Big Star

(Haven't heard those last three, but know where he's comin' from re previous.)

It's Robert (Robot) A. Hull's April 1979 review of Third that really gets it right. I can't find it archived anywhere except at the subscription-only Rock's Back Pages site, but i recall it. That's 1979, so it must've been another review somewhere that we read that got us onto the Big Star stuff, because I know I'd already been into it by then (and bought my copy of Sherbert in November of that year).
I think Michael Brown is a somewhat good analog to Chilton, though I really don't hear much of the Left Banke in the third record (strings do not make it like the Left Banke). But I suppose the tunecraft and fragile nature of LB toons like "She May Call You Up Tonight" had their impact on Chilton, who seems to have listened to a hell of a lot of '60s stuff like that, including the Zombies, We Five, the Mamas and the Papas...I was at the Missouri show in 1993, I'll never forget them lurching into "Duke of Earl." I think there's a new, complete version of that show that's out. Set/Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy is heinous except for his Ollie Nightingale cover, his Brenton Wood cover, and maybe one other. What he does to Gary Stewart's great "Single Again" is just unforgivable; points for covering Stewart's masterpiece, but he couldn't sing it in some one-take vocal and expect it to fly. If he'd worked at it for a couple weeks in the studio, got it right, it could've been amazing. Man Called Destruction almost works, I quite liked it at the time, but now it sounds typically one-dimensional, except a couple cuts. The only really produced record he did after the '70s.

Found the Hull review, at ebay--no credit given to the writer, of course. It's here.

whoa a studio version of "Baby Strange." hell yea.

this one song justifies the release IMO.

thanks for those great posts, Edd

^^^

whoa a studio version of "Baby Strange." hell yea.

― billstevejim, Tuesday, August 16, 2016 11:34 AM (35 minutes ago)

this one song justifies the release IMO.

― billstevejim, Tuesday, August 16, 2016 11:35 AM (33 minutes ago)

We talked to the lady at the park admission and she said nobody can dance...

I'm sorry...

[boos]["Why not!??!"]

I don't know... ask her...

In the meantime: don't dance...?

I was at the Missouri show in 1993...

― Edd Hurt

offtopic: Any recollection of openers The Palace Brothers?

No, I'm afraid I don't remember the Palace Brothers at all. I should've taken some notes, I guess.

Oh yeah, xpost Hull's description of the *actual listening experience* triggers reader's memories after all: The album even seems to begin at the wrong speed with ‘Stroke It Noel’, a sagging melody that suddenly bursts into the flowery ebullience of the Left Banke. Fortunately by the second cut (‘For You’), the speed accommodates warm sentiment smothered in baroque orchestration.

And But what causes Chilton's work to finally congeal is not introspection but exploration – a search outside himself for a musical structure that will contain all emotional flux. is the crux-- Chilton's 70s and maybe later reverie, pop x and vs. antipop, dancing not-dancing this messaround---and of course hard as hell to do, in a way that artists and other listeners can live with, without wandering away. And this is re the "indecision" Edd notes, which can use you more than you use it, creatively or otherwise.

Later he settles, in an okay way, solo, BS 2.0, even sep. oldies circuit shows w the Boxtops, back and forth. But when you tend to be unstable, you can over- and undervalue stability, to some degree(s). I dunno man, In the meantime: don't dance...?

thanks for those great posts, Edd

― ro✧✧✧@il✧✧✧.c✧✧ (sleeve), Tuesday, August 16, 2016 1:40 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

