Show notes for Ep. 3: Andy Hawkins (Blind Idiot God)

With an appreciative nod to a 1997 Guitar Player feature

Feb 12, 2025

(Listen to it here.)

My introduction to Andy Hawkins and Blind Idiot God came through the January 1997 issue of Guitar Player magazine—in particular, a feature entitled “The Dirty Thirty: Guitar’s Most Subversive Terrorists, Tweakers & Troublemakers.” Mind you, this was pre-9/11, when calling someone a terrorist could still be a compliment as opposed to something liable to land them on a government watchlist.

Flipping back through the issue, I’m realizing how many interesting guitarists it introduced me to—among them Hans Reichel, Robert Hampson, and James Plotkin. (Among the others profiled were Derek Bailey, Jim O’Rourke, Keith Rowe, Marc Ribot, Henry Kaiser, and some guy named Neil Young.) Hats off to James Rotondi, Joe Gore, and the other writers who put the “Dirty Thirty” feature together.

Anyway, there was one part of the Andy Hawkins profile that captured my attention:

“Listening to hardcore or metal, I would think, ‘Great intensity—boring chords!’ I want clarity and density, the full force of the guitar, together with an orchestral ringing where all the harmonics are clear.” Hawkins leans toward “root, fifth, major-seventh voicings with open strings resonating,’ and he often plays with minor sixths and stacked fourths.

As an amateur/bedroom guitarist, I kind of knew what he was talking about, but just kind of. I tried to imagine what it would sound like, as I didn’t know where to find any of BIG’s records.

Then, in the fall of that year, I managed to get a show at WYXC-Chapel Hill, the student-run radio station at the University of North Carolina, where I was a junior by that point. This, in turn, gave me access to an incredible music library, one that I would spend many hours poring through. I would do my show (Friday nights/Saturday mornings from 3-6 AM), then spend a couple more hours in the listening booth auditioning records. Among those was BIG’s Cyclotron (Avant, 1992), which I dubbed onto a cassette (with the Lounge Lizards’ self-titled debut album on the other side). I spent many hours listening to this tape—both sides of it—on my Walkman over the next several years. (And yes, I was still listening to tapes on my Walkman well into the 2000s.)

I did manage to procure a (used) copy of Cyclotron at some point, along with copies of the band’s two previous albums: their self-titled debut from 1987 (released by SST) and the follow-up, 1988’s Undertow (Enemy). By this point, all of these albums were long out-of-print, and the band itself seemed to have gone completely AWOL. There were occasional rumors and rumblings, but nothing tangible until 2015, when they reemerged with Before Ever After—this time via Hawkins’s own label, Indivisible. To make up for the fact that I’d been listening to their music for nearly two decades without paying for any of it, I bought the deluxe bundle: LP, CD, and T-shirt. It’s still the only time I’ve ever done that.

As for this podcast interview, it was a long-awaited opportunity to ask some follow-up questions related to that old Guitar Player piece. But in keeping with the broader themes of the podcast series, we also talk about some of the technological changes—particularly regarding recording technology—that have unfolded over the span of BIG’s existence, along with how those changes have (or haven’t) affected the band’s modus operandi. Along the way, we touch on some bits and pieces of the band’s history, but for a more thorough rundown on that—particularly the early years—I recommend the You Don’t Know Mojack podcast episode linked to below.