The Big Shot Chronicles
The Big Shot Chronicles is Game Theory's third full-length album, released in 1986. Produced by Mitch Easter, it was recorded with a new lineup of Game Theory members after leader and songwriter Scott Miller moved the band's base from Davis to San Francisco, California. The album was reissued on September 23, 2016 by Omnivore Recordings as part of the label's series of reissues of the Game Theory catalog.
Personnel
Recording personnel
By early 1985, all of the original members of Game Theory had left the band, except for Miller. Miller relocated to San Francisco together with future Game Theory member Donnette Thayer. He assembled a new lineup in the San Francisco Bay Area, featuring Shelley LaFreniere on keyboards, Gil Ray on drums and Suzi Ziegler on bass.The newly formed version of Game Theory commenced a national tour in 1985 in support of the band's previous album Real Nighttime, an album on which none of the new members had appeared. During a break in the middle of the band's tour for Real Nighttime, this lineup recorded The Big Shot Chronicles.
Touring personnel
Prior to touring in support of The Big Shot Chronicles in 1986, the group experienced another change of personnel, becoming a five-piece band when Ziegler left the band shortly after the conclusion of the Real Nighttime tour in 1985.For the 1986 tour, Thayer joined Game Theory as rhythm guitarist and vocalist, and Guillaume Gassuan replaced Ziegler on bass. This lineup remained together to record and tour for two subsequent albums, Lolita Nation and Two Steps from the Middle Ages.
Production notes
The Big Shot Chronicles, released in 1986, was recorded in September 1985 at Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studio in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Twenty years after the studio sessions, Miller recalled them as "the most effortless studio experience I've ever had," taking place "in a period of my life when being involved with the music business was surprisingly enjoyable."In 2001's All Music Guide: The Definitive Guide to Popular Music, critic Mark Deming wrote, "Mitch Easter's production guides the record through moody neo-psychedelia and up-tempo hard pop with an equally sure hand; the record sounds just as good as the band plays." According to John Borack, Easter did "his usual Herculean job behind the console, getting great guitar sounds whether they be gritty and electric ... or softer and acoustic."
In an October 1986 interview, Miller discussed Mitch Easter's role as producer:
He helps from the technical end, not from the artistic end. He doesn't say, "You're going to need a lot of backing vocals here" or "Use this guitar on this." I usually do most of that stuff. I'd say I end up doing half of the production myself. He does pretty much all of the engineering and some of the things you'd call production. Like he decides where you stand when you do the vocals, and you know, "We're going to have a nylon stocking between you and the microphone," some tricks like that. He'll do things like say "No, that vocal track wasn't good, let's do it again." He makes a lot of quality decisions, he sort of figures out what we want and has in his head what he thinks a good pop record's gonna be and works toward that. Also, he knows how to use all his equipment precisely and utterly.
Miller added, "Mitch and I are real historians, we're both really into 70s rock. The song 'I've Tried Subtlety,' I said, 'I want a drum sound just like Low by David Bowie,' so we kind of went for that." Referring to the song "Like a Girl Jesus," Miller later recalled that "even the spacey sounding instruments" were recorded in one take."
Songs and thematic notes
According to Robert Ham of Paste Magazine, "the sound of Big Shot is big, brash, and purposeful."In addition to the double meaning of "big shot", the title of the album was a reference to Big Shot Photo Lab, a Berkeley business where band photographer Robert Toren had secured rehearsal space for the group. According to Trouser Press, the title also paraphrases John Cheever's The Wapshot Chronicle.
In 2008, Scott Miller wrote that "most of the lyrics on album came from dreams I'd had."
Harvard professor Stephanie Burt, analyzing themes of social awkwardness in Miller's work, recalled Miller's dismissal of his own early songs as "young adult hurt-feeling-a-thons," and argued, "The Big Shot Chronicles had its share of hurt feelings, but the album also shows emotional range: exultantly happy, regretful, resentful, worshipful, confused, or hurried, or all these at once ... One emotion is missing: never does Miller sing about anger at anyone besides himself. Nerd passion, instead, becomes nerd passive-aggression, barbed puns and pulled punches."
In a January 1988 interview, Miller called the album "the happiest of the last few," adding "It seems like Real Nighttime and Lolita Nation both have this real chip on their shoulders." In Miller's opinion, "Big Shot is a better record than Real Nighttime, much better."
"I've Tried Subtlety"
According to Burt, this song "follows a fragile promise, or a premise, not unique to nerds: that the gang of kids with whom you might belong, who share your tastes and habits, can make whatever you like stay with you for good." Burt wrote that the songfollows a party run by "MIT-grad alleycats with time on their hands," at the Victoria Hotel to which "all the kids from 916" show up; Miller has joined them, but can’t seem to join in their fun—he may be too old, or too lovelorn, or too self-conscious. "Gifted children link your arms in rhyme," the last verse implores, as the big guitar rises beneath it: "better make this world while still it gives you time." Pounding along, for a while, like any teen anthem, "I've Tried Subtlety" works so memorably as a song because it fails as a call to arms: each verse, each break, goes on a measure longer than we expect, as if to accommodate second thoughts.
Former Game Theory member Fred Juhos filmed an unofficial video for "I've Tried Subtlety" with the 1986 five-piece lineup of the group.
"Erica's Word"
"Erica's Word," regarded as the best-known track on The Big Shot Chronicles, was released as a single and became Game Theory's first official music video. Commissioned by Enigma Records, the video featured the band's 1986 five-person lineup and was directed by Jan Novello, with art direction by Modi Karlsson. The video received airplay on MTV's 120 Minutes and contributed to the song's durability as "a popular college radio track for years."AllMusic's Stewart Mason wrote that "the super-catchy melody and Mitch Easter's crisp production" made it "ear candy for eggheads." The song has been variously described as "sunny", "soaring," or "restrained"; but according to Mason, "The moment in the final verse where Miller sweetly sings 'Girl, I hope it comes through for you in the clutch' and adds a teasing extra bar before spitting out a snotty 'But I won't bet much!' and swinging into the final chorus is one of those perfect little moments power pop fans savor like truffles."
Assessing the song's popularity, Mason wrote:
If Game Theory was ever going to have a hit single, it would have been 1986's "Erica's Word." It did get them closer than any of their other songs ... but although the song has a strikingly memorable tune and a killer singalong chorus, accented by ideal little production touches like the slow instrumental build-up of the intro, acoustic rhythm guitars, expertly deployed handclaps and fuzzboxes, plus bassist Suzi Ziegler and keyboardist Shelley LaFreniere's chirpy backing vocals, it's still unlikely that a song with an opening line like "Erica's gone shy/Some unknown X behind the " is going to burn up the charts. People don't like to be reminded of algebra in their nice little pop songs.
According to Stephanie Burt's scholarly analysis, Miller's algebra "joins up with physics ... mass not conserving in the old way" to yield energy, Burt speculated, in a song that was "energetic indeed, the should-have-been breakthrough hit" that "even has a conventional video — the band mimes the song, and Miller tosses his hair." In Burt's reading of the song, Miller seemed "almost happy to be so frustrated, since it gives him a reason to sing; he sounds even happier to be led, or misled, by the charismatic Erica, whom he says he has known since high school, when they were photographed in her car, going nowhere."