^^^^^^3X

Some of what crippled Alex was simply his own intelligence. I think he took to heart the idea behind a lot of old R&B music that the words could be super-banal, of the moment, and crass, with references to--and I think this is crucial--the larger world of pop that existed parallel to R&B and soul. In this sense he was quite different from any revivalist of old-tyme music that he really ought to be compared to, in the '80s. The trash aesthetic meant something a bit different to Alex than it did to David Johnansen or someone, just as his idea of roots music wasn't exactly X's or Dave Alvin's. Third is a really amazing example of someone wavering in and out of pop, which also makes that record different from all the records it inspired, perhaps the most interesting being His Name Is Alive's Mouth by Mouth, and certainly Alex at least paid lip service to moral gravity--"Thank You John" is a good example--in a way that his epigone Scott Miller could never summon, because Scott Miller didn't conceive of pop as an area where you could make those moral distinctions. I saw him with the reformed Box Tops twice and it was always kind of creepy, as if this guy had had part of his body removed (that he didn't play guitar was a big part of it, because his guitar style was definitely the most worked-out part of all his scattered parts). And all the old Box Tops shit was about Morals, from "Down in Kentucky" to "Fields of Clover" (the greatest non-hit Box Tops tune ever) to even "The Letter." Audience members used to get impatient with Alex's "indecision" and his detachment--"More, faster!" they'd shout, and Alex would just hunker down more and keep on walking the line between concentrating on what he was doing in an unsmiling way and making those moderate tempi and post-R&B guitar moves stand in for what he was trying hard to not feel. The songs were vehicles, obstacle courses he mastered by hewing to what he heard in the records he imitated. The most he ever strayed from the original record, far as I can tell, is on "What's Your Sign," but he also did a Frederick Knight tune called "Claim to Fame" that to this day I never heard the original of, so he obviously knew something about songwriting he didn't want to give away. And as a matter of fact, you can do most of the songs on the third record alone with your guitar and piano, but you can't really play "O My Soul" that way, and that performance is like the Grand Tour of post-R&B guitar playing that he could've replicated endlessly, if he'd been a true formalist.

Re moral gravity and moral distinctions even upper-case Morals--as toll bridges, or something else, anyway w shadows and gravity, whatever they amount to---but also his detachment---so making me think of outsider-pattermeister Harry Smith compiling The Smithsonian Anthology of AmericanFolk Music?? Except of course Chilton is in a different artistic situation: a registered cult artist *and* s guy with a guitar, whose show preview writes itself, coming to Yourtown, and hoping not to be taken for granted---but is this something like what you mean?

"patternmeister", Ah mean.

"O My Soul" is like a master class in Strat.

Yeah, dow, moral gravity, concern with some kind of morality, concern with his inability to make sense of it all, fear that these transient things will be lost, like Harry Smith. Or maybe the dead rock writer and incurable romantic Paul Nelson, who worshiped Chet Baker to the point that he bought every scrap of outtake and live performance to be had and stored it all, annotated, in his little sublet in the shadow of New York City. Moralists who are obsessed with power are strange people. Chris Bell was terrified half the time, it sounds like to me. Alex wanted bodyguards, hit men, sex objects, songs that he could fall back on. A romantic. Harry Smith, yep: looking for patterns everywhere. I'm sure Alex had a reason for choosing those songs, a pattern in his mind. Lowell Fulson's most pro forma record, check. I think you can hear this operating on the third Big Star record--Jerry Lee, Lou Reed, "Nature Boy," originals that sound like half-remembered songs from someone's addled childhood, and the Kinks to boot.

thank you edd hurt for everything you have written in the past 24 hours.

where are those 33 1/3 people when you need them

thank you edd hurt for everything you have written in the past 24 hours.

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, 17 August 2016 03:52 (41 minutes ago) Permalink

yeah totally. great stuff.

Sentiments echoed here. I'd be interested in more about the thread you trace from Third to Mouth By Mouth which I've always felt was a less-fully-realised sibling to Home is In Your Head. I've always felt Chilton was at odds with his gift whereas Defever was indulgent of his, if that makes sense.

loving your posts edd

excited abt 3rd expanded reissue not least because it means i might now be able to find an affordable vinyl copy

edd hurt you have long been my favorite poster on ILM & this thread is a sign post to that

where are those 33 1/3 people when you need them

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

listened to the Third demos on the way to work this morning, those songs scrubbed up well

I'm excited about this! I listened to Big Star *way* too much growing up and I'm kind of sick of these songs now. But the chance of hearing Alex's voice again, in its prime, with his best set of songs, and in - presumably - a more intimate setting - that sounds really appealing and interesting in a specific way, the way that the grab-bag of stuff on "Keep an Eye" wasn't.

