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The Obsessed Stream Live at Big Dipper in Full; Out Friday

Posted in audiObelisk on August 19th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

the obsessed

Nobody’s trying to get away with anything here. The Obsessed will release Live at Big Dipper this Friday, Aug. 21, through Blues Funeral Recordings, and if you’re thinking you’re getting a slick, pro-recorded live album from the band’s ’80s run, I’m gonna stop you right there and refer you to the PR wire text below and key phrases like, “borderline unlistenable” and “walkman shoved down the front of a sweaty hesher’s pants.” Also “pure magic.” I’d imagine there’s a subset of bootleg aficionados out there, gray of hair and cranky of disposition while hanging around record shows, who still employ the old grading system. Live at Big Dipper gets probably about a ‘C.’ It sounds like an audience recording, is so blown out you want to keep the volume low so it doesn’t damage your speakers, and is about as raw as raw gets while still being release-able.

Oh yeah, and it sounds pretty rough too.

You get the point. On the other hand, there are few taglines that’ll raise eyebrows among the doomly converted like “Wino‘s favorite The Obsessed show,” and Live at Big Dipper also carries that honor when it comes to the original lineup. For that alone, it’s an essential document of Maryland doom, captured over the course of two nights, April 29-30, 1983, in Beltsville, Maryland, with the trio of Scott “Wino” Weinrich on guitar/vocals, Mark Laue on bass and Dave Flood on drums. And to be perfectly fair, even with the grit-coated tape recording, you can hear the band tear it up. None of that “doom has to be slow” stuff, or really doom has to be anything. There’s as much punk in “Iron and Stone” as there is Sabbath, more in “Leather Nuns,” and even a nodder like “Endless Circles” keeps its energy at the fore. These of course were formative days for The Obsessed, who’d gotten their start in 1980 after picking up from Wino‘s high school-era band Warhorse (né 1976), but the vitality of the metal of the era comes through with a telltale casting off of bullshit that would become a staple of the Chesapeake Watershed’s doom scene to this day.

Did The Obsessed know as they lurched through “Mental Kingdom” inThe Obsessed Live at Big Dipper April 1983 that they were helping set the tone — literally, the tone — for an ensuing 40-year development of a regional style that became arguably the most vibrant on the Eastern Seaboard? Probably not. Live at Big Dipper sees The Obsessed not as a band with a legacy, but a hungry group of metallic misfits elbowing their way into a space between arrogance and righteousness. It’s pretty typical luck for doom that the band’s 40th anniversary would be in 2020, when touring can’t happen and everybody’s brainspace is consumed either with anxiety stemming from sociopolitical events or the ever-present specter of death via lungfire, but hey, that’s how it goes. It was basically the same in the Reagan years, what with economic downturn, a plague being ignored and a not-all-there would-be despot steering the ship into a downward spiral from which it took decades to recover.

Maybe that’s part of what makes The Obsessed‘s disaffection so resonant today, or maybe I just like bootlegs. It’s hard to tell sometimes, but Live at Big Dipper is a fan-piece. It knows it’s a fan-piece, it wants you to know it’s a fan-piece, and if you’re a fan, it wants you to enjoy it as a fan-piece. Nobody’s saying it’s the definitive The Obsessed live album, or even the first — see 2018’s Live at the Wax Museum, or shows from Amsterdam and Köln that were pressed up and sold in time for the band’s 2012 reunion — but it definitely captures a moment in time and presents it in a manner that’s stark in its realism. There’s no fakery here. Again, bullshit-free. Live at Big Dipper has so much edge there’s almost no middle.

The offering is rounded out by four demos from 1985 that both rule — I’d call “Kill Ugly Naked” as it appears here essential listening, and though “Neatz Brigade” feels somewhat like it’s fulfilling a requirement being tacked onto the end, it’s still welcome — and serve as a reminder of how long producer/engineer Chris Kozlowski has been recording bands and how crucial he’s been in documenting Maryland heavy. It would not be what it is without him.

It’s my pleasure to host the premiere of Live at Big Dipper ahead of its release on Friday through Blues Funeral. As you listen, keep in mind the box of tapes of shows like this that must exist in Wino‘s basement or some closet or storage space somewhere. I hope this isn’t the last show like this that we get. Who doesn’t like a good bootleg?

Enjoy:

Following closely behind doom godfather WINO’s souful new solo album, THE OBSESSED’s 40th anniversary year yields another slab for fans and devotees in the form of a rough and raw live recording of an early show at the lost-to-history Maryland club Big Dipper.

Officially forming in 1980 and building a bridge between metalheads and punks, The Obsessed gigged heavily in the Baltimore and D.C. area. Finding their footing amid some early member shuffling, the band’s crunchy, sludgy, dissonant yet hooky American Doom coalesced with the lineup of drummer Dave “The Slave” Flood and bassist Mark “Professor Dark” Laue along with singer/guitarist Scott “Wino” Weinrich.

Live at Big Dipper presents the trio at their early ’80s peak, burning hot from sharing stages with Iron Cross, Dead Boys, Scream, The Exploited, Blue Cheer and Death Row, not to mention a near miss supporting Motörhead.

The audio is borderline unlistenable, as if captured on a walkman shoved down the front of a sweaty hesher’s pants, then deteriorating in a dank Beltsville basement for 35 years. Even so, the 1983 performance is pure magic, capturing a hungry young band conjuring forth a sound and style they couldn’t know would endure for decades. The release also features a handful of recently uncovered demos from the early days, shedding light on the development of songs that would go on to become staples of The Obsessed and Wino’s subsequent band Spirit Caravan.

Says Wino: “This show at the Big Dipper was one of the last if not the last show of the OG Obsessed lineup, and it’s my favorite by far. It’s raw and noisy and took some cleanin’ up, but here it is. If it ain’t heavy, it ain’t shit!!!””

Pre-orders for Live at Big Dipper on limited edition LP and digital at:

Blues Funeral US Web Shop:
bluesfuneral.com

Blues Funeral Euro Web Shop:
https://en.bluesfuneral.spkr.media/

Blues Funeral Bandcamp:
bluesfuneralrecordings.bandcamp.com/

Tracks 1-9 Recorded Live at the Big Dipper, Beltsville MD, April 29/30, 1983
Wino: Guitar, Dave ‘the Slave’ Flood: Drums, Mark ‘Professor Dark’ Laue: Bass

Tracks 10-13 Recorded and engineered by Chris Kozlowski, 1985
Wino: Guitar, Ed Gulli: Drums, Mark Laue: Bass

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