dude obviously had a contrarian streak a mile wide
― the Spanish Porky's (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 27 June 2013 18:06 (ten years ago) link
I dunno Josh, if Grisso's quote is accurate, and from the tapdancing-around I heard in this doc, the Chris-was-gay talk seems closer to secondhand, and we're not getting first anytime.
Some gays are always on the lookout for cultural totems who aren't Liberace.
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 27 June 2013 18:21 (ten years ago) link
In fact it was "Chris was a homosexual. That's why we had to break up.
def recall this from the radio show, which is also the one where Alex does Riding Through the Reich or whatever that pseudo-Nazi jingle he had was
― the Spanish Porky's (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 27 June 2013 18:23 (ten years ago) link
haha, yeah, he was obviously in a "provocative" mood for that particular broadcast.
― tylerw, Thursday, 27 June 2013 18:25 (ten years ago) link
Much talk in the film of how he had no use for Big Star after the fact, and then ppl were "flabbergasted" at the reformation in '93. Um, ka-CHING?
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 27 June 2013 18:28 (ten years ago) link
are the Cramps in the doc at all...?
― the Spanish Porky's (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 27 June 2013 18:33 (ten years ago) link
just a bit. More Tav Falco.
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 27 June 2013 18:42 (ten years ago) link
I think the Big Star reunion was really just a matter of catching him in the right place at the right time.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 27 June 2013 19:59 (ten years ago) link
also i saw the trailer and was dubious because i need no convincing about the greatness of this band and it seemed to just be people telling me things i already knew
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, June 27, 2013 6:16 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
but now dr m is making it sound a little more appealing
i didn't want to say so earlier, but i didn't think this doc was too great. they did well, given the paucity of footage from back in the day, but it's overlong, it lacks pace, it spends too long having indie rockers and such telling you they love big star, etc. is this by the same guy who did the replacements doc?
― my eventual wife (stevie), Thursday, 27 June 2013 21:46 (ten years ago) link
Who is the dude working on the Grant Hart doc?
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 27 June 2013 21:46 (ten years ago) link
yes and yesthat's why i was apprehensive
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, 27 June 2013 22:06 (ten years ago) link
at least i think so! formula seems the same, and it's not one that interests me for the abovementioned reasons
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, 27 June 2013 22:07 (ten years ago) link
So any significant differences in that new alt-take collection, soundtrack to this doc maybe? Good review in Rolling Stone, but yknow...
― dow, Thursday, 27 June 2013 23:09 (ten years ago) link
Yeah, it's the soundtrack (though may have more/different than the movie, as these things sometimes work out)
― dow, Thursday, 27 June 2013 23:13 (ten years ago) link
doc isn't "great" at all, simply bcz of lack of live footage etc for starters, but I think it's an entertaining film for ppl who are not steeped in the lore. I've played the LPs (not lately) but never became a superfan who read about em.
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 June 2013 18:24 (ten years ago) link
If this guy could get rights to the 'Mats music and cut the fan talk down to a reasonable length, maybe that project wd work too.
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 June 2013 18:25 (ten years ago) link
i'm sure i'll enjoy it (and i'm pretty steeped in the lore), but yeah, not expecting it to be "great". listened to sdtk last night (it's on the various streaming services) -- fine, but nothing essential.
― tylerw, Friday, 28 June 2013 18:27 (ten years ago) link
also it seems reasonable to spend a lotta time w/ critic interviewees cuz they "made" BS's rep to a degree, given the sales/distrib disasters.
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 June 2013 18:30 (ten years ago) link
yeah they really are the ultimate critics band -- wasn't their biggest gig (at least in the 70s) a rock critic convention?
― tylerw, Friday, 28 June 2013 18:45 (ten years ago) link
yes, that's basically the focal point of the first half of the film.
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 June 2013 18:47 (ten years ago) link
It's remarkable to think that Big Star, let alone the VU (was Big Star the first band to cover the VU?), was a hard to find relative obscurity as recently as the '80s, given what an influence both those bands were on so much of what came out of the college rock scene at the time. Was it really just critics that kept (either) act alive? I imagine musicians passing the LPs around like totems helped at least as much. Not to mention critics who were also musicians.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 June 2013 18:56 (ten years ago) link
(was Big Star the first band to cover the VU?)
