Big Star

i mean the beatles were liberating to a whole host of musicians but most of em probably don't sound like the beatles

but "influence" is an overused critical heuristic anyway, where's mark sinker when you need him?

the acoustic guitars at the opening of "unsatisfied" owe everything to big star IMO

wonderful song btw, worth listening to again :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU6IndADEWI

i hear the strong open major key jangle and vox of radio city in early-mid rem (xp). 'radio-free europe'. also 'thirteen' in lots of indie pop. elliott smith maybe exists in a parallel dimension, idk. sort of think it's more about the vibe and context than the music per se for many kewl bands and albums.

I think with REM just the basic concept of an artsy Southern band playing jangly pop owes something to Big Star. I mean, what other precedents are there really.

From the time pre-Big Star was in high school (also dropping out, in Chilton's case),'til they first got together, the Beatles were saturating the market--would've been flooding it, if they were anybody else---but somehow it worked, because they also tried their best to keep up the quality, even raising or at least shifting the bar: you just never knew quite what the next single, much less LP might be like. And this despite increasing rumors of discord---so Chilton, already the jaded/jaundiced vet, might've been encouraged to try and get *something* remarkable done, no matter how much of a difficult kindred spirit Bell obviously was.

Is part of their influence keeping the mid-60s Beatles/Byrds/Kinks strain of rock 'alive' to the next generation? I've been thinking about this while listening to Big Star concurrently with the classic rock poll, that they really were an "alternative" to the Southern/boogie-rock, prog, and metal emerging at this time. And they seem aesthetically distinct from the Laurel Canyon/LA singer-songwriter scene in certain ways as well--less folky and slick, a little more angsty.

I mean, they're this band who writes songs that are jangly and catchy but also still have a certain level of aggressiveness (not as "smooth" as the LA scene), and that seems like a direct influence on, say, R.E.M. and a number of their contemporaries.

Yeah, Radio City really pushes beyond *relatively* mellow #1. And of course Third/Sister Lover pushes (incl. luck) even further.

Actually I'm pretty sure this is where Paul nicked Unsatisfied from-check out the :10 chord changes in particular.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUFuJQATLZA

@dow agree on Radio City. A shambling, angry/defeated song like "Life is White" seems pretty close to the Replacements in tone.

Actually I'm pretty sure this is where Paul nicked Unsatisfied from-check out the :10 chord changes in particular.

wait this sounds exactly like some Faces song

You Wear It Well... I think?

Yep, at :47 here: http://youtu.be/rsqKdZ3JZ2k

obviously Westerberg was a fan of all three bands so whatever but I was momentarily shocked by the possibility that anyone in KISS ever had an actually creative musical idea

Actually I'm pretty sure this is where Paul nicked Unsatisfied from-check out the :10 chord changes in particular.

ha you might be right! nice call. i still think the whole musical approach of the replacements' song owes a lot to BS.

listening to Radio City right now, still rocks

box set seems to no longer be on Spotify though, kind of a bummer

amateurist-certainly seems possible, and if so, for me that makes me love it even more.

When Borders went under, I was always saddened most when I'd be in a store on the last or next to last day before closing and find amongst the last CDs in stock the Big Star box sitting alone on a shelf.

I read a galley of the book in February. I have long known of but have never met nor ever corresponded with Ms G-W, although know a shit-ton of people who do and have. I have never thought she was particularly insightful vis-a-vis what she was writing about: she hacked that shit out. but it always been clear she was very well connected.

She sez in the book that she was around Alex a number of times in the last, oh I don't know, 30 years. and I will mention that my wife, who works at an outlet that received the galley provided to me, told me that Chilton's widow, who evidently only knew him for a relatively short time and is much much younger than he, wrote to my wife's outlet to say, well, fuck HGW, who the fuck does she think she is, I'm his widow, etc.

I only have the galley, with contains no reference, so I can't say how HGW cites all the shit she does. but she did a great fucking job, despite that the WSJ dude correctly points out that she is no wordsmith (for all I know, she has no aspiration as such). But yeah, there's no doubt that the book encompasses every single facet of the guy's life, background, artistry, radio interviews, attitude towards booze, drugs, his legacy, pussy…it would have been beneficial were I to know just how HGW knew all this shit, tho.

I had long suspected that the milieu in which he came up, upper crust Memphis which WSJ guy and HGW reference but which I have no first hand knowledge of, was similar to the one which I grew up in, Louisville KY, which isn't far away. Probly the two are largely consonant w/r/t to music culture, and how privileged people become artists because they can in both places, etc etc… Chilton's experience is one I recognize, probly just by proximity.

