Meaty music features for the many jades and fewer noobs (about older artists mostly, though not always)(well they all are now, though some weren't at the time),.originally published in Charlotte Creative Loafing, now posted here---mostly, but not absolutely always---from the most recent (Jan. '07), back to the innocent first (Aug. '05). A few tweaks for sake of added info, clarity and compulsion.
Monday, January 3, 2022
When You Wish Upon Big Star
When You Wish Upon Big Star
Thirty years on, seminal Southern power-pop kings are ready for their close-up
By Don Allred
(an edit was published autumn 2005)
In the mid-to-late 60s, Memphis teen Alex Chilton’s afterschool job was recording raspy, rootsy Top 40 pop-rock with the Box Tops, following producer-songwriter Dan Penn’s instructions to the letter, also “The Letter,” their biggest, and/or most famous hit. On others, A-list session players sometimes stood in for Chilton/s fellow Box Tops, who had to learn and, in effect, cover those ghostplayed BT tracks, as any club band might—so they did it, and toured, their more dogged efforts hopefully staying close enough to the records,if lacking taken-for-granted polish of Penn’s studio pros (who didn't have to deal with being jerked around by older guys: biz lizards to the Tops, including shady and/or hapless characters beyond the gleaming studio machine.)
Chilton took his next band, Big Star, in a surprisingly spacier, still catchy direction, like his peer Stevie Winwood going from being the soul-rockin' prodigy of Spencer Davis Group to floatier Traffic. Although fun, rootsy genre exercises could pop up again in Chilton’s subsequent solo career-of-sorts, Memphis was a small musical world, still, and Big Star zigzagged around Penn’s turf, even as Chilton worried (in at least one supposed-to-be promotional radio interview, caught on bootlegged tape) about being so influenced by Todd Rundgren, who had gone from playing the blooze with Woody’s Truck Stop, to the para-as-post-Beatles psych-pop revelation of “Open My Eyes,” with The Nazz, while the Box Tops were still slogging for the suits (also making good records with Mr. Penn and other savants, it should be said).
Big Star’s name, like the group, was cocky and wry, following dreams and the sign above a chain grocery store across the street from their strip mall studio, the equally well-named Ardent. This time, the resident elders trained all band members to use the studio, instead of just using them. As documented in Rob Jovanovic’s unavoidably Behind The Music-tending Big Star bio, this added to the creative and other friction of a headstrong, innovative-in-the-making crew, with all that drama under the hood, as late-adolescent woes, foes, and bros rose to the occasion–-also to the posthumous glory of “September Gurls,” as thrillingly killed by The Bangles a decade later, proving that BS did too have commercial potential. Ditto “In The Street,” when it became late-'90s-spawned That '70s Show’s theme song, though as less amazingly covered by Todd Griffin, later Cheap Trick: teens again, calling out, "W-i-i-sh, w-e-e, h-a-a-a-d, a joint, s-o-o b-a-a-ad." (Big Star’s blue glider ballad "Thirteen," known to some as T7S couple Eric and Donna's theme, was heard in several episodes, including the very last one, aw-w-w.)
Meanwhile, back in the offscreen 70s, what the heck: the guys in Big Star named their first album #1 Record.
More or less "released" in 1972, #1 Record mainly existed as promotional copies sent to record reviewers, the hippest of whom couldn’t get enough of its spill and spin of sweet and salty ear munchies. Radio City and Third/Sister Lovers, released in 1974 and 1978 respectively, cemented Big Star's cult status and took it further in that direction each time. Third... was down to Chilton and BS drummer-singer Jody Stephenson (yes, they were dating sisters), assisted by Memphis music’s Merlin, Jim Dickinson, and a swirling circle of friends, though light and shadow of expanding, contracting original songs and appropriate covers, like The Kinks’ rousing “Til The End of the Day” and The Velvet Underground’s immaculate “Femme Fatale,” with spare, poignant guitar inflections provided by Booker T and The MGs’ Steve Cropper. Indeed, this Big Star’s moody, mobile, signature style, spacious and enclosed, with strings occasionally slipping through, and bootleg tapes sometimes releasing themselves from the basement, makes Third/Sister Lovers seem like a big old worn-but-still-elegant Bluff City granny house in headphones orbit.
By the early 80s, what Jovanovic calls "the Winston-Salem gang" ---including the dB's Will Rigby and Peter Holsapple, and Let's Active's Mitch Easter---may well have turned Easlter's garage production clients R.E.M. on to the music of Alex Chilton and company, even before they heard The Bangles' hit. R.E.M. talked them up in interviews, may have encore-covered them sometimes, and, after a couple of decades solo—which included interrupting his dishwashing gigs for the one-off Live In London, backed by members of UK indie post-Big Star stars Soft Boys and equally compatible punk guitarist Knox of the Vibrators, also tours of bars, and producing, recording, touring with The Replacements, among other things)(The 'Mats later caroled,"Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton")---Mr. C. suddenly agreed to a Big Star "reunion" performance. The lineup included original drummer/singer/songwriter Jody Stephens and new Seattle recruits Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, guitarist and bassist, respectively, of the Posies. As heard on Columbia, Live at Missouri University 4-25-93, the concert heavies up the classic power-pop, while keeping it crisp and pop enough to be chased with Big Star stimulants T. Rex (“Baby Strange”), ditto T. Rundgren (“Slut”).
And now, a mere 12 years later, Chilton brings us the same Big Star 2.0’s studio platter of 12 all-new tracks, In Space (adding a calf, though no doubt not a capper, to their span of reissues and previously unreleases on ever-faithful Rykodisc). It's a disc on which lightweight-to-high-generic qualities seem deliberate and sometimes witty, as if the band is saying, "Hello, fellow collectors! We too are influenced by Big Star!" But my favorites sound more like chillin' Chilton's better solo joints. The very classical "Aria Largo" gets tortured by an electric guitar, one careful note at a time. "Love Revolution" sounds like a long-haired Carolina beach band covering Archie Bell & The Drells' "Tighten Up." "Do You Wanna Make It" conjures a big, fat, drunk chick, with a boombox, doing the bump to The Kinks. Yes, baby's got bass, and there's a Big Star tattooed on it.
Once again, Big Star shines where the sun don't, 'cause after all, they're stars of the underground. Presently, Big Star's touring plans are also underground, courtesy of Mr. Chilton, who steadfastly remained in his New Orleans home 'til Katrina came calling. Chilton's also-reformed Box Tops may have to re-schedule, too. Latter-day Big Stars Auer and Stringfellow continue to play with their other band, the Posies (which are slated for a Sept. 25 show at Chapel Hill's Local 506). Typically, as Jovanovic makes clear in Big Star's saga, post-airlift Chilton's rumored to be in a place he refuses to name (but was recently reported to be a refugee star of the Astrodome).
Big Star is now slated to play live dates in December; check Pollstar.org for updates. In Space was released on Rykodisc Sept. 27. Jovanovic's book is currently in bookstores and available online.
BIG STAR: The Short Life, Painful Death, and Unexpected Resurrection of the Kings of Power Pop
By Rob Jovanovic (Chicago Review Press, 333 pages, $15.95)
In Space
Big Star (Rykodisc)
(Rob J.'s book has since been Revised and Updated, it says here--for deeper dives into the music of Big Star and Chilton, check the ongoing explorations of Omnivore Records, also several discussions, often involving long-time Chilton listener and Nashville Scene writer Edd Hurt, on these ilxor.com threads (linked)
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