Alex Chilton S&D

there is little to be gleaned from the live in london set aside from a mere curio stance.

search: the big star boot entitle Beale Street Green which features some great "Lost-Era" Alex doing some very rad demos:
"she might look my way"
"windows hotel"
"can't seem to make you mine" (seeds)
"shaking the world"
"all the time"

but then the greatest song ever written:

"tennis bum"... as alex mentions it's like wooly bully, all strat reverb and the goofiest lyrics you've never heard. i am in love with the lost era chilton voice, it's perfect.

classic classic classic.

Just had to point that out.

Of course the third Big Star record is an Alex Chlton solo album and it's one of the greatest LPs ever made, in my opinion, greater even than "Radio City."

So I would say get "19 Years," "Sherbert" and "Destruction" and you'd have it. Alex has been treading the same water for years now, though--I've seen him be brilliant live and I've seen him just go thru the motions. Some experimental genie seems to ruin many of his efforts, which I guess is kind of a good thing, since how many performers even try anything new, ever? As a commentator on pop-music history, he's been intermittently great--there's something very second-hand about his passion, which doesn't mean I disregard what's real about his passion. Very strange guy, but I rate him very high as a guitarist, despite the fact that he's among the most mannered of all rock guitarists.

"1970" is decent, I always liked "Just to See You" and "All I Really Want is Money," both of which circulated for yrs on tapes...I never liked "Free Again" at all. What they do to "Sugar Sugar" is nice. It's good juvenalia, I guess.

The Big Star reunion CD is all right--they left off the best thing about that show in Missouri, though: AC leading his backup band thru the very demanding changes of Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl" as an encore.

Will, it is "Desafinado."

skin as soft as buttermilk

guys which of his solo albums/compilations are worth checking out? i'm going through a big star phase and i'd like to explore chilton solo too. i know it's depressing stuff, i'm down for that

solo chilton isn't that depressing really -- it's fun! definitely start with like flies on sherbert

omg that french tv clip

The album called 1970 rocks balls and isn't depressing at all; the cover of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" tops the Stones' original (acc. to me)

Search: the 1987 CD version of High Priest on Big Time, which includes the Feudalist Tarts EP and the "No Sex"/"Underclass" single.

...but is apparently rare as hell, because I can't find any copies for sale anywhere.

Wow, this edition is apparently really rare. I wonder what I could get for it.

yeah, 1970 is good, he's trying out different things like country rock, funk, almost bubblegum-y ballads

fuck the "Jumpin' Jack Flash" on 1970 is tight. The drum sound in particular is amazing, as you'd expect from a Terry Manning production, as is the bass. And Chilton's lead guitar mines the song's implicit funk, brings it forth. The vocal is good and hoarse too but the rhythm section sells this one.

kinda cool
Ray Davies , whose new album See My Friends contains special contributions from artists like Billy Corgan and Bruce Springsteen, recently talked about working with Alex Chilton. The Big Star icon died earlier this year, but he recorded “Till the End of the Day” with Ray Davies before he became sick.

Speaking to ClashMusic, Ray Davies elaborates on the collaboration: “Way back in 2004 I was in New Orleans, recovering from an injury, and I was befriended by a neighbor called Alex Chilton. Alex had been in a band called Big Star, and had sung on a record called ‘The Letter’ by The Box Tops. We didn’t talk about music much, but he did say to me before I came back to England, ‘You know, I’ve recorded one of your songs, ‘Till the End of the Day’, with Big Star, and I’d love to do another song with you. And he asked me to write some songs for him – I felt really flattered, because by then I had found out about his history. A very unassuming guy.”

Then, in 2009, Chilton and Davies did indeed get together to record. Davies recalls: “In 2009, on July 4th, Independence Day, he came up to Konk Studios. He was a real character – he was wearing a New Orleans beret, he had a cigarette holder, he was a chain smoker, and I think a recovering drinker – and he said, ‘Let’s do it!’ I said, ‘What would you like to do?’ He said, ‘Till the End of the Day’ and ‘Set Me Free.’ So I just had an acoustic guitar and a rhythm box, because I hadn’t organized anything. I played guitar and Alex sang.”

http://www.gibson.com/Files/aaFeaturesImages2010/ray-davies_see-my-friends.jpg
artists listed on the cover of this tribute makes it look fucking horrible

http://www.empsfm.org/education/index.asp?categoryID=26&ccID=127&xPopConfBioID=1436&year=2011

Wish I could make it to Los Angeles and hear this Holly George-Warren presentation on Alex Chilton at the February 2010 EMP Pop conference

She's writing a bio of him that is scheduled for a 2012 release.

ooh that does look good. interesting that there's a bio in the works. would read.

thought i'd bumped one of the AC threads to say this a while back but either way, damn, cliches still sounds exquisite to me

I picked up Cliches in a used cd shop last year and still haven't gotten around to it. This week!

would be really interested to hear from anyone else who likes/hates it etc, i'd never heard anything about it before hearing it. it's a really good showcase for his guitar playing, &c, but it's also just such a satisfying fit for him, knowing how into the standards he was, & how much working in that sorta context was what he was drawn to, eg playing with pick-up groups etc.

It makes me feel great listening to it, his guitar is so enveloping.

Also note the Box Tops reunion album is surprisingly alright, with a few of the tracks absolutely essential for AC fans.

Cliches is really great, I wish there were five more Chilton albums like it. OTM about his guitar, he was such a fun player.
haven't heard the box tops reunion album! which songs are the good ones?

"Flying Saucers Rock'n'Roll", "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Little Latin Lupe Lu" are my faves. All covers, I believe, but then few can choose covers and make them their own like Alex.

cool, i'll check it out.
listening to cliches right now, you can really tell how much chilton loved these songs. sometimes his covers sound kinda jaded (guess i'm thinking of Set/Loose Shoes), but this one just overflows with warmth/affection. his friendliest record?

Set/Loose Shoes

No, that's the one irredeemable album he ever released, as far as I'm concerned. Beyond tossed off, really embarrassing when you think about how much raw talent he's got.

i like some of the stuff on Set, but it definitely just keeps going downhill as the album progresses. it's too bad, because the material itself is great, and I can imagine alex doing far better versions of those songs.

Picked up that new 1970 sessions disc over lunch, excited to dig in.

I have an earlier reissue, pfork review raised some things that struck me as odd - like complaining about a "rave-up" at the end of "Every Day As We Grow Closer"...? that must have been tacked on, I'm guessing? cuz there's no such rave-up on my copy

in general it's like half a great album imho

Well, even half a great album means more good Chilton in my life.

I remember coming across a 45" of Teenage Fanclub covering "Free Again" in the early 90s and being really frustrated that I couldn't find the original. just took 20 years lol.

free again, although a diff version, was available on an alex chilton comp that came out in the 90s. it's from roughly the same era as the 1970 version i think

19 years: a collection it was called. came out in 1991

hm yeah, can anyone report back as to what the differences between this and the earlier 1970 album are? if you've got that, do you need the new one?

From what I can tell from the tracklists alone, subtract "Funk National" from 1970 and add the following new tracks:

13. All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain
14. I Want You To Have My Babies
15. Another Place, Another Time And You
16. Every Day As We Grow Closer (Original Mono Mix)
17. The EMI Song (Smile For Me) (Original Mono Mix)
18. Free Again (Original Mono Mix)
19. Come On Honey (Original Mono Mix)
20. All I Really Want Is Money (Original Mono Mix)
21. I Wish I Could Meet Elvis (Original Mono Mix)
22. The Happy Song (Original Mono Mix)

"Funky National"

oh cool that Another Place, Another Time And You is being put out officially -- it's on a big star bootleg, always wondered why it wasn't on the recent box set. guess it was more of a chilton solo thing. an instrumental, verrrrry pretty.

listened to Free Again this morning -- really a nice collection of songs. Think I prefer the 1970 sequencing, but that might be because I'm more used to it. shocking that these tracks remained unreleased for so long -- to my ears there are at least three or four hit songs. amazing that some record exec didn't hear them and want to put 'em out. no idea if they were shopped around extensively or what. obviously chilton was trying out a wide range of styles, but i can imagine a lot of these becoming radio staples in the early 70s, even more so than his big star tunes.

which songs are you talking about?

the hits? Every Day As We Grow Closer, The EMI Song (Smile For Me), Free Again ...

http://hasitleaked.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/artworks-000054834936-lp94sw-t500x500.jpg

On the night of February 13, 1997 Alex Chilton and his band were getting ready to play their second set of the night at the Knitting Factory in New York City when the lights went out. What happened was this album, a spontaneous off the cuff performance. This is Alex thinking on his feet, in the moment, bouncing songs and ideas off the folks that stuck around for a real one-of-a-kind exchange. This is as close and personal as it gets. Much of the material will be new to even hard core fans, there's Johnny Cash to the Beach Boys.--Amazon Release: Oct.8

1. Last Bouquet 2:44
2. Step Right This Way 2:50
3. Let's Get Lost 2:20
4. D-I-V-O-R-C-E 1:40
5. Raining In My Heart 3:14
6. Lovesick Blues 2:33
7. Girl From Ipanema 3:15
8. My Baby Just Cares For Me 3:49
9. Motel Blues 3:08
10. Someone To Watch Over Me 1:35
11. Footprints In The Snow 2:49
12. A Case Of You 2:02
13. Wouldn't It Be Nice 2:57
14. Surfer Girl 1:59
15. Solar System 2:50
16. I Walk The Line 2:05
17. If I Had A Hammer 2:56
18. You Can Beat Your Heart On Me 2:51

looove his take on my baby just cares for me. let's get lost too.