^this, I guess

Sentiments echoed here. I'd be interested in more about the thread you trace from Third to Mouth By Mouth which I've always felt was a less-fully-realised sibling to Home is In Your Head. I've always felt Chilton was at odds with his gift whereas Defever was indulgent of his, if that makes sense

I traded an e-mail or two with Warn Defever back when I reviewed Detrola, which is the last HNIA record I've heard, actually. I've always been a fan of Mouth by Mouth, which does strike me as a more controlled version of Third. Defever kind of came at putting together a band in a conceptual way, somewhat like the way Bell approached Big Star. Similar studiomania. I always thought Mouth by Mouth was the one record--I like Stars on ESP too--where he kinda got it all together and made a coherent statement. I always thought it was a record by someone who fundamentally liked pop but couldn't resist the urge to make it more allusive. I do think Defever has been more indulgent of his gift, just like I think Scott Miller--the Game Theory-Loud Family guy, not the alt-country musician who is still alive and well-- was also too indulgent of his. The version of "Blue Moon" on Mouth is one of the best Big Star covers, too.
Seems to me the folks compiling this Big Star stuff could do worse than to talk to someone like Defever, who seems like the quintessential scattered suburbanite who got twisted around by the third album and probably the other stuff too. Karin Oliver was kind of the Lesa Aldridge of the best period of HNIA, apparently Warn gave her zero autonomy and regarded her as just a voice. So the progression from the third album to 1993 would be from cult of personality to the effacement of personality, perhaps.

That's really interesting Edd, I second the sentiment that a book on Chilton from you would be a very interesting read. I need to listen more to Mouth By Mouth too.

I'll second what EH said about Tiven… I worked with him in the early '90s, when I was quite enthralled with B.S, and the cult got much much bogger. and occasionally asked him about AC. Without fail he indicated visceral disdain for him, which clearly resulted from some extremely bad interpersonal experiences going well beyond anything involving what he should or should not have done musically. Tiven was somewhat pompous and obviously annoyed that AC was being hailed as such as big deal, but there can be no doubt that AC was a difficult mufugger in those days.

I worked with marshall C. at the time as well, and asked if he knew of Big Star in the early '70s and what he thought of them now. He said he didn't think much of the band in the '70s, and seemed to be similarly annoyed that this fuck-up was receiving all this acclaim, whereas he was perceived as a charming, hugely skilled journeyman, but not a dysfunctional star-crossed Nick Drake-ish dude that creates such fascination. I remember specifically that he said that he thought Bell was a spoliled little rich kid.

thank you edd hurt for everything you have written in the past 24 hours.

Because I was just wondering if it was time for my semi-annual foray into the rolling country thread.

Actually now wondering if Edd or anyone else ever crossed paths with the guy who did play guitar in The Box Tops and later turned himself into a session musician, Gary Talley, whose birthday happens to be today, I just learned.

I guess it is sort of mildly interesting to me that somebody else came out of that band and had a more conventional career in the music business because if one were to take Alex at face value, it was such a traumatizing experience that it is a wonder any of the members could leave the house afterwards.

