Wee Tam and the Big Huge is the fourth album by the Incredible String Band, released in Europe as both a double LP and separate single LPs in November 1968. In the US, however, the two discs were released separately as Wee Tam and The Big Huge.
The album is considered by many to be, along with its predecessor The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, the best work the band ever produced. Consisting of a very varied selection of songs by Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, with intriguing and poetic lyrics, the album is rich with eclectic and adept instrumentation and arrangements. Around 15 instruments are featured, played mainly by the two band members Williamson and Heron but also, in supporting roles, on a few tracks by Rose Simpson and Licorice McKechnie.
Williamson explained the title as follows:- "I saw a man with a huge big dog, we knew somebody called Wee Tam, in Edinburgh. It seemed like it was a good idea in terms of one person looking up at the stars - Wee Tam and the Big Huge, just like the vastness of the universe."
Read more about Wee Tam And The Big Huge: Background, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words wee, tam, big and/or huge:
“Four and twenty at her back
And they were a’ clad out in green;
Tho the King of Scotland had been there
The warst o’ them might hae been his Queen.
On we lap and awa we rade
Till we cam to yon bonny ha’
Whare the roof was o’ the beaten gold
And the floor was o’ the cristal a’.”
—Unknown. The Wee Wee Man (l. 21–28)
“O I forbid you, maidens a’
That wear gowd on your hair,
To come, or gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tom-lin is there.”
—Unknown. Tam Lin (l. 1–4)
“Maybe in the ‘90s or possibly in the next century people will look upon the ‘80s as the age of masturbation, when it was taken to the limit; that might be all that’s going on right now in a big way.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)
“Here, the churches seemed to shrink away into eroding corners. They seem to have ceased to be essential parts of American life. They no longer give life. It is the huge buildings of commerce and trade which now align the people to attention. These in their massive manner of steel and stone say, Come unto me all ye who labour, and we will give you work.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)