Back after a decade, Big Picture seeks exposure
Maegan Outzen • GoPensacola.com
• July 30, 2010
Eighties group Big Picture got back together three months ago, and is ready to get back in the local music scene after a 10-year hiatus.Guitarist and vocalist Todd McCabe said he reunited Big Picture — which was popular on the local scene from 1986 to 2000 — because, "I miss doing this band.""We're just hoping to maybe bring back what we had before and have a good time with it," McCabe said. "All the people who used to come see us all the time, they're older, but their kids are grown up. They can have a babysitter. Come on out. Let's be 24 years old again."McCabe, drummer and vocalist Chaz Paré and bassist and vocalist Scott Riggs have all played together before, but ventured off with other bands during the past 10 years. McCabe has another band called Cadillac Attack, and Riggs and Paré played together in Ghostown Phantoms.In its heyday, Big Picture played current hit songs. The members want to play those songs again, so it would be fair to call them an '80s band."What I wanted to do — and we all kind of agreed on doing that — instead of learning any type of new music that's out now, we'll pretty much do what we learned in 1986," McCabe said. "All the old stuff. We're going to present the whole show again as it was when we first started.""And we can take some stuff we didn't do back then," Paré added. "We did a lot of radio, college radio stuff. And then we'd do some underground stuff. It's when R.E.M. was big, and the Pixies and stuff like that. The Hoodoo Gurus. We'd pick some of the real obscure ones. And now we can do the obscure ones, but people wouldn't know those. So we're doing the more mainstream (songs) that were too mainstream to do back then."Big Picture still has some "strange" songs in their set, including songs by The Godfathers and Split Enz.All the members are songwriters, and the band has several originals in its archive that they are learning. Riggs has written some material that he is bringing to the table as well."One thing I've always done, even in the beginning of the band, is play enough cover songs so people recognize what's going on, and then slip in the originals all at the same time," McCabe said. "You have your group of people who just love original music only, and that's great. I like that too. And you have another big group of people who come to the club and they don't know what the heck you're playing and they just lose interest real quick. People who want to hear things they recognize, they get their portion and then other people who are like, 'oh well, I've never heard that before,' they get their fill of it."Big Picture played its first two shows at The Break this month, and they want to continue to book shows at the venue as well as get their foot in the door at other various places around town."The funny thing about The Break, when The Break first opened up we were the first band (that played) there," McCabe said. "In fact, we were the only band for about a month or two before they started bringing in other acts."For more information, visit www.myspace.com/ tbpicture.
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