Big Star

Starting Third with anything other than "Stroke it, Noel" is like starting Sgt. Pepper with "Sgt. Pepper (reprise)."

sez the guy who doesn't want "Waiting for the Man" as the 2nd track of VU & Nico! (i kid, i kid)

I love that there's no agreed upon order.

xp haha, I know

I love that there's no agreed upon order.

― campreverb, Wednesday, October 21, 2015 11:51 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what if there was, like, some recording technology where you could, like, program an album to play in any order you wanted? and you could effortlessly skip back and forth among the songs?

i daren't dream...

there's something akin to that in live performances but the performers always get irrationally angry when you tell them which song comes up next in their set

in my version of "third" i've retained the pvc track order but i swapped the first and second verses of "o, dana."

no one has a CD player anymore, amateurist, it's all cassettes and vinyls

You can still do shuffle/programming with vinyl. Since vinyl purists like to talk about how fun it is to get up and turn over the record, it stands to reason that getting up every 3-4 minutes to put the needle on a different song would be even more fun.

no one has a CD player anymore, amateurist, it's all cassettes and vinyls

― tylerw, Wednesday, October 21, 2015 3:16 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually, i'm an all-flexidisc household these days

flexis have that thin, brittle sound we all love.
did anyone get that 3rd "test pressing" that came out on RSD a few years ago? http://www.discogs.com/Big-Star-Third-Test-Pressing-Edition/release/3234763
collector scum bait or actually worth hearing?

*shivers*
The new pressing was cut from the original assembly reel, on the same lathe at the legendary Ardent Studios in Memphis and by the very same engineers who cut it the first time, Larry Nix and John Fry. Pressed on high quality vinyl at RTI, this is the definitive version of this album.

Thee Correct track sequence, hallelujah!

prix archival reissue is coming out on vinyl. tommy hoehn + alex + chris.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GKHla--bjY

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/v/t1.0-9/12019923_10153205040902503_7872205233980864499_n.jpg?oh=dad863f5b67968260fb1f52d9d574d79&oe=56C2622D

there was a japanese cd, but this new vinyl has extra stuff...

i have some enormous (and incredible) many-disc Big Star 'n' friends boot that has almost all that prix stuff (along with many other side projects, post-BS bands, solo Alex and Chris, etc. etc.). nice to see some of this get official release.

So what do the Prix trax sound like, are they good? I think of Tiven as a producer and sometime-songwriter, not a performer.

it sounds like tommy hoehn basically. which is a good thing. click the youtube link above.

chris bell played a big part in those sessions. producing and playing. so if you are a bell fan, you need that stuff.

i'm a hoehn fan. and a van duren fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBWj6mSyDhg

and a hot dogs fan...

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

Yep, Chilton and Prix trax on Ork box do sound fine.
New uniform for Ardent Studio staff:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbDcr0DUMAA16Ag.jpg

If that's gone, it's a pair of feet sporting custom Converses w Big Star logo on the hi-toppermost

you know Alex Chilton would have just loved that

Those $70 Shoes...

Those Pretty Wrongs feat. Jody Stephens of Big Star announces debut LP

STREAM: "Ordinary" -
Pitchfork / SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/those-pretty-wrongs/01-ordinary

Those Pretty Wrongs are Jody Stephens and Luther Russell, two old friends and veterans of the music scene in different ways.

Jody-as many people in rock and roll (and beyond) know-was the drummer for the legendary band Big Star. He went on to help run the equally legendary studio Ardent in Memphis and play with the endearing troop Golden Smog. Luther Russell was the leader of seminal roots-rock band The Freewheelers and went on to make several acclaimed solo records, as well as produce many important artists over the years. Together they have forged a sound that is brand new for both, yet begets a strangely familiar feeling...

It was the documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me that brought Jody and Luther together creatively, when Jody asked Luther to join him for some promotional performances. A chemistry was immediately noticed. They began writing songs and performing them whenever possible, soon taking their name from the opening line of Shakespeare Sonnet 41, which they slipped into one of their first collaborations, "Fool Of Myself". A relationship was soon struck up with underground SoCal label (and two-man revolution) Burger Records when the first track they cut in Memphis, "Lucky Guy", was sent to Sean and Lee, who jumped at the chance to release it as a 7", along with the aforementioned "Fool Of Myself" for the flip side. There was an outpouring of support for the new music, which gave Jody and Luther the confidence to move forward. Regarding how this all came together, Jody declares: "In a word...serendipity. So many of the events that brought Luther and me together were just by chance and born out of the Big Star world. I actually thought we might write three or four songs together for an EP but we just kept writing beyond that. 'Another window opened up and through it' we became Those Pretty Wrongs."

