Big Star

A lot of people thought he let the Posies guys sing the songs they did because he couldn't, but apparently he absolutely hated a lot of the Big Star stuff. Bad feelings.

he played Michael Jackson's "Rock With You." In fact, I want to say he played it twice.

this kind of thing is why AC was awesome

dude obviously had a contrarian streak a mile wide

I dunno Josh, if Grisso's quote is accurate, and from the tapdancing-around I heard in this doc, the Chris-was-gay talk seems closer to secondhand, and we're not getting first anytime.

Some gays are always on the lookout for cultural totems who aren't Liberace.

In fact it was "Chris was a homosexual. That's why we had to break up.

def recall this from the radio show, which is also the one where Alex does Riding Through the Reich or whatever that pseudo-Nazi jingle he had was

haha, yeah, he was obviously in a "provocative" mood for that particular broadcast.

Much talk in the film of how he had no use for Big Star after the fact, and then ppl were "flabbergasted" at the reformation in '93. Um, ka-CHING?

are the Cramps in the doc at all...?

just a bit. More Tav Falco.

I think the Big Star reunion was really just a matter of catching him in the right place at the right time.

also i saw the trailer and was dubious because i need no convincing about the greatness of this band and it seemed to just be people telling me things i already knew

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, June 27, 2013 6:16 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but now dr m is making it sound a little more appealing

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, June 27, 2013 6:16 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't want to say so earlier, but i didn't think this doc was too great. they did well, given the paucity of footage from back in the day, but it's overlong, it lacks pace, it spends too long having indie rockers and such telling you they love big star, etc. is this by the same guy who did the replacements doc?

Who is the dude working on the Grant Hart doc?

yes and yes
that's why i was apprehensive

at least i think so! formula seems the same, and it's not one that interests me for the abovementioned reasons

So any significant differences in that new alt-take collection, soundtrack to this doc maybe? Good review in Rolling Stone, but yknow...

Yeah, it's the soundtrack (though may have more/different than the movie, as these things sometimes work out)

doc isn't "great" at all, simply bcz of lack of live footage etc for starters, but I think it's an entertaining film for ppl who are not steeped in the lore. I've played the LPs (not lately) but never became a superfan who read about em.

If this guy could get rights to the 'Mats music and cut the fan talk down to a reasonable length, maybe that project wd work too.

i'm sure i'll enjoy it (and i'm pretty steeped in the lore), but yeah, not expecting it to be "great".
listened to sdtk last night (it's on the various streaming services) -- fine, but nothing essential.

also it seems reasonable to spend a lotta time w/ critic interviewees cuz they "made" BS's rep to a degree, given the sales/distrib disasters.

yeah they really are the ultimate critics band -- wasn't their biggest gig (at least in the 70s) a rock critic convention?

yes, that's basically the focal point of the first half of the film.

It's remarkable to think that Big Star, let alone the VU (was Big Star the first band to cover the VU?), was a hard to find relative obscurity as recently as the '80s, given what an influence both those bands were on so much of what came out of the college rock scene at the time. Was it really just critics that kept (either) act alive? I imagine musicians passing the LPs around like totems helped at least as much. Not to mention critics who were also musicians.

(was Big Star the first band to cover the VU?)

Bowie

On Pin Ups, or around then? He was definitely in there, but I'd say scenester rock star who hung at Max's and produced Lou Reed that same year (72?) is trumped by kids stranded in Memphis, even if they got there a year or so later.

think this is from 67 or 68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beUcnN9ULhA
i dunno, VU records might've been slightly hard to come by before the mid 80s, but they must've had a much higher profile than big star thanks to Lou Reed's relative rock stardom in the 70s. i don't think more than a thousand people even knew the name big star before the mid 80s?

I don't think you can overemphasize how obscure the VU was. I mean, it took 25 years for the Sex Pistols album to go platinum, and that was one album with historic hype behind it. Want to say the VU, like Big Star, was mostly out of print in the early '80s.

This was actually recorded before the release of The Velvet Underground and Nico
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPwCSem3cUQ

I believe somewhere in this 11-part interview, Mo claims to have not known the band was influential until the mid'80s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdV_THMjeKk#at=77

Mott the Hoople covered Sweet Jane on All the Young Dudes (1972). so no

I dunno, I didn't have a problem finding/buying the VU & BS albums in the early-mid '80s, but then I was going to school, then working, in NYC.