Have you heard this whole set? How's the rest?

Pretty sure this set surfaced on Dime A Dozen a while back. Loose & fun pretty much covers it. Will undoubtedly buy the official version, but must dig the CDr out & see if the missed anything off.

whole thing is great, and yeah, the tape has floated around for a while -- i think pretty much everything is there on this official release (they may have snipped some dead air). totally a fun listen, though it kinda seems like a weird thing to release. would chilton have approved it had he been alive?

There has been quite a bit of Big Star-related activity since his death which I'm unsure he would have been that keen on

yeah... then again, he might've just thought it was funny that he was getting paid for an audience tape made in 1997.

My understanding is it is released as a deliberate counterpoint to the Big Star stuff, trying to show more of what Chilton as a solo performer could be like. The Lovesick Blues version is particularly great.

I'll check it out, thanks yall. Gonna try posting the cover again (AC doing his best Ray Davies)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51n8asTjzZL.jpg

lol at Ray Davies

Just put this on. Not familiar with "Last Bouquet" but from the sound of it I'd guess it was a Kitty Wells number.

Just posted this on the Tav Falco thread, never seen Alex's hair so short:

talv falco & his panther burns, killer awesome fuckin choice or what

Noticed in the EMP participants bios that her book is due next month:

Holly George-Warren is the author of the forthcoming biography of Alex Chilton, A Man Called Destruction (Viking, April 2014)

hope it's good!

Yall all know about Tyler's AC/Big Star re-posts, rat? On http://www.doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com

Here's a bit of HGW's bio:
http://www.spin.com/articles/read-an-excerpt-from-alex-chilton-biography-a-man-called-destruction/

Steve Danzinger's pretty frustrated by the bio in this weekend's WSJ (overall, he conveys the appeal and struggles of Big Star pretty well):

Somewhere in "A Man Called Destruction" is a story about the mysteries of creativity, collaboration and luck, the agonizing loss of wasted potential, the multitude of factors that must align for artistic success. But potential insights are obstructed by minutiae and redundancies, investigations supplanted by undeveloped allusions about Chilton's resentments. The missed opportunity is substantial; even the trifles portray early 1970s Memphis as a singular world of musically precocious, emotionally fragile man-children struggling to attain some state of grace. Ms. George-Warren gives a glimpse of that lost world, but it remains largely unexplored.

So does Chilton. By 25, he was barely more than impish grin, inclined more to nullity than destruction. He urinated off one stage, was fellated on another. He sat on curbs watching Catholic-school girls go by, prospecting for dates. He smoked pot and drifted through his days like a sixth-year undergrad who doesn't want to leave the dorms. He laughed his way through shambling performances, as if he couldn't believe his acolytes were taking him seriously. These post-Big Star years reek of disdain, not least toward the fans who laughed awkwardly along with him, as if to convince themselves there was actually a joke to witness, rather than the remnants of a great talent.

It's a petty, dismal litany, seemingly endless in Ms. George-Warren's lethargic telling. But in life, it was mercifully brief, and Chilton's life would end positively, if more in resignation than redemption. At 31, he quit drinking, moved to New Orleans and lived contentedly, working at jobs like tree trimmer and "human jukebox," playing requests in a tourist bar. Big Star reissues inspired an international cult ("influenced R.E.M." became the general Big Star legitimizer, and the Replacements' 1987 tribute "Alex Chilton" made him famous for being loved by the Replacements). There would be new records, like Feudalist Tarts from 1985, a gritty return to form with covers of songs by Isaac Hayes, Slim Harpo and Willie Tee, residuals and reunions and the comparative triumph of replacing self-mockery with nonchalance.

Chilton died in 2010 of a heart attack, aged 59. To the end, he claimed not to understand the fuss about Big Star. After "A Man Called Destruction," readers might not, either... Ooh! But the anecdotal material seems like it might be interesting, at least judging by his glosses.

This is short but sweet: http://m.nashvillescene.com/nashvillecream/archives/2010/03/19/alex-chilton-as-remembered-by-john-bucky-wilkin

this thing kind of came out of nowhere but it is great!
http://www.othermusic.com/collections/frontpage/products/alex-chilton-ocean-club-77
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0192/7084/products/CED400CD_CU_grande.jpg?v=1433871252

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-eVsH49_2U
video footage by william eggleston

Heard "O My Soul" from Ocean Club this morning on WFMU, sounded great.

Hoooooly shit nice find drash!

oh wow check that out!

Ocean Club and several other Chilton thingies are on Spotify, but just noticed that they only have Disc 1 of the Flies On Sherbet/Feudalist Tarts/No Sex twofer on the Last Call label. This list incl. the FT/NS tracks, which add up to one of his best EPs evah (still got the vinyl):

http://www.discogs.com/Alex-Chilton-Like-Flies-On-Sherbert-Feudalist-Tarts-No-Sex/release/4507641

SEARCH his beach boys love you covers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evuWI44bRmU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK8fOnD2yos

new girl in school is aces too (jan & dean, but brian wilson co-wrote)

he does honkin down the highway somewhere too...

here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYNaUkTlipM

sick! thanks!

these are good, he should've covered the whole album...

omg

feel like there's some alternate universe where alex stayed out in california and actually ended up joining the beach boys in the early 70s... i think he was supposed to make a post-boxtops solo LP for Brother Records at some point.

and an alternate alternate where BBs incl. AC and Glenn Campbell, who wisely declined to get involved in all their drama, over on our side of the timelines.

lol

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

unsurprisingly much worse than the version on Lei'd in Hawai'i

maybe for fans only i can never tell but really really enjoying ocean club 77

yeah i think it's great -- maybe the best set from this period? speaking of which, a lot of good info on chilton's nyc years in the numero group Ork Records set that came out a few weeks ago.

Indeedio---currently listening to Ork box on the free version of a certain streaming service: Mr. C. (and Prix trax which may or may not incl. him) sounding mighty fine so far.

Just noticed it a couple days ago but it looks like Raven records have put out the three Box Top albums on a 2 CD set earlier this year.

There's actually four Box Tops LPs, which are indeed in that Raven set alongside some but not all of their stray Chilton-era* singles.

*I have a Chilton-less Box Tops single from '71-2 on Stax in my 45 collects!

I thought that might be the first time those Lps were brought out on CD. I know for a long time the Box Tops only had a greatest hits package available.

Sundazed had them out on CD with bonus tracks (stray singles, mono 45 mixes, unreleased stuff) back in 2000, but they've been OOP for awhile.

interesting little chilton/dickinson deal -- https://summerstepsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/brown-sugar-call-me-7 -- "possibly under the influence of hog tranquilizers"!

Summersteps is proud to announce this special limited edition single featuring two vintage sides from Amy Gassner. Amy is best known as the bassist for Memphis’ first all-girl punk band The KLiTZ.

The A-Side features a very relaxed reading of The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” recorded in the haze of 1979 and possibly under the influence of hog tranquilizers. Personnel includes legendary producer Jim Dickinson (Big Star, Replacements, etc) on bass along with her fellow KLiTZ providing backup. While the flip side, features a groovy rendition of Tony Hatch’s “Call Me.” Committed to tape a few years later in ‘82 at Easley Studios with the accompaniment of both Doug and Ron Easley along with legendary sometime Panther Burn and Alex Chilton drummer, Ross Johnson.

Highly recommended for those who dig the artfully damaged sounds of Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbert, Tav Falco's Panther Burns and of course, The KLiTZ.

The Grifters should be mentioned as well, I think?

did anyone get that live in '77 album that came out a year or two ago??

the ocean club one? i have it -- it's a very good time. similar to the bootlegs that have floated around from that period but (slightly) better sound, some rare covers.

Feeling kind of sad about how many of the people in the Chilton story, some of whom I got to meet, like Jim Dickinson, and write about (I did a Dickinson piece in 2007 for which I got to talk to him), are gone: Alex, Andy Hummel, John Hampton, Lee Baker, Tommy Hoehn, Dickinson, Sid Selvidge (got to see him play once in Nashville, where he shared a bill with folk-jazz singer Caroline Peyton), Richard Rosebrough, John Fry. And Chris Bell. And Chips Moman, who passed this year, and with whom I got one of the last 2 interviews he gave, far as I can determine. I guess I feel lucky to have known or interviewed or met some of these folks--I also got to interview Alex back in 1981 and got an interview that I think is one of the better ones he gave, and he treated me and my friends really nice and wasn't remotely difficult that day. A few months later in Nashville, I caught a Panther Burns set and went back to the dressing room between sets and sat at Alex' feet like a little puppy dog; he was also nice to me then.
I wrote this back when he died, and I wish I could have written more about him; it's kind of hard to read it now because it was so long ago, and though I think I did a good job of interviewing him, what I know now. what I knew in 2010, versus what I thought I knew then...damn. I don't know if I ever posted this anywhere here, see what you think. And here's my Jim Dickinson piece, which covers some Alex stuff pretty well (I would've made it a bit more down-to-the-bone, I think, but it was done for No Depression and they had their way of doing stuff.

And, here's my 2012 Chips Moman interview. Chips was like Alex--he didn't give a lot away, unless he wanted to: http://www.nashvillescene.com/music/article/13044490/chips-moman-the-cream-interview.