Those Pretty Wrongs was tracked entirely to 2" tape at Ardent in Memphis, using much of the old Big Star gear, including Jody's original kit from Radio City and Third and Chris Bell's acoustic and electric guitars from #1 Record. The album was mixed by Luther Russell and Jason Hiller at Hiller's Electrosound Studios in Los Angeles, CA. Crucially, Jody is way out in front on this release-really for the first time ever-taking all lead vocals and co-writing all of the songs with Luther. The songs range from the elegiac "Lucky Guy"-which some have described as the boy from "Thirteen" all grown up-to the marimba-laced, circus-like "The Cube". Soaring, heart-felt ballads like "Start Again" and "The Heart" mingle with songs with an almost Merseybeat-like combination of simplicity and complexity, such as "I'm For Love" and "Never Goodbye"-a number on which they went for a "busking in the train-station" quality with brushes on the snare and cascading 12-string acoustic guitar. As with all the songs, airy, light harmonies abound, making for a bittersweet sound all their own. Besides tunes with these more self-evident touchstones, there is the baroque rocker "Thrown Away", mod-like jangler "Mystery Trip" and a moment of cinematic grandeur on the exotic, piano-driven "Empty City".

Opener "Ordinary" is really the statement of purpose for the duo. Regarding the song, Luther says: "For me, the song has a message that is very timely in today's age where everyone has to be 'special' and 'different'. It says its okay to be ordinary. That's a beautiful sentiment that Jody came up with...that the space between us all, that connection, is what is extraordinary." With it's shimmering, ascending/descending acoustics and sky-high clusters of harmonies, "Ordinary" was nearly the title-track to the LP, but they opted to self-title it, because it felt like the beginning of something. Through the words on this record Jody opens up about his life, which has been well-documented, but not in this very intimate way. Adds Stephens: "For me the lyrics are a walk through day-to-day emotions and experiences."

Luther lives in Los Angeles and Jody in Memphis, so the commitment had to be strong to persevere in composing these songs and cutting them until they were completely satisfied. Those Pretty Wrongs will be released in May in a unique partnering between the classic Ardent label and the burgeoning Burger Records. No one could be happier than Jody and Luther, who feel that this keeps a family-like feeling to the release. "Why stop now", remarks Luther. "We've wanted to keep this thing sounding and feeling personal from the start because it's extremely personal for both of us." Thus they've tailored every aspect of the project themselves: from producing, writing and playing much of the instrumentation to the design itself (Luther hand-draws the artwork). Those Pretty Wrongs is like a homespun arabesque with a pattern of many lyrical, melodic and harmonic lines to discover. Just like the handmade collage inside the LP, the record is akin to a series of snapshots: of lives present and past, and fleeting moments of simple joy and reflection.

"Those Pretty Wrongs is so much more than the two of us", states Jody affectionately. "We were jump-started by friends who produced the Big Star documentary. Friends have helped book and play with us live and in the studio...not to mention providing the studios. Friends also provided accommodations and encouragement by coming out to hear the music. They have cared. We are grateful for them and hope to make more."


TOUR DATES:

Mar-21 - Melbourne, Australia - Melbourne Recital Centre *
Mar-22 - Sydney, Australia - The Factory *
Mar-23 - Sydney, Australia - Petersham Bowling Club
Mar-24 - Melbourne, Australia - The Gasometer
Mar-26 - Tallarook, Australia - Boogie Festival

Ardent Studios: 50 years of Music History at The Grammy Museum in L.A.

discussion, performance??
Mot seeing specifics re participants yet yet, but can sign up for fbook updates, follow their twitter feed etc.:
http://www.axs.com/events/312478/ardent-studios-50-years-of-music-history-tickets?ref=edp_twpost

Can click on where that image of thee Converses w Big Star logo was originally posted, and seeee---but I'll try it again
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbDcr0DUMAA16Ag.jpg