I saw Chilton at Folk City (a $3 night booked by Ira Kaplan) circa '85, maybe, and I'm p sure the audience knew those BS records well.

ha well, half the people in the audience at folk city that night were probably interviewed for the documentary.

from quite early on, Big Star were always a biggish cult band in UK and European music-hipster circles - music journalist Max Bell wrote a 4-part story on them in 1978 for the NME - and by the time i was buying albs in the mid 1980s most big star and chilton-related discs were pretty easy to find in london (and there's that great 1980 live in london alb recorded at dingwalls in camden).

xpost But Mott had that direct Bowie connection as well, at the exact same time. Bowie gets massive credit for being the first to glom onto the VU, but again, he was part of that scene. Big Star couldn't have been farther from that scene.

Who was the first to cover Big Star? Replacements? Bangles?

Michael Jackson

there have been bands that critics liked more than audiences basically for as long as there were professional rock reviewers. but what i'm kind of curious about re: big star is that the hype seems to have been that they WOULD have been huge (at least on the first two albums). That rather than them being a challenge to the audience, the audience would have eaten them up if only they'd hear them. I know around the same time Xgau cracks that the Move's "Do Ya" was "rated single of the year in the rock press, apparently the only place it was distributed," so whether or not Big Star was the first critics fave to be presented this way, they're definitely one of the more enduring of the first class.

actually, I think Todd Abramson had take over booking the indie-darling sets from Ira K by '85 at Folk City

Big Star couldn't have been farther from that scene
well i dunno, they covered "Baby Strange"

xposts EMI reissued the first two lps in Britain as a double album just prior to Bell's death, bringing to mind Xgau's definition of a "legend in one's time" (which he said re:the New York Dolls, who got a similar reissue treatment at the same time).

Who was the first to cover Big Star? Replacements? Bangles?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 28, 2013 12:25 PM (19 minutes ago)

1979, Australia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOsO3Ib2Wzk

Wanna say that Game Theory might have been the first US band?

db's probably had some big star in their repertoire early on, right?

I dunno, I didn't have a problem finding/buying the VU & BS albums in the early-mid '80s, but then I was going to school, then working, in NYC.

All the VU records (except for Loaded which, bizarrely, never went out of print) were reissued in 1985 so yeah, those were easy to find then.

Some Big Star was available on import in the US, but not that easy to find (and pricey if you did find it).

Big Star couldn't have been farther from that scene
well i dunno, they covered "Baby Strange"

I meant literally far from that scene. Think there were a lot of T. Rex or Lou Reed records in Memphis record stores in the early '70s? Maybe. I've talked to a lot of people 10 years older than me who grew up in the midwest or the south beholden entirely to what would be played on AM radio. That's the Replacements in a nutshell: they grew up listening to AM radio, and became what they became when they later bumped up against hip stuff like Big Star and Johnny Thunders and the Only Ones.

I don't get the Bowie/Mott dismissal. Technically they were even FARTHER away from the VU scene than Big Star was, what with the whole Atlantic Ocean thing. Bowie rescued Reed's career and was the first high-profile booster of the Velvets.

bang a Gong was top 10 single in the US in 1971. Walk On the Wild Side was top 20 in '72.

Some gays are always on the lookout for cultural totems who aren't Liberace.

^choice

xp i've lost track of what exactly we're arguing -- i'm going to say that while both bands were obscure, big star were more obscure. based on extensive research!
more interesting thing maybe is when the college rock/indie "canon" started to come into place and be solidified ... i guess it probably has to do with REM interviews.

woah! that garagey r&b VU cover is amazing! yardbirds covered VU live too. an early VU covers comp could be cool.

not vu, but an early lou/cale song if I recall correctly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyaus17wWZ4

here ya go - http://www.philxmilstein.com/probe/index.htm#session419

covers of VU material during VU lifetime:
1. The Banana: There She Goes Again
2. David Bowie: I'm Waiting For The Man
3. The Riats: Run Run Run
4. The Riats: Sunday Morning
5. The Yardbirds: Smokestack Lightning/I'm Waiting For The Man

early VU ref. in song:
6. David Bowie with The Riot Squad: Little Toy Soldier

alt. VUs:
Oklahoma:
7. Velvet Underground Ltd. of Enid, Okla.: Correct Me
8. Velvet Underground Ltd. of Enid, Okla.: Why Don't You Love Me

Australia:
9. Velvet Underground: Somebody To Love
10. Velvet Underground: She Comes In Colours