Gary Talley has lived in the Nashville area for years. He's known as a guitar teacher. I did interview him briefly a few years ago, to do an Nashville Scene critics' pick on something he was doing at the time. Nice guy.
Jon Tiven and I have had a mostly congenial relationship, although I panned his record with P.F. Sloan in 2006, which he got pretty exercised about. I thought at the time that Sloan, whom I'd seen put on a great performance at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe (temple of pretentious singer-songwriterdom/pretty cool place where you can see some pretty amazing performers, you know), wasn't well-served by Jon's aesthetic on the record they made together. But I got to meet P.F. Sloan and hang out with him at Tiven's house, where I remember these geese or ducks kept honking and quacking around this pond he had in the back yard, pissing off Jon in a comic fashion: "Won't those goddamn ducks shut up so we can talk," etc. P. F. Sloan was fucking great at his show, and in fact reminded me of Alex Chilton in his somewhat desiccated glamour, but the record was pretty lifeless. Some of what Jon has done has been in the realm of reviving old soul performer's careers, and since he usually gets them to do his songs....well, you know, it's what it is. I didn't so much mind his job on Howard Tate, whom I also got to meet once and interview, or his more recent work with Steven Kalinich of Beach Boys-associated fame. He also produced Bebe Buell and I got to see her throw her big old butt around the stage one time at Jack Clement's studio on Belmont Avenue in Nashville, with Jon and his wife Sally backing her up. Sally Tiven is a really nice lady, they've welcomed me into their house on several occasions. I've on occasion wound Jon up: "Hey, tell us about that time Alex tried to jump into bed with you..." He would tell the story in an aggrieved tone. But the fact of the matter is, I don't much enjoy his shit with Chilton on that amusing Bach's Bottom LP, which I bought back in around 1981 or whatever and have since discarded, and I actually don't love his production of Van Duren's Staring at the Ceiling LP all that much, either--"Grow Yourself Up" is better in the demo version Van did with Jody Stephens at Ardent, though I do enjoy "Oh Babe" and "Chemical Fire" and "New Year's Eve" and some of that record. It just lacks the space, the production values, that Van needed. Van's still at it and still good, he's far more similar to Chris Bell and to Emitt Rhodes or Eric Carmen or McCartney than he is to Chilton. His recent work with Vicki Loveland is nice, and in fact, they're playing in Nashville (most likely Van Duren's first Nashville show ever) next month in a Big Star tribute show headed by a young guy named Robert Gay, another fan of power pop. I think Van even knows Emitt Rhodes and has recorded with him.
I do think Marshall Crenshaw is everything Alex could've been; I rate him very highly and those first two records of his made the same kind of impact on me as the Big Star records. Not to denigrate Alex. They're great in different ways. I interviewed Marshall last year. Hoo boy, what a difficult guy, not a fountain of warmth or one who suffers fools gladly. I was actually intimidated by the prospect of talking to him and it showed, it wasn't my best interview, but then, anyone who goes into interviewing with some notion of being beloved is a hack, and in the end I got him to talk about stuff. I've done a ton of interviews. I should've asked him about Alex. And of course, Marshall makes a big deal out of the fact that his stuff derives from American music, not British Invasion music, which is actually completely accurate. He's the heir to Goffin and King if anyone is.
Here's my takedown of Tiven's P.F. Sloan record. I hated to do it, because I really liked Phil (as he was called) and was real sorry to alienate him by writing a bad review, which is what happened. Whatever, I don't move in those circles.

Found the Gary Talley pick, from 2007. Did I get that right, that he played on "Soul Deep" and "The Letter"? Gotta check that out.

GARY TALLEY An original member of Memphis pop group The Box Tops, Gary Talley made his mark as guitarist on hits such as “The Letter” and “Soul Deep.” After The Box Tops dissolved in 1970, Talley worked in Memphis and Atlanta studios with the likes of Ace Cannon, Jerry Butler and Billy Joe Royal. Moving to Nashville in 1981, the Bluff City native played on Chips Moman-produced sessions by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Tammy Wynette. He’s also toured with Billy Preston and the re-formed Box Tops, whose superb 1998 reunion record, Tear Off!, demonstrates Talley’s chops as a player and songwriter. A well-known guitar teacher, Talley specializes in techniques designed to aid aspiring songwriters. Tonight’s set, part of Debi Champion’s Writers’ Night, offers an opportunity to see a first-rate musician with a rare breadth of experience, and an underrated songwriter whose credits include Keith Whitley’s 1988 hit “Flying Colors.” 7 p.m. at The Commodore —EDD HURT

xpost Thanks. Good to know Sloan is still around (who was it, Jim Webb, wrote & recorded that song "P.F. Sloan"?) And yeah you gotta tell it like it is.
Frank Kogan went to college w Tiven, but they didn't run in the same circles either. Still, he always enjoyed seeing JT across the foggy-ass campus, strolling in his glam-prog-rock gear (think T was already into Yes, and maybe said so in Creem).
He also produced and played on and wrote for a Wilson Pickett album---Pickett and I are from the same Deep-ass South small town, once too small (his Grandmother said she advised him to leave quickly, but there's a plaque for him between the museum and the police station now, so all good). And Pickett's Best of, the one that starts with his lead on the Falcons' "I Found A Love" (well-covered by Mitch Ryder on Detroit's s/t), was an---experience, very early on, a milestone, gateway---so was kind of leery of hearing him get the Tiven treatment---but what did you think of it??