Thought the revive would be about this: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/big-stars-classic-third-receives-massive-reissue-w434438

feel like "massive" is being misused here. three discs is massive?
interested to hear all the unreleased mixes, but this is definitely hitting the bottom of the big star barrel isn't it?

gotta click to view that one too---anyway, looking fwd to comments by Chilton's bodyguard herein:

BIG STAR’S COMPLETE THIRD ALBUM
COMING IN 3-CD SET
FROM OMNIVORE RECORDINGS ON OCTOBER 14

Set includes every demo, rough mix, alternate take and final master known to exist, plus extensive liner notes from original participants and artists deeply influenced by Big Star, as well as many previously unseen photos.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — After a nearly decade-long search for unheard session recordings from Big Star’s Third LP, the results are finally in. Recorded in 1974 but not released for the first time until 1978, Third would be subsequently re-released, renamed and re-sequenced many times over the years. While some demos and alternate versions and mixes of songs have dribbled out on various compilations, all extant recordings made for the famed album are presented for the first time on Complete Third, due out on Omnivore Recordings on October 14, 2016.

The definitive collection boasts 69 total tracks, 29 of which are previously unheard session recordings, demos and alternate mixes made by producer Jim Dickinson and engineer John Fry. The set allows the listener to track the creation of the album from the original demos, through sessions and rough mixes, to the final masters of each song.

Besides the contextualizing main essay from journalist/A&R executive Bud Scoppa, extensive notes from original participants and artists influenced by Big Star are also included: Jody Stephens (Big Star), Mary Lindsay Dickinson (widow of producer Jim Dickinson), Mitch Easter (Let’s Active), Adam Hill (Ardent staff producer), Elizabeth A. Hoehn, Susanna Hoffs and Debbi Peterson (The Bangles), Peter Holsapple (The dB’s), Gary Louris (The Jayhawks), Mike
Mills (R.E.M.), Cheryl Pawelski (Omnivore Recordings), Pat Rainer (Memphis photographer/friend of band), Danny Graflund (Alex Chilton’s bodyguard), Jeff Rougvie (former Rykodisc A&R), Pat Sansone (Wilco), Chris Stamey (The dB’s), John Stirratt (Wilco), Ken Stringfellow (The Posies, Big Star), and Steve Wynn (The Dream Syndicate).

Initially, the collection will be released in a 3-CD box set and digitally with three separate double LPs to follow at a later date, each vinyl volume representing a CD in the boxed set.

From Bud Scoppa’s liner notes: “The small but rabid cult of Big Star, composed initially of rock critics and hometown Memphis hipsters, coalesced
around 1972’s #1 Record, which supercharged the legacy of the Beatles and the Byrds, and 1974’s Radio City, which brought additional attitude and poignancy to the recipe. The shimmering brilliance of Big Star’s sound and songs on those two LPs, along with its underdog allure, would have been sufficient to perpetuate the band’s legend. But there was a third album, and that strange beast of a record made all the difference for subsequent generations of fans — many of whom formed bands of their own — who turned each other on to this music as if it were a secret religion or a trippy new drug.”

Ardent Studios' Adam Hill wrote: “Ask any of the original participants who made the record, and none of them would say they expected this album to even see a real release, much less end up on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 best albums of all time . . . It’s an amazing snapshot of the artists and the times and circumstances in which the recordings were made. It’s a great testament to Third that an album that almost nobody was interested in at the time of its pressing, is now loved and sought out by an ever growing legion of fans. I guess that’s called ‘ahead of its time.’”

And finally, surviving Big Star member Jody Stephens recalls the time and place: “At the time of the recording, everyone’s emotions were forefront . . . is uncertainty an emotion? We were responding to Alex’s mood both in song and conversation. All my time spent in the studio for Third was in the company of John (Fry) and Jim (Dickinson) as well as Alex. I heard stories of maudlin scenes that happened after hours but never really witnessed them. But I did witness Alex, Jim, and John, and the sometimes easy and sometimes uneasy interaction among us all. Through it all, Jim and John were brilliant and reassuring.”

