Big Star

Sure as hell hope those sealed copies of The Velvet Underground and Nicoand White Light/White Heatand The Velvet Underground and Loadedwere in print when I bought 'em in the mid-70s, because I paid full price: $5.99 each! I know Loaded and Live In Texas 1969 was still in print, because I got it soon after release.
On campus, the canon seemed to form as student DJs moved from, say, Fleetwood Nicks to Richard & Linda, Browne to Zevon (then "Excitable Boy" hit, so hey to wimpy program directors), and various factions were getting abck to classic frat rock (the music of out childhoods; also: Animal House, drinking age was 18), so bands soon realized they could go from Seeds, Standells,Swingin' Medallions to Ramones, Stooges, B-52s as the night went on (then the actual B-52s & Pylon came to town). Etc.

"I know..." shouldn't have mentioned Loaded again sorry

and Bowie was responsible for getting at least some of the Velvets' catalog reissued in the 70s. He is liberally quoted in the liner notes of the MGM Archetypes reissue of White Light/White Heat in 1974.

Like, the Replacements, Posies, dBs, Game Theory, Teenage Fanclub, Wilco, Matthew Sweet, Elliott Smith, sure - you can hear bits and pieces (or, you know, outright copies) of Big Star in all those bands. But not really in REM, not to my ears.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 28, 2013 3:02 PM (7 minutes ago)

I'm going to do something daring and post this first without consulting google/wiki, but IIRC: it was mid-80s REM who found Alex washing dishes in some New Orleans shithole and took him on the road with them as an opening act. Could be urban legend though, caveat emptor.

Alex seems like one of the few rock stars who would be found washing dishes by choice.

During those lean years, Chilton washed dishes at Louis XVI Restaurant in the French Quarter and cleaned an Uptown bar called Tupelo’s. His most hazardous gig? Working with a local tree clearing company, trimming tree branches away from River Road power lines with a chainsaw, while perched in a cherry-picker.

At one point, Chilton and Coman joined a Bourbon Street cover band called Scores. During five-hour gigs at Papa Joe’s, patrons called out requests for R&B standards from printed song lists. “It was an adventure,” Coman said. “It was like we were a human jukebox.”

With few other prospects, Chilton contacted Frank Riley, the New York agent who booked his friends in the dB’s. Riley subsequently arranged the tours that established Chilton as a solo act.

Chilton, Coman and future Iguanas drummer Doug Garrison barnstormed Europe, then criss-crossed America in a’73 Buick LeSabre with a missing driver’s side window.

“There might not be many people in the club, but the R.E.M. guys would be there,” Coman said. “The caliber of fans was much higher than the numbers.”

http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2010/04/post_7.html

The band had a few days to work up a set-list before their next gig and Bowie took charge in helping to knit together a running order. He even brought in a track from an unreleased LP by a US band called The Velvet Underground, “I’m Waiting For The Man.”

I posted the youtube upthread!

I def heard about the dishwashing gig in the mid-80s; don't remember the REM connection, but soon enough he played an off-handed, yet chirpy-to-Sharrockin' gig at a tiny bar in Tuscaloosa (I've still got a good tape of it somewhere). He was quoted by the taper re hadn't started getting royalties for the Bangles' version of "September Gurls."

That same nola link:

Thanks to his low overhead in New Orleans, Chilton subsisted on periodic Big Star, Box Tops and solo gigs, augmented by modest publishing royalties. Cheap Trick covered Big Star’s “In the Street” as the theme music for the Fox sitcom “That ‘70s Show”; Chilton received royalty checks as a result. He saw little reason to hustle additional work.

“He was kind of lazy,” Kersting said, laughing. “He took it very easy. He’d say, ‘Why work when I don’t have to?’ He wanted a very simple life. He was not interested in fame. He was interested in money — he wanted enough to be comfortable and to travel.”

Sounds p rational to me.

he called That 70s Show the "That 70-cent Show" or something similar iirc, in reference to his royalties

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

Pretty damn sure Can and Faust (to name but two) were familiar with the Velvet Underground, e.g., as Julian Cope pointed out compare the intro basslines on "European Son" and "Father Cannot Yell". The obscurity of the Velvet Underground has been exaggerated over the years, I mean:

"...from 1970 to 1972 the band's repertoire drew heavily on songs by the Velvet Underground and the Fugs."

... the band being Plastic People of the Universe... from Prague!

