Written by: Alex Green
Scott Miller may have been the Poet Laureate of the 916 but his songbook spoke to the awkward outsiders, nervous outlanders and shape-shifting oddballs who dwelled worlds away from his Sacramento locale.
Miller’s ability to mythologize mid-semester malaise, dorm room disasters and deep summer breakdowns was a masterful confluence of “Howl,” Franny and Zooey and the first Badfinger record.
1986’s Mitch Easter-produced The Big Shot Chronicles is the third album in Game Theory’s winning oeuvre and arguably their finest. Amidst its jangle and crunch, there’s a dreamy center that’s hopeful, elegiac and guardedly optimistic. There’s nothing sweeter or more lilting than the sweeping “Where You Going Northern,” which finds Miller singing in falsetto: “It’s all too true now/That you see the world just as I do.”
That said, the searing “Make Any Vows” boasts one of the most caustic and cautionary lines you’ll ever hear: “Latticework without foundation/Holds as long as we agree/Question and you’ll hear it buckle/All on your own suddenly.”
Miller studied the way every subculture of Youth Culture would constantly draw and re-draw its boundaries and his findings were sheer sociological brilliance. A blend of an embedded reporter and a streetwise poet, it’s no wonder that Miller’s sonic reports from the urban battlefield resonated with everyone from grad school grifters to disaffected dropouts all looking for a place to finally belong.
Moving fluidly through Canadian bars, fey retail towns, and glittering coastal cities, Miller was as much a cultural critic as he was a modern day philosopher. Observing “Winter houses turning on the glow/Christmas based on Christmas long ago,” Miller captured in these few lines the darkness and the folly that dwelled behind the quotidian triumphs of the modern world.
The Big Shot Chronicles is a masterful pop record that not only swings mightily, it tears the cover off the ball every time. “Here It Is Tomorrow” is a thrilling whirlwind of manic pop brilliance; “Regenisraen” is a dreamy hush of kaleidoscopic bliss and “I’ve Tried Subtlety” is an East Bay anthem that summarily subverts modern society while somehow managing to take swipes at the falsity of adulthood and the post-coital confusion of collegiate failure.
It also contains in “Erica’s Word” not only a timeless pop classic, but a song that delivers a line that perfectly explains the great mystery that happens and then doesn’t happen between women and men. A percussive drumbeat gives way to Miller declaring: “Erica’s gone shy/Some unknown X behind the why…”
This is an album that has everything and thanks to the always classy Omnivore Records, it has more than it did when it first came out. On the occasion of its thirty-year anniversary it’s been expanded to include 13 bonus tracks, nine of which were previously never issued. Comprised of live recordings, demos, rough mixes, outtakes, and covers of numbers by Big Star, Velvet Underground, Roxy Music and Todd Rundgren, this new iteration of The Big Shot Chronicles offers a generous and rewarding glimpse into Miller’s complex and fascinating world.
“Gifted children link your arms in rhyme,” he sings. “Better make this world while it still gives you time.” Miller took his own advice and used his time wisely and The Big Shot Chronicles is a clear snapshot of a gifted pop genius stretching out and flexing all his musical muscles with a startling, literate grace.