I hear R&B in Chilton's vocals. One of the pluses of the otherwise diffuse and muddled 33 1/3 book about Dusty in Memphis is its explanation of how this Wexler-Mardin ethos drew towards itself the tight rhythm of Stax. When I hear "September Gurls" Chilton's vocals sound like he's invoking Dusty Springfield more than the Beatles.

in fact Dusty could have done a fantastic version of "September Gurls."

i adore both chilton and dusty but there's a... diffidence and strain to Chilton's Big Star vocals that seems a world away from dusty.

also key to his vocals (and their charm) is the combo of chilton's strange, effeminate mid-south drawl and his faux british accent.

i have a bunch of radio shows that chilton did in the 70s and 80s and it's delightful to just listen to him speak, what a weirdo.

he has the best voice

more like big fart

A chance to post this again, don't mind if I do!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-k32L0KCc

amateurist otm

what a weirdo
think this is pretty key, really -- he was an odd guy to begin with, and he went through some even odder experiences. thing that bummed me out about the bio was how genuinely unhappy he was. i sort of figured people projected that on to him because of a record like sister lovers (even though the depressing nature of that record I think is kind of overstated). but he obviously was extremely troubled (at least throughout the 70s).

also key to his vocals (and their charm) is the combo of chilton's strange, effeminate mid-south drawl and his faux british accent.

He was a fabulous soul singer – and it's almost like those two voices were some weird metaphor for the guy who played by the rules of the industry (confidence and bravado) and didn't (vulnerability and emotional).

i adore both chilton and dusty but there's a... diffidence and strain to Chilton's Big Star vocals that seems a world away from dusty.

― I dunno. (amateurist), F

I hope I was clear when I made the Dusty comparison that I didn't mean they sounded like each other: I heard similarities in approaching particularly charged material.

I don't hear diffidence in "Kangaroo," "Big Black Car," or a few of the more fraught Third performances.

i do wonder if Chilton's effeminate speaking voice was a kind of (internalized) attempt to wind-up people, since it is pretty much the polar opposite of the deep-voiced, macho southern dude accent. I listen to interviews with him in the 1970s and I imagine that for many his intonations, etc. would have coded as gay.

i mean even if this is barking up the wrong tree, i think there's no question that his eccentricities were as cultivated as they were real. i don't mean that as a criticism.

when i do listen to those interviews there's something very modern about chilton's affectations: the drollness, the blank irony (is he being sarcastic or not?--it's often hard to tell), the almost Valley Girl-like elongation of end syllables (which again takes the southern drawl into places unknown). in general his hipster disaffection and contrarianism (even or especially to his fans/admirers) seems very modern. not to imply those things were unknown in the 1970s by any means, but to find them in this obscure Memphis boho cult power-pop rocker whose greatest passion was more obscure New Orleans 45s is pretty amazing. i think some of this frisson is captured in the tav falco TV appearance linked above.

greatest passion was FOR obscure New Orleans 45s

there's much we don't know or went unsaid about the Bell-Chilton relationship so

what, you think they could have been lovers? i think i've seen some (wild) speculation about that.

i think knowing a little about chilton's persona has helped me make sense of "like flies on sherbert" etc. the persona lends it a convinction and coherence. of course i don't know if it really was a product of half-assed, chaotic sessions or if it was put together to sound that way. or both. maybe the book has answers. i like that album a lot, though.

No, but all the evidence suggests much sexual tension. Who knows what signals were exchanged between two young and relatively good looking men with their talents.

yeah true dat

i feel like mid-period chilton (like flies on sherbert-->high priest) was groping for something really interesting that's barely tangible but still kind of elusive on the actual releases. like, a genuine breakthrough, a kind of self-consciously artless, lyrical primitivism that would actually be more fully realized by other folks. the closest analogue, other than tav falco/cramps, is i think moe tucker's solo stuff.

George Warren's book mentions that Chilton had a fling with a guy in the early 70s. and someone who worked with Chilton in the mid 70s, who despised him with visceral intensity in the aftermath through to the 90s, told me that AC wanted to swing with him and his girlfriend at the time.

So…I always thought that maybe the sensitive, star crossed, worried about his sexuality Bell was in love with the more feckless, devil may care AC. Very tempting to speculate that AC maybe teased him, or did get physical and then withdrew…and that this could be key to tensions that made the band what it was…note that none of the songs on #1 HR contain gender specific descriptors…

Plus "You Can't Have Me"! Not the kind of song I expect a man to write to a woman.

<i>i do wonder if Chilton's effeminate speaking voice</i>

haha, are you from the South? Chilton talks like most of the people I know from the mid-South, myself included.

the documentary was exceedingly (maybe excessively) careful in avoiding discussing these matters-- i think perhaps the participation of the bell family was contingent on them doing so

haha, are you from the South? Chilton talks like most of the people I know from the mid-South, myself included.

no, but my girlfriend is from tennessee and i've spent a lot of time there. chilton's voice is quite different, i think, from the usual. at least in a lot of the interviews i've heard.

"these matters" = bell's gayness, basically

yeah the doc at those moments sounded 10 seconds away from a lawsuit

The interview with Chilton I've listened to is the one on the Live record that came out from that 1974 radio show, and that just seems like a typical, languid drawl that I have heard everywhere from Mississippi to North Carolina.
put another way, it's not a Southern Sissy accent.

i'll see if i can find one of the interviews I have online, but it'll have to wait until i get home.