First time I heard of Big Star was when R.E.M. were on Rockline (nationally syndicated radio call-in show) in 1985. The host pointed out a certain sonic similarity to the Byrds; Stipe said, "I hate the Byrds," and mentioned Pere Ubu, Mission of Burma, and Big Star as their influences.

I wonder if he said that to Roger McGuinn when I saw him open for them that year...

xpost. the modern lovers addition of Foggy Notion to their repertoire would have before Big Star added Femme Fatale & Candy Says, yeah?

xp haha, yeah, wonder what the post-show conversation was like here: http://youtu.be/hpShuPQW8SA

Stipey might have hated the Byrds but Peter Buck was always open about his fervent fanhood

Stipe didn't care for the Beatles either. This could be a bit of frontman contrarianism, or maybe something to do with MS having plenty of blind spots in terms of the canon, unlike Buck.

Whether or not Stipe or Buck liked the Byrds, there's definitely more than a little Byrds in the REM. More Byrds than Big Star, that's for sure. Minimal Burma and Pere Ubu, to my ears, though I can hear how the latter two could be influences.

The Byrds similarities were heavily played up in R.E.M.'s early days, so Stipe might've just been reacting strongly to try to shake them off a bit (and in fact from Fables on, the jangly Rickenbacker thing became far less of a defining characteristic).

growing up in the south, I heard REM's declarations of Big Star fandom as a nod to ~left of the dial~ southern roots, because there weren't a lot of precedents for ambitious alt-y rock bands from the south

I know they talked it up in the press at the time, but I was really hard-pressed to discern any of Big Star's "Third" in TFC's "Bandwagonesque". The wall of distorted guitars that were the center of TFCs approach at that time seemed worlds away from "Third" to me.

― the Spanish Porky's (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 June 2013 22:06 (Yesterday) Permalink

Not 3rd, but Radio City absolutely. At least half of Bandwagonesque sounds like it could have been outtakes from Big Star's second album - compare, say, "What You Do To Me" to "Back of a Car". My ears sense substantial Badfinger influence on Teenage Fanclub as well.

Whether or not Stipe or Buck liked the Byrds, there's definitely more than a little Byrds in the REM. More Byrds than Big Star, that's for sure.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, June 29, 2013 3:51 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Really, there's alot of Byrds in Big Star too.

Oh, man, Big Star totally subsumed the Beatles and Byrds. When my guitar teacher and I went trough the first two albums in their entirety - he was barely familiar with them - we were shocked by how well they nailed George's sound in particular, or perhaps generally the Beatles c. the White Album. He also loved the Strat sound on the second album, which was done with old-school tube compressors (like the Beatles) but which he heard as a distant precursor to the compressed Strat sound of the '80s. The '70s, after all, were a real Les Paul decade, so of course Alex would shift from Les Paul to Strat.

xpost. the modern lovers addition of Foggy Notion to their repertoire would have before Big Star added Femme Fatale & Candy Says, yeah?
probably right around the same time? at least that precise modern lovers version of foggy notion is from 73. though knowing richman, he had most likely been playing VU songs since 68-69.

I don't hear a ton of Big Star in REM, but I hear the Byrds in both. Listen to "Candy" from Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde - practically sounds like Chilton on lead vocals.

Alex in New York at the Chelsea Hotel, 1970. Note copy of Untitled in his hand.

http://obrienphotography-wp.eblox.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Alex-Chilton.jpg

BTW, since he was in NYC in '70, I wonder if Alex ever dropped in to Max's and caught a VU set?

Note copy of Untitled in his hand.
Good catch.

practically sounds like Chilton on lead vocals.

"After a period in New York City, during which Chilton worked on his guitar technique and singing style (some of which was believed to have been influenced by a chance meeting with Roger McGuinn at a friend's apartment in New York when Chilton was impressed with McGuinn's singing and playing), Chilton returned to Memphis in 1971..."

xp Another early VU cover, from 1971

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov6ZI58ozYE

Was reading the Mats book and I came across this:

