2 Big: Cardiacs' Big Ship & Rush's The Big Money

Are you big on either of these Big songs?

I doubt this will be a Big Generator of Big Fun, but these are two "Big" tracks that came out at about the same time.   There are other "big" tracks that I like, including Big Science by Laurie Anderson, Kha-Ym's Big Ben, and the gloriously named Hatfield and the North's "Big Jobs No. 2 (By Poo Poo and The Wee Wees)" and so many more, but I just wanted to focus between these two. If you are to choose one, please choose which you enjoy the most from a musical perspective rather than just voting for the biggest hair please.

Here's a live version of both:





If you wish to acquaint yourself with studio versions:
Cardiacs' Big Ship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGZAqTEXpTU
Rush's Big Money music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQgu0MpnKq8

Big pass for me. 

There are at most 5 songs in the world that can beat Big Ship. None of them is by Rush.


Edited by Lewian - March 08 2018 at 19:29

Rush by far 

I don't care for either song, personally!

I would say I'm big on neither song. Big Ship is a very interesting song but I would struggle to say that I liked it. 

Cardiacs easily

Big Money for me.  I had not heard the Big Ship song so thank you for sharing.  It was pretty good.  Funny enough the vocalist's singing style reminded me a bit of Steve Hogarth, so it is funny that Marillion fans would have booed and pelted them...unless maybe it was the Fish fans. 


Edited by rushfan4 - March 09 2018 at 17:06

There's enjoyable reading in this thread for me, thanks to those who responded. Big bump, as this fell far down page two in a number of hours. Someone has been frenetic with necroposting - haha. I'm not complaining. Discussion at this site has slowed down (not that polls tend to engender the most discussion), and it needs a little juice now and then.

Jeffro wrote: I would say I'm big on neither song. Big Ship is a very interesting song but I would struggle to say that I liked it.  I'm a huge Rush fan but I never cared much for Big Money. It was the first single released for Power Windows and I got sick of it pretty quickly, so much so that I would almost always skip it when playing the album.

Really well expressed, so thank you. I'm a sucker for the synth in it, but had I gone with favourite, as memory serves, I think I would gone with Marathon.

rushfan4 wrote: Big Money for me.  I had not heard the Big Ship song so thank you for sharing.  It was pretty good.  Funny enough the vocalist's singing style reminded me a bit of Steve Hogarth, so it is funny that Marillion fans would have booed and pelted them...unless maybe it was the Fish fans.

It was the fans of Fish era Marillion. I hate to say the Fish fans because if thay had been his real fans, they wouldn't have been so rude to a band that her personally asked to come on tour with them, and really enjoyed. It actually bugs me more that it was so direspectful to Fish and Marillion than how rude it was to Cardiacs. Fish intervened and berated the "fans", and good for him. I can imagine how embarrassing it must have been for Marillion (Fish especially as is was his particular wish to have them support the band). I know some people feel responsibility for their "fans" behavior even though you can't control those people, and it likely was a rowdy minority, and one bad apple can incite/ motivate others to join in in the spirit of the moment -- look at how riots escalate. Emotions tend to run high at events.

For any Cardiacs fans here, there's an interesting article which mention this, as well when Blur gave them a support slot and audience members pelted them with coins. Silly side-note: if I were in a support slot, I wouldn't mind being pelted with wadded up paper money, but coins hurt. The proper way is like with belly dancers, you put the bills in the clothing, though I don't think Tim Smith would have reacted well if some people got on stage and started stuffing money down his trousers.

Cult heroes: Tim Smith led the Cardiacs in the face of hatred – and much love

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Pete Cashmore for the Guardian wrote: There’s a school of thought that says that if you are hated with the same passion with which you are loved, then you must be doing something right. That being the case, Tim Smith and his shifting cast of characters must have got it absolutely bang on. Those of us who love them do so with a fervour that makes Southern Baptists in the throes of worship seem like uninterested wallflowers; those who don’t tend to use Cardiacs as a go-to reference point for horrible, terrible music: a ghastly dungheap of quirky self-indulgence and forced weirdness. Back when I was a teenage fanzine writer, I interviewed Tim, and among all the terrified fawning (I think at one point I used the phrase: “You’ve been present at every one of the best nights of my life”) I kept going back to one question: “Why do people hate you so much?” Tim didn’t really know, and seemed, as I look back on it, a little bit saddened by being asked about it again. Not everyone does, of course. Blur cite them as a major influence, and “repaid” their debt by giving Cardiacs a support slot at their huge Mile End Stadium gig in 1995, a move that saw Britpop fans rejecting Tim and his chaps like a bad organ and pelting them with so many coins that they inadvertently paid for the band’s post-gig dinner. Interestingly, nearly a decade earlier, the band were lynched off a Marillion tour in similar circumstances, inviting opprobrium so strong that at one point Fish marched on stage to intervene, which I think underlines the breadth of their anti-appeal – celebrity fans like Faith No More, Napalm Death, Radiohead and Mark Radcliffe underline its precise opposite.

Edited by Logan - March 10 2018 at 08:15

Big Money takes my vote for the bass alone. Quickly fell in love with the Wal bass after listening to Power Windows ~