Big Hat:When Did You Stop?
Big Hat. Man. I was obsessed. Or, rather, we were obsessed - me and my friend Mike Anderson. We were 4AD fanatics, and they had been called the most 4AD sounding band not on 4AD. We were basically actual groupies. For real. In like 1992 or so. We would actually hit the road in Mike’s beat up old car or my dying Integra and see them play in Portland, ME or Providence, or anywhere else we could see them. We had signed up for their fan club. They mailed us actual newsletters - in an era before the internet. Mike was in love with the violinist, Char Malloy, and I was in love with Yvonne. Mike worked up talking to them once or twice, I think. Yvonne and Preston were, if I recall correctly, an item, but in my mind, that just made it all the more dramatic. I would stand there in my all goth garb (I was generally trying to look like an extra from the party scene in Uncle Buck for about three years there). I wouldn’t talk. I’d just pine.
This track, “When did you stop,” isn’t their best. This album, “Shimmer,” is the one that got me into them, though the follow up, and their last album, “Selena at My Window” is a far more accomplished affair, listening to them back to back right now, some 18 years later. But this song….
This song and “Erotomania,” Shimmer’s opener, always identify Big Hat for me. And “When Did You Stop” has, in its own way, become sort of a timeless pop song for me. It’s about a woman and relationship peril, specifically around having children. I’ve been on both sides of the equation in this song, and it’s always managed to pop right back up in the right time in my life.
