Shaking the rust off to celebrate a 3-disc set years in the making
The piece of scrap paper tacked to the door outside a Brighton rehearsal room bears a cheerful but petitioning message:
"Hi Big Dipper! Why don't I hear 'Meet the Witch' coming from your room?"
Twenty years after the song appeared on the Boston band's second album, "Craps," Big Dipper, it seems, still has a few fans.
Inside the cramped rehearsal space, four guys who look much younger than their years are loudly running through their repertoire: "Lunar Module"; "Faith Healer"; and yes, "Meet the Witch." The songs, ragged at first, begin to sparkle like diamonds in the rough. To anyone within earshot, Big Dipper is back.
Well, three-fourths of the quartet anyway. Bassist Steve Michener is still stuck at home in Walla Walla, Wash., so the remaining three members - singer-guitarists Gary Waleik, 45, and Bill Goffrier, 50, and drummer Jeff Oliphant, 42 - have convened to practice with latter-lineup Dipper alum Tom Brewitt until Michener's arrival. They'll play Brooklyn, N.Y., tonight and are at the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge tomorrow.
"The whole idea is to try and shake some of the rust off," says Waleik, who lives in Natick and is senior producer for WBUR's "Only a Game" radio program. "It would help if I could remember the lyrics."
The occasion for this unlikely alignment of near-stars is a new three-disc compilation, "Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology," out on Merge Records, that gathers nearly 50 of the tracks the group recorded between 1985 and its collapse in 1992. Most of the material was origi nally released on the independent Homestead Records label. The third disc comprises 15 tracks the band recorded, but never released, after its ruinous stint on a major label (Epic, which dropped Dipper after one album, "Slam"). None of the tracks from "Slam" appear on the collection.
"I really wanted to see a happy ending for this band because the way it fell apart was not a happy thing for anybody," Waleik says, explaining why Big Dipper has joined the ranks of reuniting Boston outfits like the Pixies and Mission of Burma. Before forming Big Dipper, Waleik and Michener had played in drummer Peter Prescott's post-Burma band, the Volcano Suns.
"I wanted people to see that the material we were doing after 'Slam' was worthwhile and that we had the door closed on us much too soon," Waleik says. "We needed to go out on our terms and say, 'That was fun wasn't it?' "
It was, and is. With "Supercluster," Big Dipper and its brand of artfully skewed yet infectious guitar pop is getting its due, and it is long overdue. The set offers convincing proof that songs like "She's Fetching" and "All Going Out Together" made for some of the most toothsomely hooky rock music to ever come out of this city.
Superchunk singer-guitarist and Merge cofounder Mac McCaughan, whose label roster includes Spoon and the Arcade Fire, first heard Big Dipper back in college. He was enthralled by the band's clever collision of beauty, brains, and volume.
"Like Hüsker Dü and a lot of the bands I liked back then, they had these classic songs, but they were noisy and had a punk rock aspect," recalls McCaughan. "They had aggressive guitars, but there were always these oddball things thrown in, like a strange chord or harmony, or a twist."
When McCaughan, on his blog, lamented the band's catalog being out of print, Waleik got in touch. McCaughan was excited to hear about the stash of unheard songs, intended for a record that never happened. "It would have made a great album," McCaughan says, "if it had ever come out."
Indeed, "Wake Up the King," "Edith," and many other previously unreleased gems are as strong as anything Dipper did, rife with bewitching melodies and bedeviling lyrics that contemplate the mysteries of nature, space, and the supernatural.
Oliphant, who now lives in New Hampshire and sells mutual funds, claims he still doesn't know what the songs are about. "When I joined, I remember thinking to myself, 'This is by far the best band that I've ever been in - what the hell are they writing about?' " says Oliphant. "But the nice thing was that all the songs were catchy."
Waleik envisioned Big Dipper as a bright contrast to a bleak landscape. "A lot of the rock and punk we were listening to growing up was extremely cynical," Waleik says. "To write songs that inspire a sense of wonder is a real challenge. But I felt there was an audience out there that would rather feel like they were living in a universe that was interesting and worthwhile, than a place they resented."
Prior to launching Big Dipper, Goffrier had played with the Wichita, Kan., indie- rock outfit, the Embarrassment. To him, Big Dipper was about musical freedom more than anything. "We didn't really try to have a 'band sound,' " he says.
Now, they're purposefully trying to recapture it. "Sometimes it feels like we're playing the songs, and sometimes it feels like we're working them," says Goffrier, now an art teacher living in Norwell. "But that's what rehearsal's all about - getting through the work part so it becomes about playing."
Until a couple of years ago, members say, the prospect of standing together onstage seemed remote. But when Oliphant's wife, Tracey, who was battling cancer, said she longed to hear Big Dipper perform - the group had broken up before she and Jeff met - the idea was born. Now, with her health and the band returning, she'll get her wish.
"There's been talk about working together subsequent to the shows, but right now it's hard to look beyond April," Waleik says. "I don't necessarily think this is going to propel us into a long-term reunion, but I've got probably 10 or 12 songs I would love to record. I think we have it in us to make a very good record."
