of the band's core ideals in his notes to the Pigpile album:

Organizationally, we were committed to to a few basic principles: Treat everyone with as much respect as he deserves (and no more), Avoid people who appeal to our vanity or ambition (they always have an angle), Operate as much as possible apart from the "music scene" (which was never our stomping ground), and Take no shit from anyone in the process.

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Famous quotes containing the word influence:

    “The higher the state of civilization, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens.”
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    “I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way. But in this water there are countless objects at different depths; and certain influences will give certain kinds of those objects an upward influence which may be intense enough and continue long enough to bring them into the upper visible layer. After the impulse ceases they commence to sink downwards.”
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    “They tell us that women can bring better things to pass by indirect influence. Try to persuade any man that he will have more weight, more influence, if he gives up his vote, allies himself with no party and relies on influence to achieve his ends! By all means let us use to the utmost whatever influence we have, but in all justice do not ask us to be content with this.”
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