Big Sticker began in Cranston, Rhode Island, in 1994, first taking shape as Fixture before three original members regrouped, reshuffled positions and instruments, and rebuilt themselves for what was supposed to be a one-off high school battle-of-the-bands project.

The first name was Mo & the Squitos. Mercifully, history intervened.

Big Sticker followed soon after—although the band would continue debating possible new names at nearly every practice for the rest of its existence.

What began as a school project became a loud, strange, funny, hook-heavy run through the Providence-to-Boston music corridor. There were punk-pop songs and basement-rock instincts, homemade recordings and regional showcases, clubs, bars, art houses, college campuses, outdoor stages, festivals, theaters, live radio performances, and countless miles of Northeast pavement.

The music was scrappy, melodic, irreverent, and perpetually held together by enthusiasm, distortion, and whatever equipment happened to be working that night. Big Sticker was never particularly interested in behaving like a polished rock band. The rough edges were part of the architecture: strange jokes became traditions, throwaway phrases became audience chants, and songs could mutate simply because something unexpected happened onstage and everyone decided to keep it.

There was also, inevitably, a chicken costume.

For several years, the band recorded wherever and however it could—studios when possible, basements when necessary, live rooms, rehearsal spaces, DAT machines, home-video cameras, and whatever other technology was available. Some of those recordings became Sigh-Guy the Conquistador (1997) and Making It Up as We Go Along (1997); others remained unfinished, duplicated onto cassettes, passed between people, or disappeared into boxes. The Basement Brand sessions followed in 1998, leaving behind another collection of recordings that would remain largely unreleased for decades.

Much of that history eventually vanished.

Most of Big Sticker’s surviving photos, ephemera, DATs, live recordings, home videos, and other archival material were lost during “Hurricane Amber” in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the mid-2000s. What remains is therefore less a complete catalog than a stickered-over archive: torn, faded, stubborn, incomplete, and somehow still attached.

This collection gathers what survived—and what has since been recovered: recordings, photographs, video fragments, artifacts, and whatever proof the tape refused to surrender. There are gaps. There are probably things still sitting in someone else’s basement, attic, shoebox, cassette case, or forgotten hard drive. Maybe some of those pieces will eventually find their way back.

The archive currently includes retrospective material from Sigh-Guy the Conquistador (1997), Making It Up as We Go Along (1997), and previously unreleased recordings from the Basement Brand sessions (1998).

The anthology Big Sticker: Nothing Left But Tape gathers 13 surviving songs from the band’s original run—Rhode Island punk-pop, garage rock, basement noise, and super lo-fi recordings pulled from the noise floor before they disappeared for good.

Signal, static, and songs that stuck.

Members

Kevin Haslam — vocals, guitar
Mike Norman — guitar
David Zisserson — drums
Marc Sanzen — bass

Additional / Former Members

Steve Saritelli — bass, guitar
Brian Dombrowski — bass
Nick Scappaticci — keys