Somewhere along the line, I found myself in the backyard standing across from Alex Chilton. I gave him a few general compliments and then gave special attention to "Hey Little Child." I told him I loved the rhythm. Alex smiled and said, "Yeah, the old cha cha cha." Like it was one o his first girlfriends. A few seconds later, he told me he was going downstairs and he invited me to come along. Soon I found myself in a crowded basement, seated on an old couch surrounded by Alex Chilton, Freedy Johnston and Slim Dunlap, and everyone but me and Peter Jesperson had a guitar. The guys were trading songs and riffs in a gentlemanly way, but the aural dance floor cleared when Alex started playing transcriptions he'd done of Nina Simone solos and then, mind-blowingly, of Wagner's overtures. It was amazing. Watching Alex's fingers crawl up and down the frets like a family of crazy spiders, I go the impression he could do whatever occurred to him on that guitar, that anything was possible and that every note he chose to play had a green glow around it, the glow of having been chosen among millions of options. It was magical, virtuosic, gracious, infinite, unexpected and completely perfect.

what if alex chilton have been in the traveling wilburys

There shoulda been a Bizarro World Traveling Wilburys with Chilton, Arthur Lee, Roky Erickson, and Skip Spence.

still never heard this one:

http://www.discogs.com/Alan-Vega-Alex-Chilton-Ben-Vaughn-Cubist-Blues/release/1320578

that's one of the best records, seriously.

Idiot Hollywood blogger Jeff Wells: "Big who?":
http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2013/07/didnt-last-long-didnt-tour-much/

it's like i always say, if i've never heard of them, they must suck!

Wells is such a moron. And I love how much Glenn Kenny likes to poke at him.

The comments are interesting. Wells (whom I've never heard of, I don't think): "I've always been reasonably aware of pretty much everything that happens of any importance or avant-garde-ness or catchiness, perhaps only in a passing or fragmentary but...you know, if the right fly or mosquito flaps its wings in a cool, never-before, half-interesting way, I tend to at least hear about that."

To make this statement and not have heard of Big Star is a real stretch for me. I mean, I'd never heard of Manuel Göttsching until I read about him here, and I'd never heard of Arvo Part until I watched Gerry one night a couple of years ago, but Manuel Göttsching and Arvo Part aren't Big Star, right?

he is deluded about what he's aware of. The guy is a film blogger (actually, an awards blogger) and didn't have any use for Abbas Kiarostami til his last film. The last week he is his own parody...

first place i heard about big star was in an obscure music magazine called rolling stone, about 20 years ago now.

I love how " I would have at least picked up on a fragment of their lore, their sound…" is followed up by the barrage of "That 70s Show? Replacements? Bangles?" comments, like multiple hits to the head.

but Manuel Göttsching and Arvo Part aren't Big Star, right?

― clemenza, Monday, July 1, 2013 9:50 AM (16 seconds ago)

well, they are (part is arguably more influential & well-known), but only their respective certain circles/streams. i'm not surprised, even at my advanced age, to so frequently stumble across "important" artists of whom i've never heard. then again, i don't claim to catch wind of culture's every butterfly wingbeat...

Alex started playing transcriptions he'd done of Nina Simone solos and then, mind-blowingly, of Wagner's overtures

So when Alex shouted out, during a particularly rambunctious take of "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" on the "Bach's Bottom" album, it was more than just a funny aside?

What I knew and didn't know growing up had less to do with relative obscurity than with four books: Christgau's '70s guide, the red Rolling Stone guide, Lillian Roxon's encyclopedia, and Logan & Woffinden's encyclopedia. If they weren't in one of those, like Göttsching and Part, then I likely didn't find out about them until my 30s or 40s. If, as with Big Star's prominence in Christgau's book, they were, then I knew about them, though sometimes I wouldn't actually hear them until later. (I just checked, and Big Star aren't in either the red or blue Rolling Stone guide, I guess because their albums weren't in print.)

So when Alex shouted out, during a particularly rambunctious take of "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" on the "Bach's Bottom" album, it was more than just a funny aside?

LOL I forgot to put in what he shouted out which was, of course, in his delicious accent, "IT'S GETTING LIKE WAGNER"

I've never heard of REM, the Byrds, Beach Boys, or Beatles, and I know a lot about music. For instance, did you know a band called Black Sabbath recently reunited? I think one of the Beastie Boys used to be in that band. Ever heard of the Beastie Boys? They're really good, though I liked them better before they went rock. I wonder when they'll put out a new record?

Thing about that asshat Wells is his stubborn ignorance in the face of ample evidence, his refusal to admit wrong and instance on doubling down on the most ridiculous stuff.

So, I guess a Doobie Brothers documentary would be more up your alley, Wells?

nice Artforum piece on the doc

http://www.artforum.com/film/id=41722

New York opening is today !