Actually, P. F. Sloan has passed on. Died last November. Uh, I thought Pickett-Tiven was OK. Not great. Jon's a good guitar player. I did a thing on Sloan's passing last year. His Beethoven album may be the best thing he ever did, too.

Marshall makes a big deal out of the fact that his stuff derives from American music, not British Invasion music, which is actually completely accurate. He's the heir to Goffin and King if anyone is.

Is that the distinction Crenshaw makes, that it's Goffin and King in particular? They strike me as not exactly everybody's definition of Americana, I guess.

No, he didn't say anything about Goffin and King I can remember. But yeah, I definitely discern a debt to Goffin and King in his songwriting.

I'd definitely be curious to know particular songs that show that influence, if you wouldn't mind sharing any! (Don't know Crenshaw's music apart from the hits.)

I can imagine MC is difficult, just not difficult in a way that might appeal to or increase his fan base or even be noticed by them like, um, you know who. I remember him being on Letterman, I think, where he was asked about portraying Buddy Holly in La Bamba, I believe, and he totally didn't want to play along, he dismissively said "I made that movie a year and a half ago."

Found the Gary Talley pick, from 2007. Did I get that right, that he played on "Soul Deep" and "The Letter"? Gotta check that out.

I'm curious where someone would draw lines between Goffin/King and the early Beatles, particularly with regards to some perception of American music vs. non-American music. I tend to believe in the Greil Marcus principle: that the Beatles were "a version of the chair."

Obviously, Goffin-King ended up writing hits for the Animals and Herman's Hermits.

Marshall is not difficult in my view, but then I knew him before I was a working journalist asking him questions that would find presumptuous. It is true that there is a certain reserve that may appear as standoffishness, and I understand that he wouldn't relish being asked about playing Buddy Holly…so mavbe that was a payday he should have turned down.

Tiven's projects with r&b singers always struck me as somewhat gross. Recorded poorly and too much showboating on his part.

Yeah, I got that wrong re "The Letter." Richard Malone played on the recording; Talley joined soon after the record was released. Cogbill played on and produced "Soul Deep," though I think Talley was on it too.

As for Goffin-King, Tim his it on the head, the Beatles were basically a version of the chair that they built. Was there another group that used those dominant seventh chords and thirteenths in rock before the Beatles? Like in the bridge for "What You're Doing"? Or minor sevenths like in "Ticket to Ride"? That was a big part of what listeners perceived as different about the Beatles from the start, as in the bridge to "I Want to Hold Your Hand." A lot of Goffin-Kings will put a major seventh into a basic structure, like "No Easy Way Down," if I remember right. I can't totally speak to what Crenshaw meant, except that his stuff isn't like Chris Bell's--you never get the sense that he's working thru the Creation or the Move so much as he's doing, I don't know, Eddie Cochran, maybe. Or a variation on R&B.
A good example of the harmonic richness that Crenshaw uses in a Goffin-King way is "Passing Through," from Jaggedland, a really nice song. Coulda fit right in to a Gilmore Girls episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--v3UMZqgw0
Another good one is "Monday Morning Rock," which also illustrates the mnemonic power of his guitar licks. Totally structural, not a moment wasted. Warm yet full of potential danger and so forth, which is kind of his universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Tc7ub7XQ0

Random tangents, but Larry Coryell had a great cover of the Jimmy Webb "P.F. Sloan" on his much-reviled vocal album, which is probably the best thing he ever did. I like the 3rd Big Star album a lot, don't really expect to have my life changed by the reissue. My main interest in Big Star is the idea of screwing up great normal songs (which basically comes to dominate 90s indie). I've probably posted in other threads, but Alex's weirdo version of "Take Me Home And Make Me Like It" predicts Royal Trux with surprising accuracy. I didn't notice the Liz Phair connection on that song until recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0GQAWlr3_0

My main interest in Big Star is the idea of screwing up great normal songs (which basically comes to dominate 90s indie)

I used to tell indie rock friends who didn't know Big Star that there was a clear through-line from the Velvets to Big Star to REM to Pavement based entirely around this aesthetic idea

You don't say. Tell me more.

hey I can't say I gave *too* much thought to it