The life and times of the legendary band.
Posts tagged Big star.
Alex Chilton: 1975-1981
In early 1979, Alex Chilton formed the Panther Burns with Tav Falco. Chilton was nearly a decade removed from his stint as lead singer in the Top 40 band the Box Tops and almost five years from his last recordings with Big Star, the pop band whose work had sparked a legion of dedicated followers. Over those five years, Chilton had begun his definitive move away from everything he’d done before. He made two solo records that had grown deliberately more simple and primal, crossing rockabilly with outrage, and he’d then moved himself behind the scenes to produce the first singles of the band the Cramps, rockabilly revolutionaries of an even more primitive sort. With his next project, the Panther Burns, Chilton found his least refined band to date and again pushed himself seemingly out of the spotlight, this time in the role of the guitar sideman. Yet he appeared to still have a great hand in the band’s direction. The Panther Burns had started almost as an art project, but a year later they had evolved into a rock ‘n’ roll dance band. They were like no other dance band around…
Westerberg live. The camera work is shaky at first, but the intro is worth watching to hear the requests, including someone shout “the entire Let it Be album” before Paul plays one of his best tunes ever.
This seems oddly fitting on the two year anniversary of the death of Alex Chilton. Please share it with your friends.
choir! choir! choir! sings Big Star - Thirteen
A slow beautiful sound for the cover of Jumpin’ Jack Flash. By alex Chilton from Chilton’s Free Agian: The “1970” sessions. Recorded while he was constrained to the Box Tops and before he joined Big Star.
Big Star- Jesus Christ (from “Third/Sister Lovers”)
I’m a bit late to the party on this one- I tried to get to love Big Star in college, reading about their supposed place among the first of tragically-underappreciated beloved tragic cult bands- the sort of thing I’m usually a sucker for- on the usual internet-criticism-derived required listening list for young would-be music snobs, but without much luck- “September Gurls” seemed fairly perfect but a bit lightweight, like cotton candy, and Holocaust and Kanga Roo were pleasing enough, but I still preferred the This Mortal Coil versions floating around the campus network. Now, listening again nigh on a decade later, it’s painfully obvious that everyone was right all along, and I wonder how I could have overlooked such sheer gorgeious elegance- their best songs, of which this is an example, are perfect classicist miniatures, models of refinement and restraint, aching and tender yet beautifully detached and not infrequently absolutely heartbreaking- a much better sonic approximation of “filigree and shadow” than the celebrated 4AD. I’ve grown particularly fond of this song, which manages the near-impossible feat of using lyrics taken only from stock Christmas carols in a straightforward pop song context, horn section and all, without their seeming the slightest bit cloying, insincere, or even out of place, the music perfectly evoking a winter night full of frost and stars and joy and glory. Granted, not all their songs are near so good, and when not firing on all cylinders they could be dead boring, but enough approach it to make each of their albums a delight- I’m only glad to finally realize it.