Good stuff, thanks. Wonder if there's any more Chilton-Dickinson out there. Moman worked with the Box Tops *after* Dan Penn? Thought Penn kept his hand in for the duration. How were their records different with Moman?

Moman just did the last album...the main difference was he let the actual band appear on stuff alongside the session guys. Aside from a jammy cover of "Rock Me Baby" at the end, it doesn't really come off that different from the earlier stuff.

Right, Chips just did the "Soul Deep"-era Box Tops, and maybe there was just a bit less schlock on that single than the previous, not that the schlock wasn't beautiful on Penn's "Neon Rainbow" and "I Met Her in Church" and the great "Fields of Clover," perhaps the toughest track the Box Tops ever did. I always heard that Chips admired Chilton and wanted to work with him again. Definitely would've been interesting, but Chilton always looked down his nose at Chips and Penn for being out of touch with contemporary music. Dan Penn told me that Alex showed up after a show in New Orleans and carried Dan's guitar for him, a sign of respect I guess, and Penn never thought much of Alex' songwriting.
I think there are some tracks that Dickinson cut with folks like wrestler Jerry Lawler that are out there somewhere. They apparently aren't on the same tracks, but Dickinson and Chilton had something to do with this interesting single by a former member of Memphis punk band the Kltiz.

new thing coming out -- not sure if these have ever showed up on bootlegs?

Just announced for release by Munster Records on June 16: an LP of previously unreleased rehearsals and alternate takes from Alex Chilton's 1975 recording sessions for the Singer Not The Song EP and Bach's Bottom album, with notes by Alex Chilton, written in 1992, and 2017 notes by original producer Jon Tiven.

Take Me Home And Make Me Like It is a raw document of one of the pivotal moments in Alex Chilton's career, telling the story of a troubled recording process that nevertheless produced intensely unique music. From Jon Tiven's liner notes: "He wanted to repudiate his Big Star work and make a sinister record that threatened people. . . . so I'm happy to present these tracks with no apologies."

More info here:
http://munster-records.com/en/label/munster/product/take-me-home-and-make-me-like-it

Alex Chilton Take Me Home And Make Me Like It

Munster
Alex Chilton
Take Me Home And Make Me Like It

1
Take Me Home
2
Every Time I Close My Eyes (Alt version)
3
All Of The Time (Alt version)
4
I'm So Tired (Full version)
5
Free Again (Alt version)
6
Jesus Christ (Take 1)
7
Jesus Christ (Take 2)
8
Singer Not The Song (Alt version)
9
Summertime Blues (Full version)
10
Take Me Home (Rehearsal)
11
Free Again (Rehearsal)
12
Every Time I Close My Eyes (A capella)

feels a little barrel-scraping-y, but what the hell, i'll check it out.
i finally got that chilton-vega-vaughn live record and it is amazing.

I hope they include a tacky badge.

The weirdo version of Take Me Home is m6 favorite song of his, so I'm mildly intrigued.

Before scraping the barrel, check out Prix

i listened to a promo of this, it's great



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 1, 2017

ALEX CHILTON’S 1995 RETURN TO ROCK,
A MAN CALLED DESTRUCTION,
REISSUED AND EXPANDED WITH
SEVEN BONUS TRACKS ON OMNIVORE, AUGUST 25th

Critically acclaimed album to be released on two-LP vinyl for the first time,
and features new liner notes from Bob Mehr.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — As lead singer of The Box Tops and co-founder of Big Star, Alex Chilton already had a place in rock history. But he was never one to rest on his laurels. An enormous music fan himself, he consistently reinvented his own sound throughout his career, until his death in 2010.

Chilton returned to Memphis’ legendary Ardent Studios and a reconstituted Ardent label to record Destruction, a classic mix of originals and covers, this time with a full-horn section. Featuring an eclectic mixture of garage rock, jazz and R&B, A Man Called Destruction, released in 1995, was well received by fans and critics, and even landed him a spot on Late Night With Conan O’Brien performing the album’s “Lies.”

The Orlando Sentinel observed: “Plenty of bands attempt, however feebly, to reproduce Big Star's melancholic power-pop. But nobody else would dare try to approximate the brilliant, offhand weirdness and subtle irony of Chilton's later solo work. Teenage Fan Club might be able to imitate Big Star's guitar sound on ‘September Gurls,’ but they couldn't transmogrify 'Volare’ the way Chilton did on 1987's High Priest. Destruction is very much in the tradition of High Priest — a peculiar mélange of deliriously cheesy pop.” 

Destruction will re-appear via Omnivore Recordings on August 25, 2017, complete with seven previously unissued tracks from the original sessions and new liner notes from journalist and author Bob Mehr (Trouble Boys: The True Story Of The Replacements).

To make this reintroduction even more special, the title is making its vinyl debut. The first pressing will be a translucent blue double album, which includes all of the bonus tracks, a download card, and Mehr’s essay in the gatefold sleeve.

With the renewed interest and appreciation for his work in Big Star, it is the perfect time for Chilton’s solo work to get the same due. It is time for a reintroduction of A Man Called Destruction.

Track Listing:
1. Sick And Tired
2. Devil Girl
3. Lies
4. It’s Your Funeral
5. What’s Your Sign Girl
6. Il Ribelle
7. You Don’t Have To Go
8. Boplexity
9. New Girl In School

10. You’re Lookin’ Good
11. Don’t Know Anymore
12. Don’t Stop

Previously Unissued Bonus Tracks:
13. Devil Girl (Double-Track Vocal)
14. Don’t Know Anymore (Rough Mix)
15. Give It To Me Baby (Take 3)
16. You’re My Favorite
17. (I Don’t Know Why) But I Do
18. Please Pass Me My Walkin’ Shoes
19. Why Should I Care/It’s Your Funeral
# # #

Will also be available on CD and download.

Still haven't checked that, but now I'm listening to another Chilton-related Omnivore expansion, Carmaig De Forest's I Shall Be Re-Released, which starts with I Shall Be Released, produced and played on by Mr. A.C., some of whose peers still find it startling: Will Rigby, who played with De Forest at CBGB, is quoted in the booklet to the effect that it's a whole other side--"the punkiest"---to Chilton's picking and undocumented anywhere else; lstening again, early adopter Scott McCaughey now raves, "Chilton's production and playing is almost shockingly prescient and wholly brilliant---spiky and wild, yet way more disciplined than he allowed himself to be on his own records."
Well, I hope that's not entirely true of the Chilton recs I haven't heard yet (and we've mentioned several on here that are tight enough), but this certainly works as punky 80s folk-rock: comparisons were and are made to to early Modern Lovers and especially Violent Femmes---Gordan Gano also played that CBGB show w De Forest, who opened for the VFs several times, him and his solitary ukelele. Which is another thing that reminds of Loudon Wainwright III, with his spare, limber, plugged-in LPs and exuberant one-man shows, starting a decade earlier (back when Chilton was covering Wainwright's "Motel Blues" at Big Star gigd).
Also like early Wainwright (and young Jawnwathon Richman, though he's a heavier vocal presence than these other guys), De F.'s got a lot of compressed lyrics, confrontational dream-scenes from complicated relationships (comebacks he wishes he'd thought of at the time and/or will have the nerve for next round: exciting fantasies!), flying by like boomerangs. Plus some still-entertaining topical work-outs, like "Hey Judas" and "Crack's No Worse Than The Fascist Threat."
It's a lot to take in, but right away I hear why and how Chilton responded so well.

It's no masterpiece, but pretty refreshing so far, putting s sparky spin on (not too-)familiar elements.

From Alex Chilton RIP 2010----still gotta check this too!

Listened to Like Flies on Sherbert while stoned and it completely came alive to me. It made me realise he's a great story teller. He shapes the narrative with weird effects and volume inequalities, all the while acting out a scenario with his voice. The way everything is structured, and especially his guitar work, heightens the story.
It also rocks in a brutally southern, soulful way. Live in London is spectacular too. The version of Kanga Roo on that is massive.
I've Had it - who's singing this? It totally sounds like John Cale, but he's not credited right?

Bach's Bottom - I can't beleive I haven't heard this before. As a massive Big Star fan, this is the missing link between Big Star (particularly Third) and Like Flies on Sherbert. It's beautiful, and the throaway outtakes are fascinating.

― glumdalclitch, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 14:37 (yesterday) Permalink

Live in London is awesome. He has got an incredible presence. I saw him in Munich in the late 80s and he rocked hard.

― Ich bin kein Berliner (alex in mainhattan), Wednesday, 8 November 2017 22:01 (yesterday) Permalink

I've Had it - who's singing this?

Jim Dickinson, I think?

― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Wednesday, 8 November 2017 22:54

Robert Gordon, who wrote the thread-relevant It Came From Memphis/ put together a listening companion of the same name, has now coughed up the book x album yclept Memphis Rent Party: Chilton shows up on a couple tracks, Jim Dickinson sings "I Want To Be A Hippie," (oh yeah and some guy named Jerry Lee Lewis crashes the party)---tasty take here: https://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/freaky-roots-memphis-rent-party-reveals-hidden-charms/Content?oid=11838795

Saw that. Curious

Bless this guy; but he had some of the worst album titles of any artist —

Like Flies on Sherbert
Bach's Bottom
High Priest
Clichés
A Man Called Destruction
Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy

I like the title Like Flies on Sherbert

Am guessing Gordon's latest Memphis book (and companion record) are worth investigating too

Pretty sure he had nothing to do with the release, and naming, of "Bach's Bottom".

