Rockin’ the red vinyl… Back Of A Car - god bless Alex Chilton x (Taken with Instagram)
The life and times of the legendary band.
June Records: At War with the Obvious: William Eggleston's Album Covers
By Charles Yao
Quick: What do The Silver Jews, Joanna Newsom, Big Star, Primal Scream, and Spoon have in common? Well, each artist has chosen a photo by William Eggleston — the dandyish godfather of colour photography — for some of their album covers. The famous red ceiling on the cover of …
Pledge today and help us take our new EP “I Can’t Wait” and The Soul Stormin’ Tour out on the road!
Welcome to the Pledge Music fundraising campaign for the Star & Micey Soul Stormin’ Tour! Your support will help put gas in our tank, food in our bellies and pillows under our heads as we embark on a month-long national tour in support of our new EP I Can’t Wait out on October 16th. Hopefully, we’ll see you on the road!
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Star & Micey
aka Joshua, Geoff, Nick, and Jeremyyou should watch this and reblog it and if you don’t you are mean.
Chris Bell - I Am The Cosmos
Unfortunately, Chris Bell died in a car crash in December 1978, a only couple of months after the release of the ‘I Am the Cosmos’ single. Thus, the song became even further subsumed into Big Star legend. Following their reformation in 1993 (the year after Bell’s recordings were collected by Rhino as the I Am the Cosmos LP), Big Star never went a show without playing the song.
“Third isn’t really a record, more a series of recordings. We never finished it.” Jim Dickinson, producer
There is no definitive tracklist for Big Star’s Third. It can get a bit frustrating, especially with the numerous rereleases of the album; once you’ve just got used to it one way, another alternative comes along with different songs (the version I go for uses 15 of the session’s 18 masters). For a start, there’s that title - some call it Third, some call it Sister Lovers, some give it no name at all. Some don’t even call it a Big Star album at all. When it was recorded, Big Star was just Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens and whoever else was floating about at the time. When it was released, no one really cared much for Big Star - least of all, Alex Chilton.
He’d been burned too many times, and felt wilful enough to simply record his state of mind. The anecdotes say it all: did you hear the one about the label guy telling Chilton he heard a hit in the album demos? You know, the one that ends with Chilton deconstructing the song in question by ripping out the drums and replacing them with a pinging basketball. Hence, ‘Downs’ (a song which doesn’t even feature on every issue of Third anyway). That’s a good one.
Big Star - Kanga Roo
Much of Third’s mystery comes from its numerous permutations, much from Alex Chilton’s frazzled state of mind. But let’s be fair, this is an album that will never quite be unravelled. Remember earlier in the week when I said that Chilton sneers his way through ‘Thank You Friends’? Well, aside from his troubling cries of “I WANT TO WHITE OUT” on ‘Kizza Me’, it’s pretty much the only time he lets his emotions take charge of a song. The rest of the time, it’s down to the music.
On ‘Kanga Roo’ especially, he simply gets consumed by the sounds around him. The burning feedback, distorted guitars, illogical dribbles of strings (carefully recreated note for nonsensical note for those tribute concerts) and clayfisted acoustic strums all contribute to the most far-out track in the Big Star catalogue. Hearing this song alone, you can totally understand why it’s had such a direct stranglehold on another crop of bands - Graham Coxon allegedly listened to a lot of it while writing his parts for Blur’s self-titled record, while any album that sounds a quarter as trashed gets at least a glancing comparison.
But it’s also easy to forget that there are actually some glimmers of light here too. ‘Jesus Christ’ is a perfect secular hymn, while the bouncy ‘O, Dana’ and the spacey ‘Stroke It Noel’ (with the least enthusiastic “Do you wanna dance?” ever sung) are actually - dare I say it? - kinda fun. And maybe, y’know, your copy might also have the version of ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ - that’s pretty damn loose too.
So yeah, Big Star’s Third. I guess it’s anything you want it to be.