Bowie
― Number None, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:01 (ten years ago) link
On Pin Ups, or around then? He was definitely in there, but I'd say scenester rock star who hung at Max's and produced Lou Reed that same year (72?) is trumped by kids stranded in Memphis, even if they got there a year or so later.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:03 (ten years ago) link
think this is from 67 or 68https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beUcnN9ULhAi dunno, VU records might've been slightly hard to come by before the mid 80s, but they must've had a much higher profile than big star thanks to Lou Reed's relative rock stardom in the 70s. i don't think more than a thousand people even knew the name big star before the mid 80s?
― tylerw, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:04 (ten years ago) link
I don't think you can overemphasize how obscure the VU was. I mean, it took 25 years for the Sex Pistols album to go platinum, and that was one album with historic hype behind it. Want to say the VU, like Big Star, was mostly out of print in the early '80s.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:07 (ten years ago) link
This was actually recorded before the release of The Velvet Underground and Nicohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPwCSem3cUQ
― Number None, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:09 (ten years ago) link
I believe somewhere in this 11-part interview, Mo claims to have not known the band was influential until the mid'80s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdV_THMjeKk#at=77
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:10 (ten years ago) link
Mott the Hoople covered Sweet Jane on All the Young Dudes (1972). so no
― the Spanish Porky's (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 June 2013 19:10 (ten years ago) link
I dunno, I didn't have a problem finding/buying the VU & BS albums in the early-mid '80s, but then I was going to school, then working, in NYC.
I saw Chilton at Folk City (a $3 night booked by Ira Kaplan) circa '85, maybe, and I'm p sure the audience knew those BS records well.
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 June 2013 19:11 (ten years ago) link
ha well, half the people in the audience at folk city that night were probably interviewed for the documentary.
― tylerw, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:14 (ten years ago) link
from quite early on, Big Star were always a biggish cult band in UK and European music-hipster circles - music journalist Max Bell wrote a 4-part story on them in 1978 for the NME - and by the time i was buying albs in the mid 1980s most big star and chilton-related discs were pretty easy to find in london (and there's that great 1980 live in london alb recorded at dingwalls in camden).
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:25 (ten years ago) link
xpost But Mott had that direct Bowie connection as well, at the exact same time. Bowie gets massive credit for being the first to glom onto the VU, but again, he was part of that scene. Big Star couldn't have been farther from that scene.
Who was the first to cover Big Star? Replacements? Bangles?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:25 (ten years ago) link
Michael Jackson
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Friday, 28 June 2013 19:27 (ten years ago) link
there have been bands that critics liked more than audiences basically for as long as there were professional rock reviewers. but what i'm kind of curious about re: big star is that the hype seems to have been that they WOULD have been huge (at least on the first two albums). That rather than them being a challenge to the audience, the audience would have eaten them up if only they'd hear them. I know around the same time Xgau cracks that the Move's "Do Ya" was "rated single of the year in the rock press, apparently the only place it was distributed," so whether or not Big Star was the first critics fave to be presented this way, they're definitely one of the more enduring of the first class.
― da croupier, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:32 (ten years ago) link
actually, I think Todd Abramson had take over booking the indie-darling sets from Ira K by '85 at Folk City
― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 June 2013 19:35 (ten years ago) link
Big Star couldn't have been farther from that scenewell i dunno, they covered "Baby Strange"
― tylerw, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:36 (ten years ago) link
xposts EMI reissued the first two lps in Britain as a double album just prior to Bell's death, bringing to mind Xgau's definition of a "legend in one's time" (which he said re:the New York Dolls, who got a similar reissue treatment at the same time).
― Mr. Mojo Readin' (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 28 June 2013 19:39 (ten years ago) link
Who was the first to cover Big Star? Replacements? Bangles?― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 28, 2013 12:25 PM (19 minutes ago)
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 28, 2013 12:25 PM (19 minutes ago)
1979, Australia!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOsO3Ib2Wzk
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, 28 June 2013 19:46 (ten years ago) link
Wanna say that Game Theory might have been the first US band?