"High Priest" is apropos, as is "A Man Called Destruction". "Cliches" is what it says on the tin. The rest I'm with you.

Could Bach's Bottom be in part a ref to the olde association of bock beer with bottom of the barrel and/or stored in cellar? Apparently it is *not* from the bottom of the barrel/fermenter as I was told many years ago, around the time this platter was released. Was also told that "bock" means "billy goat" in German, dunno. But all associations that come to mind (incl. of course rude whimsical gotta-call-it-something ref to Classical Composer) seems ACpropriate.

also: "seem"

Surely a play on Box Tops, no? You mean in addition to that?

i've come around to the idea that the "dusted in memphis" bootleg really is chilton's best solo record. i'm in awe of his capacity for self-sabotage.

x-post
I didn't catch that... terrible pun! I guess intentionally so.

I didn't catch it either, thanks! All the best puns are terrible.

It’s a thin line

Came to say that the book called A Man Called Destruction is useful, but a book in which the actual man called Destruction features, Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolfby James Segrest and Mark Hoffman, is excellent.

I recently talked to Danny Graflund. He was Alex' bodyguard and was in the studio when the Tiven stuff was going down. He's the guy who says at the end of the Bach's BottomLP, "If you was Mott the Hoople, I'd go out there and pee all over you, but who gives a shit." Danny told me he didn't piss on the board, he pissed in the corner. I've also been in touch with a guy named David Leonard, who's putting together a Chilton documentary, and I sent him a cassette of the interview I and Mike Fink and David Duncan did with Alex in 1981. Which Holly George-Warren cites in her book, not realizing it was me, the last interview he did for a while until he resurfaced a few years later out of New Orleans. I looked thru the new Robert Gordon book. Robert says Alex liked him until Robert told Alex his astrological sign. The abacus clicked inside Alex' head, the calculations were completed, and Alex never treated Robert the same way again. He told Dickinson this, that Alex made him very uncomfortable. Dickinson said, don't worry, he makes everyone feel that way. Tiven is still angry about Alex supposedly messing up those 1975 sessions, to this day. I talked to Jon about it the other day. We hung out at a Donnie Fritts show here this week. From "Nightime" and "O Dana," sublime poetic music, to...seven thousand minutes of "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It," a song that exists in its perfect form only once, on the CBGB live thing found on One Day in New York.

Booked Alex for a show in 87. We were hanging out and a couple women friends joined us. Their conversation seem to put him off, and at one point he asked them when they were born (1966). He coolly told them that that was the year of the fire horse in Chinese astrology and that women born that year would bring destruction to all in their lives.

What did they say to that?

And did he grace them with the famous Chilton grimace?

They had been talking while he rolled one. Left them a little pretty stunned. They didn't stay much longer, needless to say. Definitely a wry grin as he stuck the knife in. Never meet your idols.

During the set, he was in classic LX hassling the sound guy mode, asking repeatedly for more high end. I was back at the mixing desk and our guy had things pretty much pegged. Fortunately, without a change, he found the sound improved and played on.

A friend with a small label around the time joked about putting out an EP of just Chilton complaining about sound.

Yeah, once we some him back in the day at Tramps on 21st Street after he had played at Maxwell’s a day or two earlier. He had actually been pleased with the audio at the Maxwell’s show so he hired that sound guy to work the Tramps show as well, which of course ended up being plagued with all sorts of problems.

A muso buddy of mine once mentioned to another friend that his band was going to open for Jeff Beck, and she made him agree to introduce them---he warned her of what a dick Beck could be, cited examples, but she was ready to take her chances, Yadda yadda, he and she joined Beck and a few others at an afterhours spot, all in a secluded corner booth, the stah treatment. She chose a lull in the conversation just briefly to say hi, I'm SoandSo, been into your music since the Sixties. He totally ignored her for the rest of the evening, until finally asking her to go get him a pack of cigarettes. She told him what a corny cliche rockstar asshole he was being---"like a rabid chihuahua," muso buddy told me. Beck looked shocked---and stunned---the road manager 'bout to died laughing.

follow-up to the take on xpost Carmaig De Forest, Chilton-produced (press release for this one is also upthread):

Chilton also juices the familiars on his own expanded Omnivore, A Man Called Destruction---tempted to say "of course," because the unexpected reliability of this set, incl. alt. takes and prev. unissued titles, breeds a little bit of complacency in the robust litter, alongside interest and excitement---I was already starting to think, re the chunky originals ending the original album, that things were getting a little generic, though its prob the more agreeable, reasonable side of the subgenre which solo entertainer AC staked a claim to: that droll, rolling, r&r&b&b Memphis-NOLA thing, with a tad of country (bonus ["I Don't Know Why] But I Do" reverie not at all bothered by electric horse thermometer bass and equally business-like drums) and Southern 50s-mid-60s AM radio fodder (Brian Wilson contribution to Jan and Dean "New Girl In School," and the diligently, consistently worked-out, silly come-on "What's Your Sign, Girl?", falsetto now reformed to an agreeable twang), all work at least OK, in there with Italian rockabilly and a rockin' dirge and jitterbug jazzabilly and slow dunk unstoppable Jimmy Reed shuffles and heavy power pop---Chilton's sharp-edged, witty, sometimes slightly migrainey, dust devil guitar leads the session, with his voice adding even more genial clarity and definition to the "dry," sufficiently vivid sonics---but like I said was already getting a bit complacently discontented re "generic"/ his kind of subgeneric (which also reminded me of the way NRBQ pulls these ingredients together when they're on it, not to mention some thoughts of Beatles) even before I got to the part of Bob Merlis's notes in which he goes from very detailed and relevant clarity of backstory to opining that Chilton's chunky originals herein are of the rootsy AC vein that "had emerged as his greatest form of self-expression---as opposed to the pristine pop of Big Star, which some fans were still hoping he would produce." It was not pristine, never generic, basically reliably-to-easily-reproducible power pop---well, occasionally too sealed-over in the self-regard, as in words to "Ballad of El Goodo,"---too "pristine" in that sense---but never without some sonic distinction----and here the AC lyrics that are least wet-leafy, most likely to spin the spark and vice-versa, are the ones that have a glint of Big Star:"You're Lookin' Good"'s "I dig your mind/I dig your clothes," and "I'm ravin' I'm your slave/You're my/French fries, " from "You're My Favorite." And yes I'm quibblin' I'm dribblin' all sorts of generous quality, for these are almost all as good as french and even freedom fries, if not quite as in-the-spirit-of- Big Star free-fryin' as I'd like. (Speaking of keeping thinking, was also flagging *several* tracks, all along, as additions to midsize folder of BS faves x solo titbits, from Feudalist Tarts etc.)
"In-the-spirit of Big Star" really means also in the spirit and tradition of pushing the older elements a little further, a little more seemingly off-handed for lagniappe.

Oh yeah, and speaking of AM radio fodder, want to get into Box Tops albums for the first time---where should I start? Think Spotify's got quite a few, last time I looked.

I pretty much like all of them tbh.

The Best of the Box Tops: Soul Deep is the best comp, Arista '96. But all of their albums are good and worth hearing, and the Arista comp leaves off stuff like "Weeping Analeah" and "Break My Mind." I always kind of liked Man Called Destruction. "What's Your Sign" is great and I think "Don't Stop" is actually not unlike his "power pop" "Big Star" stuff, the closest he came to a thought-out, calibrated power pop song on any of his solo albums. I think there are moments when the niteclub vibe of genial ultra-hip reconstruction of old-tyme man-woman modes, as on Chris Kenner's "Sick and Tired," clashes with the knowingness of Alex here (he's seen more violent things than just kickin' her ass outside, so as usual there's a certain slight affectlessness going on in the singing--the derisive croon. But the production really works, the gamboling organ and the horns, and it's easily his most listenable solo album and maybe his best after Sherbert (which remains sui generis, though it's more listenable now than it was 40 years ago because it's been totally normalized, see Low Cut Connie, several million others at this point).

Thanks for the tip, will check it. Yeah, I've always wished he re-deployed the raspy, unpretentious Box Tops footsoldier voice for some albums or tracks, though if he had, might have just seemed like another
nudge-nudge Henry the Hipster metabit in solo career context. Nevertheless, I enjoy most of this vivacious album.

And he's got me using a juicy word there I don't never use, so thank you friend.

Thanks, edd. Almost forgot about “Weeping Analeah.”

Dow, the one of the few moments Chilton references his old Box Tops voice is at the end of the studio "Thank You John." "It's gonna be all right," and his voice dips down into the Dan Penn register for just a second. The singer who did "Neon Rainbow" morphaed into the one who did "O, Dana," which are actually somewhat similar, he goes for it just a bit more than he usually did. Man Called Destrcution is vivacious, a bowl of lime sorbet brought to you by a server in an ultra-cool Backstage in Show Bizness Lounge where Chilton is playing to the reeeal insiders. Some of it's kinda pro forma a bit actually, you get the persistent sense he is evading something here re "New Girl in School" or the Jimmy Reed number, but then the weird glassy surface of his music can also enable you to hear these songs as if they were just being worked out. Which is a fancy way of saying you nevah quite know, dahling, where you stand with old Alex. Mark Harrison, of the glam-power poppers Snakehips, told me an Alex Chilton story. Mark was hanging out with Alex in New Orleans the night before Alex was supposed to go to Missouri for the Big Star reunion show that got recorded as Columbia. He got them all passes to see his regular gig at the Howlin' Wolf that night. Mark said he never even mentioned the Missouri show, they hung out, talked baseball and records. A Man Called Casual.

