Alex Chilton RIP 2010

like, it didn't go any deeper than that - there was no experience, no wisdom behind it

kids these days

I fully admit that I subscribed to this "you don't need to know how to play!" philosophy as a young'un. it's true at first, but obviously if you keep playing you um learn stuff. I do think that what is still completely true is that you do not need to subscribe to any established convention about HOW to play your instrument, but you should have some idea of the sound you are trying to achieve and a technique/method for achieving it.

i really feel like people say "oh punk bands couldn't play" but honestly lots of the great punk bands had some SICK players in them.

like okay who are the fathers of american hardcore? you'd have to say bad brains and greg ginn - dudes could fuckin' tear it up...shit the minutemen were next level and most of the bands that started sorta ramshackle, like huskers or ESPECIALLY the meat puppets, got good really quick...by the time the meat puppets do up on the sun they are on some super crazy grateful dead fast shit

frankly one of the problems with capital P punk bands now is that most of the bands are so guitar center with their chops IMO

if you count the matlock era pistols as the "real" lineup, then all the dudes could play really well

(edd, I'm waiting 4 u 2 continue, even thru this zzz off-topic sidebar)

i really feel like people say "oh punk bands couldn't play" but honestly lots of the great punk bands had some SICK players in them.

this is totally true and I'm not gonna dispute it - it was more the generations that came after it (I'm lookin at you Calvin Johnson) that took this philosophy to unfortunate extremes

calvin johnson was mostly inspired by sid vicious? not seeing it...

no, he was inspired by the "anyone can play three chords" idea/philosophy

at the risk of boring Shasta further, there's a through-line from the accusations leveled against the first generations of punks by its detractors (ie "they don't know how to play!") to the DIY aesthetic that rippled through the American underground in the 80s, who basically took that charge and ran with it as a badge of affirmation, of opposition to existing "professional" orthodoxy. which is where stuff like the naif, amateurish bent of stuff like K Records comes in.

xp

*suggests reviving thread: primitivism vs. virtuoso*

the funny and relatively unique thing about Chilton was that he was both

dude recorded/engineered the gories ffs. can u pls take the zzzz to another thread pls?

sorry shasta :(

continue on with the much more important chilton love.

honestly i don't like using alex chilton for best-practice arguments. using him as a stick to beat "contemporary music" or whatever. we can agree that there is inspired amateurism and inspired professionalism, weird mixes of the two, and then there are many uninspired amateurs and professionals. making big sweeping statements just seems unnecessary.

Thinking about the guy's career arc the closest I could come up with for somebody similar was Jonathan Richman, another guy who at one point renounced his early work, put off many of his fans with his contrarian attitude, did interesting covers, was interested in earlier R and B, kept working on his guitar playing, who after one if his shows maybe you didn't always like what you saw but you always had something to think about. (Note: don't know what tense to use when one guy is still with us and the other isn't) Obviously lots of dissimilarities as well, but still.

One particular "Lost Era" period I revisited over the last couple days are the 1977 Elektra demos, and the Peter Holsapple session from 1978.

This is some of my favorite stuff: really loose and dreamy, with some topical nods to new-wave and pop-reggae. The only thing I can do without are the squelchy high-pitch Farfisa fills/runs that pepper some of the Elektra demos.

like is this the perfect summer song or what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NUi81X3-zk

Where may one find those? Are they official releases?

try google blog search, i had some 15 year old bootleg on CD that I probably paid $20 for (lol) that I burned a few years ago.

shhhh:
http://www.atomiurl.com/popdose-coms-bootleg-city-big-star-%E2%80%9Cradio-city%E2%80%9D
http://www.tapecity.org/showthread.php?t=29850
http://onlybootleghere.blogspot.com/2009/06/big-star-and-alex-chilton-beale-street.html
etc.

Had no idea that stuff existed. Thanks.

Tennis Bum!

Ann Powers for the LA Times, plus a slew of great comments:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/03/rip-alex-chilton-american-music-man.html

That record remains one of the most lucid expressions of youthful sorrow in the annals of guitar pop, a perfect encapsulation of the pain of that worst, first heartbreak.

Nice piece, but i don't know about that as an encapsulation of the Third Album: sorrow, dread, horror, pain, not tied to youth or love......it's the darkest record ever sometimes: the horror of the person Holocaust could be about AND the horror of how a person could sing that about anyone.

Also, a little more on Steve Cohen's speech:

Reached later by phone, Cohen said he learned of the musician's death late Wednesday night and had spent a lot of time since then listening to Chilton's music on his iPod, including such songs as "Bangkok," "Tee Ni Nee Ni Noo" and "No Sex." He decided on his way into work Thursday to make the speech on the House floor.

"I miss him greatly," said Cohen, 60, who had known Chilton since he met him at Chilton's father's funeral. "There's just something about Alex. He's my generation and most of us in Memphis knew him and his music. This is a great loss to the Memphis scene."
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Between meetings on Thursday the congressman "spent the day reflecting" on the singer. Chilton's songs, he says, "remind me of episodes of my life and the life of the city of Memphis."

This wasn't the first time Cohen had mentioned Chilton in an official setting. In a transportation committee meeting Cohen says he quoted "The Letter," as a way to make a point about getting fast rail to Memphis. He told those present that if faster rail service was provided he would ask Chilton to write a new song.

Cohen had another personal reason to mourn his friend's passing. He was set to introduce Chilton and Big Star at a May concert in Memphis.

Cohen says he quoted "The Letter," as a way to make a point about getting fast rail to Memphis. He told those present that if faster rail service was provided he would ask Chilton to write a new song.

Lols...