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, 28 June 2013 19:47 (ten years ago) link
db's probably had some big star in their repertoire early on, right?
― tylerw, Friday, 28 June 2013 19:50 (ten years ago) link
All the VU records (except for Loaded which, bizarrely, never went out of print) were reissued in 1985 so yeah, those were easy to find then.
Some Big Star was available on import in the US, but not that easy to find (and pricey if you did find it).
― Esperanto, why don't you come to your senses? (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, 28 June 2013 20:03 (ten years ago) link
I meant literally far from that scene. Think there were a lot of T. Rex or Lou Reed records in Memphis record stores in the early '70s? Maybe. I've talked to a lot of people 10 years older than me who grew up in the midwest or the south beholden entirely to what would be played on AM radio. That's the Replacements in a nutshell: they grew up listening to AM radio, and became what they became when they later bumped up against hip stuff like Big Star and Johnny Thunders and the Only Ones.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 June 2013 20:10 (ten years ago) link
I don't get the Bowie/Mott dismissal. Technically they were even FARTHER away from the VU scene than Big Star was, what with the whole Atlantic Ocean thing. Bowie rescued Reed's career and was the first high-profile booster of the Velvets.
― the Spanish Porky's (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 June 2013 20:10 (ten years ago) link
bang a Gong was top 10 single in the US in 1971. Walk On the Wild Side was top 20 in '72.
― the Spanish Porky's (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 June 2013 20:13 (ten years ago) link
^choice
― well-composed selfie (Matt P), Friday, 28 June 2013 20:18 (ten years ago) link
xp i've lost track of what exactly we're arguing -- i'm going to say that while both bands were obscure, big star were more obscure. based on extensive research! more interesting thing maybe is when the college rock/indie "canon" started to come into place and be solidified ... i guess it probably has to do with REM interviews.
― tylerw, Friday, 28 June 2013 20:19 (ten years ago) link
woah! that garagey r&b VU cover is amazing! yardbirds covered VU live too. an early VU covers comp could be cool.
not vu, but an early lou/cale song if I recall correctly:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyaus17wWZ4
― brio, Friday, 28 June 2013 20:26 (ten years ago) link
here ya go - http://www.philxmilstein.com/probe/index.htm#session419
covers of VU material during VU lifetime:1. The Banana: There She Goes Again2. David Bowie: I'm Waiting For The Man3. The Riats: Run Run Run4. The Riats: Sunday Morning5. The Yardbirds: Smokestack Lightning/I'm Waiting For The Man
early VU ref. in song:6. David Bowie with The Riot Squad: Little Toy Soldier
alt. VUs:Oklahoma:7. Velvet Underground Ltd. of Enid, Okla.: Correct Me8. Velvet Underground Ltd. of Enid, Okla.: Why Don't You Love Me
Australia:9. Velvet Underground: Somebody To Love10. Velvet Underground: She Comes In Colours
― tylerw, Friday, 28 June 2013 20:31 (ten years ago) link
well those dudes have bar-story material for life
― well-composed selfie (Matt P), Friday, 28 June 2013 20:34 (ten years ago) link
(Speaking of Southern AM, "Walk On The Wild Side" was at least Top 20 in mah neck of the woods; ditto mucho Bowie, from "Space Oddity" ownward). Big Star were much more obscure than VU, even in the early 70s Central Southeast: I only heard about 'em in a few rock mags, no rock clubs; I only heard 'em via radio promos sold for 99 cents in a B'ham headshop. But they were inspiring to hear and hear about, as the Winston-Salem High School kids, already rocking but not yet as the dB's, would doubtless agree (if they heard 'em that early). The VU made their living playing live, and ranged pretty far afield at times (that Texas live album was fascinating: the band that did not play no blues revealed their roots after all, with no pandering--hey Moe Diddly)
― dow, Friday, 28 June 2013 20:34 (ten years ago) link