Destruction, that is. (and re Box Tops, note the wide range of nascent Middle California and South Tennessee songwriting represented thruout--Fritts, Newbury, and then the great Wayne Carson).

xp yep but come to think of it, the kind of rolling Memphis and especially New Orleans chestnuts he favored could sound kinda droll and detached to start with, like barroom gossips taking us on a tour of funky situations. And/or just a notion that worked out, like "Workin' In A Coal Mine," with its composer, Allan Toussaint, readily pointing out there aren't coal mines anywhere near NO or in all of Louisiana, he was pretty sure.

Def. could have lived without "New Girl In School," esp. compared to some of the bonus tracks left off the original (which was a CD, so wouldn't think he had to keep the whole thing to LP length, unless he was being strictly traditional).

Eventually occurred to me that use of the dishy, convivial pop filter in Memphis and NOLA could be a way of countering outbursts of chaos etc.

Forthwith on Omnivore:

Peter Holsapple vs. Alex Chilton
The Death Of Rock
Release date: October 12, 2018

Newly discovered recordings of early solo Peter Holsapple and Like Flies On Sherbert–era Alex Chilton.

“I caught Alex exiting a world of sweet pop that I was only just trying to enter, and the door hit me on the way in, I guess”
—Peter Holsapple

It’s 1978 at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, TN. Peter Holsapple had rolled into town chasing the essence of Big Star. He hooked up with musician/engineer/friend-of-Big-Star, Richard Rosebrough after approaching, and being turned down by, Chris Bell who Holsapple had hoped might be interested in producing him. Together Richard and Peter started laying down tracks during the off hours at the studio.

Chilton meanwhile, was knee deep in the making of Like Flies On Sherbert, also being tracked at Phillips. He told Peter, “I heard some of that stuff you’re working on with Richard… and it really sucks.” Alex promised to come by and show Peter “how it’s done.”

The results? Alex’s tracks definitely line up with the chaos found on Flies, while several of Peter’s songs found homes on The dB’s albums (“Bad Reputation” and “We Were Happy There”) and on an album by The Troggs (“The Death Of Rock” retooled as “I’m In Control”), so not a loss at all. What we have in these newly discovered tapes, is a fascinating pivot point with both artists moving past each other headed in distinctly different directions. Chilton moved toward punk/psychobilly as he began playing with Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and produced The Cramps debut, Songs The Lord Taught Us, within a few months of these recordings. Holsapple was off to New York to audition for The dB’s and enter the world of “sweet pop.”

Liner notes by Peter Holsapple tell the story of these recordings firsthand and author/filmmaker/Memphian, Robert Gordon, helps pull the time and place into focus. Previously unseen photos included in the package are drawn from the collections of Peter Holsapple and Pat Rainer. Produced by Cheryl Pawelski with mastering by Mike Graves at Osiris Studio and Jeff Powell at Take Out Vinyl/Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, who brings it all right back to where it started.

CD / DIGTAL TRACK LIST:
PETER HOSLAPPLE:
BAD REPUTATION
HOUSE IS NOT A HOME
WE WERE HAPPY THERE
THE DEATH OF ROCK
TAKE ME BACK
TAKE ME BACK (Backing Track)
ALEX CHILTON:
TENNIS BUM
MARSHALL LAW
HEART AND SOUL
TRAIN KEPT A ROLLIN’
HEY MONA
BONUS ABUSE: PETER HOLSAPPLE (EXCEPT *ALEX CHILTON)
BAD REPUTATION (Long Version)
TENNIS BUM (Rehearsal)*
O MY SOUL (Instrumental Rehearsal)
IN THE STREET (Instrumental Rehearsal)
BABY I LOVE YOU (Rehearsal)
THE DEATH OF ROCK (Rehearsal)
SOMEONE’S GOTTA SHINE YOUR SHOES (Rehearsal)
MIND YOUR MANNERS (4-Track Version With Vocals)
LP consists of Tracks 1–11 and includes download card of entire CD Program.
Cat: OV-303

"Newly discovered recordings"... haha

The Chilton tracks have been bootlegged a dozen or so times.

even I have heard Tennis Bum (which is hilarious)

from Big Star thread---thanks for several like these, Mr. Eggleston:

http://dangerousminds.net/content/uploads/images/08bigstareggleston.jpg

also like "this"

what's that alex chilton quote about if you make music that's good enough eventually someone will find it?

"Somewhere along the line I figured out that if you only press up a hundred copies of a record, then eventually it will find it’s way to the hundred people in the world who want it most."

?

that's not it, but maybe i'm misremembering something I read paraphrased in a review somewhere

Re previously posted press sheet for The Death of Rock, I finally listened, tweeted this:
Peter Holsapple/Alex Chilton, The Death of Rock: main keeper AC's "Marshall Law" (sic): blithe Ray Davies vox over terse VU-ish detail "sharpshooters" etc PH says it's re 70s Memphis Fire & Police Strike, tho incl. "Martin Luther King" (who came to town during Garbage Strike).
The title track is okay too, but most of the vocals are either awkward (PH) or nerfy (AC), too self-conscious no matter who's singing---and AC esp. redic on "Train Kept A-Rolling" and "Mona," though playing is okay on those and several others, incl. stand-alone leftover backing tracks. Somebody cover "Marshall Law."

Several of the PH originals got another chance w the dBs (and "Death of Rock" got retitled remodeled etc. for a Troggs album).

I met and interviewed Lesa Aldridge today. She's been living in Nashville for years and is doing a Klitz show (all 4 original Klitz) here in February.

Please post the link when it's published!

Thanx also to Gerald McBoing-Boing for Rolling Reissues 2019 mention of two forthcoming AC collections: From Memphis to New Orleans looks mostly familiar, from the Feudalist Tarts etc era, but then there's Songs From Robin Hood Lane, which might be okay in its way---as listed on Amazon (comes out Feb.8):
Alex Chilton, lead singer for the Boxtops and Big Star, made these recordings of jazz standards in the 1990s. Many he heard them in the 1950s, growing up in a house full of music on a street called Robin Hood Lane in Memphis, Tennessee. Included are many rare and previously unreleased songs from the Great American Songbook: "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying," "Time After Time," and "My Baby Just Cares For Me."

Track Listings
Disc: 1
1. Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying
2. My Baby Just Cares For Me
3. Save Your Love For Me
4. There Will Never Be Another You
5. Let's Get Lost
6. That Old Feeling
7. Like Someone In Love
8. Look For the Silver Lining
9. All Of You
10. Frame For the Blues
11. Time After Time
12. What Was

What the heck, here's From Memphis To New Orleans also Feb 8 (both of these are on vinyl, CD, MP3):

Some know Alex Chilton as the lead singer of the Boxtops who had a number one hit in 1967 with “The Letter,” others know him from the majestic Beatlesque pop of Big Star or as the name in a song by the Replacements (“Children by the millions sing of Alex Chilton…”) Others know him as the songwriter of the theme song for That 70s Show. He was at the height of his cult star fame in the mid 1980s when he made these recordings. It is some of his best most honest work oddly neglected for some time but delivered here for enthusiasts and neophytes alike. Includes B-A-B-Y, Guantanaamerika, Let Me Get Close to You, Dalai Lama and many more.

Track Listings
Disc: 1
1. B-A-B-Y
2. Thank You John
3. Lost My Job
4. Paradise
5. No Sex
6. Underclass
7. Take It Off
8. Let Me Get Close To You
9. Dalai Lama
10. Thing For You
11. Make A Little Love
12. Nobody's Fool
13. Little GTO
14. Guantanamerika
15. Lonely Weekend

Disc 1 both collections are one disc each.

Quick review shows that "From Memphis To New Orleans" has all been previously released - there's a few expanded version of "High Priest" which have all of these tracks.

"Robin Hood Lane" has 8 tracks from "Cliches", which leaves "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying", "That Old Feeling", "Like Someone In Love" and "Look For the Silver Lining" unique to this release. If they're from the same sessions, we're in for a treat. Alex was the consummate interpreter.

I love this era of AC.

Doesn't dig Songs From Robin Hood Lane as much as the others here, but I didn't expect him to (although it seems he did like Cliches, but indicates these aren't from the same sessions after all, or not all of 'em?).
https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/59x94k/robert-christgau-on-alex-chiltons-fragile-love-songs

Some of the Robin Hood Lane stuff is apparently from the sessions for Medium Cool, a record I used to own. I never liked Cliches all that much. All the stuff on Memphis to New Orleans has been reissued before. I always felt a lot of that stuff was tentative or just underpowered, though "Thank You John" is one of his best interpretations and the No Sex and Black List EPs are mostly good. I'm working on a piece on the Klitz, the Memphis punk band who worked w/ Alex and Dickinson (and, amusingly, Sam the Sham). I met and interviewed Lesa Aldridge the other day; she's lived in Nashville for years, was once married to Chilton wannabe Tommy Hoehn. They're playing a show up here this month. They're still aiming for their shot, all these years later. The crazies thing I learned is that they did a version of "Brown Sugar" in 1979 at a south Memphis studio whose owners had bought the old Stax equipment at auction when Stax folded. It's the best thing they ever did.