I went into the Amtrak station in Memphis once on a Wednesday to see what time on the following Saturday I could get a train to St. Louis. Being European, I expected choices and baroque ticketing, and was puzzled when i couldn't find a timetable on the wall - eventually I asked: there are precisely two trains - one to New Orleans in the morning, and the same train going the other was to Chicago in the evening. That's it for train services in and out of Memphis.

Sounds about right.

Later in life, he turned his attention to classical guitar, and specifically Baroque music. His widow, a flutist with whom he frequently duetted, said it comprised most of his recent listening.

awesome.

I went into the Amtrak station in Memphis once on a Wednesday to see what time on the following Saturday I could get a train to St. Louis. Being European, I expected choices and baroque ticketing, and was puzzled when i couldn't find a timetable on the wall - eventually I asked: there are precisely two trains - one to New Orleans in the morning, and the same train going the other was to Chicago in the evening. That's it for train services in and out of Memphis.

― sonofstan, Friday, March 19, 2010 7:31 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yikes. that sucks.

cohen is a dick about some things, but on the whole he's one of the better congressmen. he's a jew who represents a district that's overwhelmingly black. IIRC he beat back some really tacky challenges from black challengers who basically used his jewiness against him.

kind of awesome that he was listening to some of chilton's 1980s stuff. by any standards, and particular by those of people holding elected office, that's pretty hardcore.

sorry for typos.

it's sad that it's taken his death to inspire me to listen to some of the alex chilton boots and other stuff from the 80s/90s. i have all the "big" records (he said w/ light irony) but haven't dived in much father, fearing i'd just be hearing a bunch of really broken-down shit. but some of it's real good. and even though he had about three different voices, all of them are pretty unmistakable and inimitable. really dig this dude, am very sad he's gone.

Took a bit of searching but I found this post from Will Rigby a couple of years back that Elvis Telecom had linked on the Chris Bell thread, along with a rebuttal concerning part of it via Terry Manning in the comments, worth keeping in mind given part of what Chilton told Rigby and those with him at the time back in 1978. Something all the more strange and moving about it all given that three of the principals in the recollection are now gone. To pull out one part of it:

Alex spent another afternoon with Mitch (Easter) and me (Peter (Holsapple) had to leave early) driving down into Mississippi and onto a levee and being effusive about the Delta blues, with some barbecue in there somewhere. He took us to 706 Union Avenue, what had been Sun Studio but at the time was an unoccupied storefront. He found a way in through a broken back door. It had most recently been an auto repair shop; in what had been the recording room was the abandoned shell of a car—no wheels, no windows, no doors, no engine. There wasn't anything left of what had been a fulcrum of musical change EXCEPT, as Alex pointed out, the acoustical tiles still on the ceiling. He climbed up on the car and liberated one for himself and one for Mitch. To my eternal regret, I declined. (A few years later the site was renovated and now is a tourist-magnet re-creation of the original studio, but I knew it when.)

Meantime Cheap Trick are playing some Chilton songs right now, it seems.

A clarification -- dedicating "Heaven Tonight" to him. A slightly disconcerting choice but it does suit.

when were the first three songs on dusted in memphis recorded? actually, when was all of that stuff recorded? i know next to nothing about that record, yet it's one of my favorites.

Alex's choices of covers were inspired. Can anyone recommend me some compilations of similar source material? I guess it's kinda like the Nuggets of soul, blues and r&b?

Paul Westerberg wrote a very nice NY Times piece about Chilton.

Just posted this in the SXSW 2010 thread. Any thoughts?

Really can't decide if attending (or even trying to get into) the Big Star tribute tonight at Antone's is a really good or a really really bad idea. Members of Big Star, Cheap Trick, the dB's, Mike Mills of R.E.M., rampant rumors of Paul Westerberg... would it be an enjoyable, fitting tribute with great music? or a shitstorm of poorly rehearsed covers, rubbing in Chilton's death when instead I could go see Death play down the street? To go or not to go? Hmmmmm...

― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Saturday, March 20, 2010 6:53 PM (2 minutes ago)

SXSW 2010: the South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas (March 17-21)

have seen mills play drunken covers shows before, man is enough of a pro to hold everyone together i'd reckon

if you can get in, go

if you can get in

Truer words ne'er spoken.

xpost to zingzing:

take me home, walking dead and lovely day: Memphis 75
can't seem to make you mine and shakin the world: Wallingford, CT 77
tennis bum: Memphis 80
baron of love: Memphis 78
the other four songs: NYC 78

Paul Westerberg speaks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21westerberg.html?hp

Alfred, I really can't throw stones, but that was linked to about five posts ago.

No worries. Haven't kept up today.

if you can get in

Truer words ne'er spoken.

― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Saturday, March 20, 2010 8:41 PM (59 minutes ago)

Also, I think Mike Mills knows the three chords to "September Gurls" and has probably heard the record enough to play the correct bassline. Like the guy upthread said, he is a pro.

Well, there goes that idea. This was posted on Austin360.com about an hour and a half ago:

http://fwix.com/austin/share/8f582cbfa6/sxsw_scene_update_the_line_at_antones_for_big_star_tribute_already_down_the_block

SXSW scene update: The line at Antone’s for Big Star Tribute already down the block

By Music Source | Saturday, March 20, 2010, 07:23 PM

At 7:05 p.m., the line was already down the block (Lavaca) at Antone’s, presumably people lining up for the Big Star - Alex Chilton tribute, scheduled to being at 12:30 a.m. The show is badges only.

duh--did you think it wasn't going to be a popular show?

is this yr first sxsw? OF COURSE it'll be crazy oversubscribed