Long read:

https://www.theringer.com/music/2019/2/11/18219958/alex-chilton-big-star-box-tops-the-letter-career-legacy

Rene Coman, Johnny J and Doug Garrison on LX:

https://troubledmenpodcast.podiant.co/e/36edf6c9c83680/?fbclid=IwAR2ZZ3ByiqhdN6Km1kMSVtVXXKtMz-qxxvLypS0Y_0I70QQz0F2voHdj6ko

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alex-chilton-doc/alex-chilton-why-should-i-care?ref=thanks-share

Kickstarter for Chilton movie doc by filmmaker David Julian Leonard who lived in Memphis

A friend gave me a CD of the The 1970 Sessions. I'm a fan of the first Big Star album, not well acquainted with Chilton's own work--I have Like Flies on Sherbert. Anyway, I didn't get much out of it, although I like "Smile" a lot. I was struck by how much it sounds like early Todd Rundgren, but if that was done in 1970, same year as Runt, I doubt Chilton would have ever heard Rundgren on his own. Is it simply a case of two guys, both coming out of late-'60s quasi-Nuggets bands, arriving at the same sound simultaneously?

The reformed Big Star did go on to cover 'Slut' with Alex on lead vocals

Actually
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRgIfa7Vv8

Chilton might have been aware of the Nazz at the time of those sessions, which were in 1969 & sorta concurrent to the last Box Tops recordings, both preceding the release of Rundgren's solo stuff.

That Chilton album is quite fascinating w/all the directions the material goes. I can hear strands of CCR, Gram Parsons/Flying Burrito Bros./Byrds, Sir Doug, Flamin' Groovies and more. What a different world it would have been had he been able to get that stuff released at the time. For one thing, Big Star probably wouldn't have happened exactly the way they did, or at all.

several live Big Star sets incl. cover of Rundgren's "Slut" (on at least one occasion, AC reportedly dedicated it to Jody Stephens's wife), and, as I noted to self on Twitter and the main Big Star thread:
radio interview on @BigStarBand's Live at Lafayette's Music Room, AC worries that forthcoming #1 Record is too much like Rundgren, reminding me not to overemph Beatles influences; also T.Rex v. favorably mentioned; both covered here, as on several other live recordings Way to sell the album, perverse AC, confiding your misgivings about it on the radio.

Alex Chilton "96 Tears" recently unearthed late '70s home video footage, Memphis. pic.twitter.com/VnpJywjVAp

— Nikki Kreuzer (@NikkiKreuzer) May 26, 2020

wow! I don't think I've ever seen *any* video of him from several years on either side of this

would take abt ten minutes to clean that sound up

Damn, 10 years gone. I guess he didn't leave that much in the vaults? Surely there's some better quality live recordings out there across his entire career.

wow! I don't think I've ever seen *any* video of him from several years on either side of this

would take abt ten minutes to clean that sound up

― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, May 27, 2020 11:28 AM (three minutes ago)

Welllll... there's some Axel Chitlins footage from approx around this time if I were to guess:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-k32L0KCc

and it looks like Tav is playing the same guitar in the 96 Tears clip.

I forgot about that!

also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-eVsH49_2U

William Eggleston^

Love that 96 Tears

Tav is in the replies saying that the 96 Tears was filmed at his house in Memphis (perhaps filmed by Tav himself?)

Those '60s super villain sunglasses...

otm

Always a good time to reshare this clip...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPl4_vQ9vZo

Was wondering when that was coming.

Oh sorry, I was thinking of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-k32L0KCc

Yeah, there are some decent live Chilton sets around some of them legit-released, as mentioned upthread--- otherwise, for instance somewhere I've got a good radio tape (an aircheck, like in jazz) of him on some Public Radio show (if it's Mountain Stage, might be in their online archives, if they still have those), performing originals, Memphis covers, also some of his favorite Italian pop ballads, adept guitar picking, geniality.
Legit-release/YouTube-wise, one of my fave raves is Live In London, with Morris Windsor and RIP Matthew Seligman of Soft Boys, Knox of the Vibrators---supposedly, somebody showed up at his place of dishwashing business, presented him with a round-trip ticket, and said, "You *are* going to do this." Oh ok go.

I still need to check this---from Xgau's site:
Ocean Club '77 [Norton, 2015]
Chilton's 1977 NYC residency fell apart before the year was over, but it began on a high--the young punk/alt godfather gigging amongst us, nowhere more mythically than at his February 21-22 engagement at Mickey Ruskin's short-lived, way-downtown successor to Max's Kansas City. I attended the first of these shows, and it was incandescent--jammed, noisy, charged with ambient adrenaline. Even a quality recording like this one can't capture such an up, but you can definitely hear a more raucous, confident, and engaged Chilton than was his quirky norm. The 16-song set leads with the brand new "All of the Time," includes five loud Big Star covers plus a rough-hewn reading of the Box Tops smash "The Letter," introduces Chilton's great nonhit "My Rival," and covers the Ventures, the Beach Boys, the Seeds, and Chuck Berry's "Memphis." Cult history is being made. Of course we were psyched. A-

I had that set on some late 90s bootleg, it's pretty great.

some version of it is on Spotify

More videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaOstl-eQ6I
@BigStarBand

@OmnivoreRecords

@rebel7449 or post even more of your favs here, of course.

I wonder if writer Robert Gordon's new updated version of his book "It Came from Memphis" has new details and stories on Alex Chilton?

Hm. Updated you say?

He would have been 70 yesterday.

from ilxor tylerw's crucial blog (yes still a few):

https://64.media.tumblr.com/84b6815f9035ec678ca1f8f5339b1855/7593e9061c0cd0a6-ea/s1280x1920/05ca7825489dfc281a943f45f09983e1a235fe14.jpg

Here’s something unusual — and uncirculated, perhaps — to get your day started. An audio verité document of the one and only Alex Chilton playing records late into the night at a pal’s loft back in ‘77.
https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/640752212251983872/alex-chilton-richard-freys-loft-246-bowery

@tywilc

Replying to
@williamtylertn
and
@jasonpwoodbury
let's just say that Alex REALLY liked The Beach Boys Love You.

It Csmr from Memphis Robert Gordon book reading event with Ann Powers tonight may touch on Chilton. Thursday Jan 21 6 pm central which I guess is 7 pm eastern, on Facebook

https://fb.me/e/1SC0LQXXA

Parnassus Books is doing the conversation

a wildly entertaining book

Newly updated, right?

published on jack white's vanity label!

Yes, newly updated

Alex Chilton and Hi Rhythm Section
Boogie Shoes: Live On Beale Street

Release date: May 7, 2021

Description
Unissued 1999 live set from Alex Chilton (The Box Tops/Big Star) and Hi Rhythm Section

“I never saw him have so much fun on stage. Without rehearsal, Alex called songs and the band locked in. The horn section consists of top Memphis session guys who huddled together when each song was called creating parts on the fly. The pure joy of playing this music so freely with such legendary musicians comes across in every groove of the record.”

—David Less, from his liner notes.

Memphis is a city with music in its blood. When Fred Ford, co-founder of the Beale Street Music Festival, was diagnosed with cancer, David Less organized Fredstock, a fund raiser to help with his medical bills. Less contacted Memphis legend Alex Chilton (The Box Tops, Big Star), who was living in New Orleans, to ask him to participate. Alex said he didn’t have any musicians to play with in Memphis, so Less suggested the Hi Rhythm Section (the band behind classics from artists including Ann Peebles, Ike & Tina Turner, O. V. Wright, Otis Clay, and Al Green). Alex replied, “That will work.”

This previously unissued live set contains versions of soul classics from The Supremes and Otis Clay, rock numbers from Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and even a cover of the KC & The Sunshine Band title track. Available on CD, Digital, and LP, Boogie Shoes: Live On Beale Street was recorded at the New Daisy Theater in Memphis in 1999, during Fredstock.

Packaging contains liner notes from Producer David Less, a friend of Chilton, and author of the acclaimed Memphis Mayhem: A Story Of The Music That Shook Up The World, and features a cover from rock & roll and folk art painter, Lamar Sorrento.

Get ready to discover this performance by Memphis icons—tearing it up on stage, making music, and having fun. You’ll want to put on y-y-y-y-your Boogie Shoes.

Alex Chilton - Boogie Shoes LP Bundle

Special LP Bundle Available:
We also have a limited-edition bundle that features the LP and a numbered lithographic print of the album cover. This special edition is limited to 100 copies and available only via the Omnivore webstore.

CD / LP / Digital Track List:

Boogie Shoes
Precious, Precious
634-5789
Kansas City
Lucille
Big Boss Man
Where Did Our Love Go
Maybelline
Hello Josephine
Trying To Live My Life Without You

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExWzYhgWgAoS_gj?format=jpg&name=900x900

more info:
http://omnivorerecordings.com/shop/alex-chilton-and-hi-rhythm-section-boogie-shoes-live-on-beale-street/

A live session of Chilton w/ Hi rhythm section sounds promising for sure

First review of it I've seen:
https://michaelsmusiclog.blogspot.com/2021/04/alex-chilton-and-hi-rhythm-section.html

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzXPzJEUUAQEoKd?format=jpg&name=small

Surely there's some better quality live recordings out there across his entire career.

I answered my own question:
Ocean Club '77 - solid but only a handful of unique tracks
Electricity By Candlelight NYC 2/13/97 - good selection of songs but terrible bootleg sound quality
Live In Anvers - ahhh, this one is great. A bunch of fun covers, his backing band is a bit loose but enjoyable, and he's in fine voice.

I'm looking forward to the new one based on that review!

I thought Live In London was pretty cool. esp. since he got drafted into a one-off (interrupting his dishwashing gig).
So far "Boogie Shoes" is the only Live on Beale Street track posted on Spotify and the 'Tube---as I expected, most of the interest is insturumental: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-jX_OwPIkA
Also a tiny trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTW7Sqf1Blk

His voice seems more effective on these Chet Baker-associated tunes (first track is glitchy on my computer, but no prob w others). He plays some nice guitar too getting into it more on uptempo "There Will Be Another You" (reminds me, look for Sonnly Rollins's version of that, from the album of the same title, which he sued to have deleted, but later on an import., and prob posted somewhere)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2t1pgsrRzc

0:00​ There Will Never Be Another You [acoustic]
3:02​ That Old Feeling
5:07​ Let's Get Lost
7:11​ Look for the Silver Lining
9:33​ Time After Time
12:11​ Like Someone in Love
14:48​ There Will Never Be Another You [electric]

Band on "That Old Feeling", "Look for the Silver Lining" and "Like Someone in Love" : Ron Miller,acoustic bass and producer; Robert Arron on piano and tenor saxophone; Richard Dworkin on drums. From the album "Imagination" by Medium Cool, with Alex Chilton as guest vocalist on these three tracks only.

Band on "There Will Never Be Another You [electric]" : Ron Easley, electric bass, Richard Dworkin, drums. From the 1999 album "Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy" (New Rose Records) (a.k.a. "Set", Bar/None Records).

"There Will Never Be Another You [acoustic]", "Let's Get Lost", and "Time After Time" are solo performances from the album "Cliches" (1994, New Rose / Ardent)

Photos: Chet Baker, Times Square, New York City, 1958 (age 29; photo by Carole Reiff); Alex Chilton, The Bowery, New York City, 1977 (age 26; photo by David Godlis)

So this is streaming now but haven’t listened yet

It's fun if not as epic as I'd hoped. As always, his choice of covers is impeccable.

I kind of sometimes want to be contrarian about that, but hard to find fault really.

sequence from Sweet Soul Music thread:

Judging by "Boogie Shoes" on YouTube, most of the appeal of the Alex Chilton/Hi Rhythm live album might be insrumental, which reminds me: here they are with Terry Manning, better known as a producer and engineer at Ardent etc. but his rough-and-ready vocal approach works better with HRS live than Chilton's (comparing just one track to another):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5lyZHzReSk

(Chilton seems a bit cautious by comparison---their set was a one-off, but so was Manning's w HRS---filling in at the last minute for a no-show, and just taking the plunge, what the hell---this is the only live track on his album, and really seemed like the only keeper---according to the press sheet, he did a Box Tops Chilton parody for kicks, and was ordered to create an album around it, which mostly seemed like filler, but I didn't listen much)

However!
So Chilton does okay after all, though yeah of course Hi Rhythm Gang is the main interest, esp. horns and bass, though everybody steps up--most songs go on a little over four minutes and a half minutes; the studio originals were at least a minute shorter, but but we get more solo turns and full Section flexing, comfortably. Fave is the penultimate performance, "Hello Josephine," where a Hi man starts the vocal, Chilton coming in later: a very robust 7:12 work-out, calm as ever. Also: Motown gets the Memphis treatment on "Where Did Our Love Go," with Chilton as okay stand-in for Diana Ross, though this is one of he shorter ones, as it probably should be).Does not sing as high, loud and fast there as on "Lucille" or "Maybelline." Sounds like Pat Boone looking to go rong on "Kansas City." Any of yall heard this one? xgau sez:
On the Loose [Hi, 1976]
In which Al Green's sidemen, perhaps disgruntled at Al's unwillingness to record their material, get together and cut it. Some stickler for detail is sure to point out that the singing on side two is completely out of tune, but that's OK--so is most of the singing on side one, which I prefer to Full of Fire. One of the more carefully thought out tracks features a mildly malicious lyric about Green himself, but it's the eccentricity of the music, which sounds as if it includes a banjo, that does him in. Loose indeed. A-
Anyway, very good music for a holiday weekend, has me looking to go for b-b-q chicken.

― dow, Thursday, July 1, 2021 4:33 PM

Well, I attended the 1999 show from which came the latest Chilton live album. At the time I thought it was just a gig for him. His patented guitar sound didn't work in that context. Last time I ever saw Alex. But the live album is really good. He sings so well and easily. I used to think he sloughed off the vocals and got over on the guitar--which could also get messy. But I was wrong. I think "Live in Anvers" is his best live album and the definitive Alex one-stop.

The fact he was friends with Ray Davies when Ray Davies was living in New Orleans is pretty cool.

Right. I love Ray Davies rendition of a New Orleans accent.

There's quite a lot about their friendship in the Americana book.

*birthday bump*

Alex sounds a lot better to me, 11 years after he departed this plane for a heaven filled with Little Beaver albums, high-grade weed and lamb chops prepared by busty Commie gurls. With mint jelly. In retrospect, he almost always sang well, often better than that, and hus guitar playing sounds more original than ever. I can't think of any other guitarist who managed to be both recessive and avant-garde.Structural and expressive. I don't even hear his post-1984 work as ironic--it's a kind of love. Most of his '80s EPs and about half of "High Priest" is brilliant and while "Man Called Destruction" aspires to the generic and remains ... inert? uncommitted? unreadable?, there are 3-4 tracks that work. I can't think of another major artist who did most of his best (mature) work live. I think he was one of the few major performers of the rock era who mastered the art of relaxation. I don't think I would have been comfortable calling Alex major 10 years ago, but now I am. As major as...Tom Petty or Roger MvGuinn or Gram Parsons.

Excuse the typos. Alex also was actually literate, so I guess I need to be more careful. Also, I think the bio by George-Warren is very flawed. There's not one bit about his style or approach in a practical sense. No discussion of how he got his guitar sound. Very light on his last decade. Alex needed a very tough person who was also a discerning ear to how musicians achieve their effects, which she's just too travails-of-thwarted-star to bother with. I actually can't think of one piece or book that gets him. I've read just about every interview ever done with him and listened to every interview I can find. From that you begin to get the picture. Alex was both a synoptic student of pop and rock and a guy who actually contributed to it, fundamentally at a Sun Records level. Which is completely singular.

That was a booming post, Edd, didn't even notice the typos. Second post too.

I always find it sort of interesting to compare him to Lou Reed. On the one hand, they shared some kind of orneriness and waywardness with respect to baiting their audiences and record companies if applicable. On the other hand, Alex had this interesting approach/avoid relationship to his material and his delivery, often recording and performing in kind of a deliberately offhand manner, but at the same time working on his craft (as George Martin said of George Harrison) perfecting or at least improving his guitar playing, building on those early lessons from Dennis Wilson while creating his own skewed version of a Great American Songbook - I can still hear his Memphis drawl saying "this is my favorite song" before performing "Single Again" by Gary Stewart. Whereas Lou ultimately seemed content with the classic career path of Undertutored But Inspired Genius Becomes Sacred Monster And Goes Out Playing Grand Old Man. I guess I still will take one from column A and column B as well though.

Alex learned from Carl Wilson directly, maybe Reggie Young and Bobby Womack at American, from Cropper, Dave Davies. Alex confounds and remains underappreciated by guitar musos because he played in timespace, not in harmonic vertical space--except when he provided the essential harmonic wheels of any particular song. Rhythm guitar. Not unlike Reed but so much warmer, fonder and more rooted in Mel Bay full-bodied chording that was also always right up on the beat, because he respected the song even as he wanted to remain minimalist. A disinclination to step on the bones but a totally funky, laggy, suggestive and non-tonal dirtiness in his non-solos. I know no other guitarist like him, and very few guitarists even come close to his style. Just drastically misunderstood in a world of Dickey Betts fans. Richard Lloyd is maybe Alex's only analogue? Obviously a far more conventionally fluent player, but still somewhat similar. ?

Ugh, didn't realize I typed Dennis instead of Carl. Monday, Monday.

Richard Lloyd is a great comparison, yeah.

Alex learned many other equally valuable lessons from Dennis. Cars and gurls.

Lol

The guitar world is maybe implicitly divided up into (with some overlap of course):

• "Real" Jazz guitarists playing chord melodies with at least four voices and as many altered/color tones as possible
• Rhythm guitarists of all stripes, who vary from playing a somewhat smaller subset of chords used above to only barre chords
• Single note soloists
• Double stop Chuck Berry-style
• Folky/Flamenco/Classical acoustic fingerpickers
• Outside (Lou, Sonny Sharrock, Bob Stinson, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker etc)

Maybe I should have had a separate Drone category and put John Lee Hooker in that along with, say, Ron Asheton. Also wondering what to do with Marshall Crenshaw as he has some similarities with Alex, although he is more conventional.

Yes - Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi hill country blues guys ( RL Burnside) along with Hooker

Yes, I was also thinking of those kinds of cats (Sorry, wrong thread). I think we are all familiar with the story of those guys having to play more "legit" for certain audiences. My friend from Detroit who I often mention who you met once although I'm not sure if either of you remember that now (I wasn't there) told me that John Lee Hooker once called up his uncle to take some lessons so he could play for the college crowd.

Yeah, blues with pop appeal, in the 50s, early 60s, when he was coming up in Memphis: BB King and Rufus Thomas, who were known as DJs early on---and think Rufus continued doing that some, after "Walkin' The Dog"?---Memphis Slim: those guys knew they had to compete with Elvis and so on (and Mississippi Sheiks, with their own Memphis connections, had already gone for crossover appeal, filling the gap left by Jimmie Rodgers from the other side, raciallY)---Little Richard his own kind of shattering blues-pop (esp. as my older Black customers in the CD store used "blues" to mean anything from one of the Kings to Johnny Taylor to Lattimore [father, not son, usually] to Smokey Robinson to Nat King Cole to Aretha to Eddie Floyd to Irma Thomas to Dusty Springfield). A necessary precursor to Hendrix at his psych-poppest, on debut Are You Experienced? and Joplin too:her sound is closer to his than any female artist I can think of (Yeah, I know she got "Ball and Chain" from Big Mama Thornton, who had a deeper range than Richard or Joplin's signature sonics).
Also, of course, when Sonny Sharrock was asked what he thought of punk, he said that he'd seen Little Richard at the Apollo in the mid-50s: "You can't get more punk rock than that."
Leading back to Richard Lloyd, whose own pop proclivities emerged more clearly on solo albums (though I think some of it was there in his Television playing, incl. how it fit into Verlaine's songs). Emerged more clearly when he wrote and produced his own tracks, although the caveman bellow and offkey impulses took him in a different direction.
Can imagine that Chilton was further encouraged in the blues-pop direction by his avowed fascination with early Rundgren, who went from blooze w Woody's Truck Stop to Nazz and early solo stuff----
But wait, where and when and what did he learn directly from Carl Wilson?

Carl Wilson gave him guitar lessons when The Box Tops toured with The Beach Boys.

There's an incredible paragraph about this in the HGW book that I am unfortunately being prevented from c&p-ing right now. Maybe can type in but not at the moment.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1139408-and-i-learned-more-at-the-hands-of-carl-wilson

And there's more where that came from.

Thanks! Had been meaning to read that, w foggy notion that some personal/career-of-sorts historical context might help me keep his long and winding discography in focus (maybe not, though)

As Edd, pointed out, it is far from perfect, but it'll have to do for now in the place of anything else, although of course there are also books about Big Star and Chris Bell for that stuff.

Yeah, I got Rob Jovanovic's Big Star chronicle when it first came out, or at least the trade pb did (latter revised & updated, I now see) around the time of In Space and Cilton's Katrina adventure ---but this one might be good as memory-comprehension aid re solo releases---?

get back, typo!

Alex's guitar style is one weird thing after another. I can't think of any other rock guitarist who was more varied while at the same time so, not limited, but consistently identifiable even when he was aiming for what I believe he was interested in: a kind of anonymity. The stealth of the rhythm guitarists he liked, which had to include Teenie Hodges, Cropper, Reggie Young, Bobby Womack, Dave Davies, John Lennon and Snooks Eaglin. And basically every R&B guitarist who played chords and a combination of those chords and figured stuff behind a vocal. Also, Little Beaver on the Miami stuff with Betty Wright and his own great Party Down album. And Johnny Guitar Watson and Carl Wilson. Also Hendrix, whom I think Alex has more than a little affinity for and with whom Alex could've easily played with. That's a very odd set of reference points for a "rock" guitarist, like he aspired to be the guy in the background on a Brenton Wood record. It's also a style that seems to disappear in front of your ears--weightless, not really "bluesy" but totally blues-oriented, not "heavy" but strange, strangulated, and decidedly off-kilter amid the standard usages he favored. However the heck he did Radio City, that stands as a monument to anti-rock rock guitar as surely as anything by Johnny Thunders or Lou Reed. Whatever he's playing underneath the lines in "She's a Mover" that go "now all night" and "she's coming from," which in cover versions just gets turned into the chords themselves, very easy shit, is completely ineffable and functions as commentary that's never over the line into embellishment, but is obviously intended as commentary. That's an extremely subtle gift, and every single thing he plays on that record is actually just about the simplest stuff you can play. Not necessarily harmonically, but certainly it never strays from the most basic things. What remains so uncanny about Radio City is, if you listen to the thing enough and then stop to remember, this is rock 1973, you begin to realize that's its just one step over and across from completely standard playing, like the fucking James Gang and Rick Derringer and so forth, but it has a totally different feel. "September Gurls" in particular is so, so simple.

Also uncanny is the stuff on the third Big Star album. "You Can't Have Me" is just like I to IV chords, yet listen carefully and he's also juicing them with subtle dissonances and wide voicings--big chords. There's the barest hint of "jangle" in one section that disappears like Windex in the heat. "Thank You Friends" is like American Studio Craft, as if it's some Ronnie Milsap record produced by Chips Moman in 1970, just the barest hint of something outside the normal I-II-IV_V progression, a suspension that hooks you in. And again, just very simple. The Chilton space is one where things are up on the beat, and rendered in a tempo neither very slow or very fast, a medium tempo that allows for reflection. I think his least effective, but still interesting, guitar playing comes in 1977, when he does indeed sound something like Neil Young or Tom Verlaine. He's barely on his marks, skidding around and making a comedy act out of making the changes, but he makes them, mostly. Again, the basics: the version of "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" on the CBGB-recorded One Day in New York set is exemplary blues-rock guitar 101, chugging along as the rhythmic pulse and one slangy lick that anchors the turnaround, the psychology of which he totally respects even as the "solo" careers almost out of the picture, like Richard Lloyd in Tops Barbeque in Memphis. Take it down into your own thang, son, and don't forget the sauce while you're down here with us.

Marshall Crenshaw is a better guitarist, I think, obviously, but Alex and Marshall Crenshaw are almost doin' the same thing, in general, and Crenshaw's "Seven Miles an Hour" is my single favorite thing he ever did, except for a song called "Passing Through" which is as beautiful as the most melancholy Big Star tunes, and it's Alex cleaned up, more uptight, in a carefully arranged room full of white furniture and 37-year-old ex-beauty queens both Alex and Marshall wish they knew better.

Weightless guitar, Reggie Young meets Hendrix meets Mick Ronson and goes out for a grilled cheese sandwich. Pretty much how I remember his guitar playing when he was in a good mood and on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcZk3PYeTkk

Wow, thanks! Also,
...exemplary blues-rock guitar 101, chugging along as the rhythmic pulse and one slangy lick that anchors the turnaround, the psychology of which he totally respects even as the "solo" careers almost out of the picture, like Richard Lloyd in Tops Barbeque in Memphis. Take it down into your own thang, son, and don't forget the sauce while you're down here with us is pretty much my impression of how he fit (esp. instrumentally: vocals are also respectful enough, while slightly campy, w/o irony [of lol what am I goofy white pop-rock boy doing here] getting too underlined) w Hi Rhythm on the xpost live one-off (I'm assuming it's that, but hope he did perform with them again at some point, recorded or not).

Alex had never met the Hi players in toto, except for Charles Hodges, who played on one track on Man Called Destruction, and never played with 'em again.

Did you note the "(Theme From) A Summer Place" quotation solo at the end of the first song on that video?

Excuse the typos. Alex also was actually literate, so I guess I need to be more careful. Also, I think the bio by George-Warren is very flawed. There's not one bit about his style or approach in a practical sense. No discussion of how he got his guitar sound. Very light on his last decade. Alex needed a very tough person who was also a discerning ear to how musicians achieve their effects, which she's just too travails-of-thwarted-star to bother with. I actually can't think of one piece or book that gets him. I've read just about every interview ever done with him and listened to every interview I can find. From that you begin to get the picture. Alex was both a synoptic student of pop and rock and a guy who actually contributed to it, fundamentally at a Sun Records level. Which is completely singular.

Edd, judging from the most recent thread revive, I think you are the one to write the book on LX.

Or if that's too stressful maybe we can have you hypnotized like the guy in PKD's Time Out of Joint so that you can write the book while you think you are doing something else.

Just was moved through the ILX pachinko game from the Doris Day to the Terry Melcher thread, which led me to listen to his jaw-dropping Is It Tone Deaf Or Genius? take on “Stagger Lee” which somehow reminded me of Alex’s approach.

Edd is now one of the lobes (along with ov mastermynd---Dickinson-Chilton-inspired---thee spirit and letter, incl. covers ov "Bangkok" and "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It," also a dystopian vision of Spooner and Karen Oldham----It Came From Nashville: https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0267189080_10.jpg

In late 2020, after figuring out that the only thing I wanted to do musically was a kind of cabaret-style retrospect of some great songs I thought other people ought to know about, I assembled a group of Nashville musicians at Sundog Recording Studio with engineer and producer Michael Esser. We recorded six songs drawn from the mists of the 1970s, and added one instrumental I wrote myself. We cut with almost no rehearsal, and trusted to the unguarded moment to guide us in our reconstructions of these timeless tunes.
...Fayetteville, Paris, Nashville, Memphis, man, it's all the same on this record.
https://thecontactgroup1.bandcamp.com/album/varnished-suffrages
https://thecontactgroup1.bandcamp.com/album/varnished-suffrages

Sorry, I meant (along with *Michael Esser*)

Also meant *"1980,"* a dystopian vision of Spooner and Karen Oldham.

Nice!

Good production job Edd