Track listing:
VOL 1: DEMOS TO SESSIONS TO ROUGHS
1. Like St. Joan (Kanga Roo) * (Demo)
2. Lovely Day (Demo)
3. Downs (Demo)
4. Femme Fatale (Demo)
5. Thank You Friends (Demo)
6. Holocaust (Demo)
7. Jesus Christ (Demo)
8. Blue Moon (Demo)
9. Nightime (Demo)
10. Take Care (Demo)
11. Big Black Car (Demo #2/Acoustic Take 1)
12. Don’t Worry Baby
13. I’m In Love With A Girl *
14. Big Black Car (Demo #3/Acoustic Take 2)
15. I’m So Tired * – Alex & Lesa
16. That’s All It Took * – Alex & Lesa
17. Pre-Downs *
18. Baby Strange *
19. Big Black Car (Demo #1/Band)
20. Kizza Me * (Dickinson Rough Mix/Alex Guide Vocal)
21. Till the End Of the Day * (Dickinson Rough Mix/Alex Guide Vocal, Kept As Final Vocal)
22. Thank You Friends * (Dickinson Rough Mix/Alex Guide Vocal)
23. O, Dana * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
24. Dream Lover * (Dickinson Rough Mix)

VOL. 2: ROUGHS TO MIXES
1. Big Black Car * (Dickinson Rough Mix/Alex Guide Vocal)
2. Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
3. Take Care * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
4. Holocaust * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
5. Nightime * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
6. Thank You Friends * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
7. Nature Boy * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
8. After Hours * – Lesa
9. Stroke It Noel (Backwards Intro)
10. Lovely Day * (Fry Rough Mix)
11. Nightime * (Fry Rough Mix)
12. Blue Moon * (Fry Rough Mix)
13. Till The End Of The Day (Alternate Mix #1)
14. Big Black Car (Fry Rough Mix)
15. Holocaust (Fry Alternate/Rough Mix)
16. Downs * (Fry Rough Mix)
17. Kanga Roo (Fry Rough Mix)
18. Femme Fatale * (Fry Rough Mix)
19. For You * (Alternate Version/Alex Vocal)
20. Thank You Friends * (Fry Rough Mix)
21. Take Care * (Alternate Version/Alex Vocal)
22. Kizza Me * (Fry Rough Mix)
23. Till the End Of the Day (FRY Rough Mix #2) – Lesa
24. Nature Boy (Fry Rough Mix)
25. Mañana

VOL. 3: FINAL MASTERS
1. Stroke It Noel
2. Downs
3. Femme Fatale
4. Thank You Friends
5. Holocaust
6. Jesus Christ
7. Blue Moon
8. Kizza Me
9. For You
10. O, Dana
11. Nightime
12. Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On
13. Kanga Roo
14. Take Care
15. Big Black Car
16. Dream Lover
17. You Can’t Have Me
18. Till the End Of the Day
19. Lovely Day
20. Nature Boy
* Previously Unissued
# # #

Brooklyn Vegan broke the news and premiered a previously unreleased demo: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/big-stars-third-deluxe-box-set-coming-in-october-listen-to-like-st-joan-kanga-roo-demo/

Please watch (and feel free to post) the Big Star trailer: http://youtu.be/DID1xdLt2l0

XP Just you wait 'til they unleash the 12-disc In Space Sessions Mega-Set!

Sorry, my press release paste didn't add shit beyond the Rolling Stone link (and my "gotta click to view that one too" refers to attempted repost of thee shoes sporting Big Star logo)

It's weird with releases like this that kind of press the "archivist" button in my brain. I couldn't imagine finding much of deep interest in the working tracks for an album which is a bit of a curate's egg (e.g. I passionately dislike "Jesus Christ" and the studiously correct French of "elle était une femme fatale") but there is a little voice saying "I better get this so that I have a complete 1970s Big Star archive."

ill the End Of the Day

Yes

yes, it was on the Ryko reissue

xp

Now all I need to complete the triple is a Kinks recording for which I can ask "is that a Steely Dan cover?"

Here ya go, JR:

http://i.imgur.com/NZUQnPI.jpg

:)

I didn't see much use to the Big Star box that came out a few years ago--apart from Chris Bell's "Country Morn" lyric, a.k.a. "Watch the Sunrise," and the Chilton demos, which could've been one disc, it didn't really say much to me. The live 1973 set just proved to me that they weren't a very good live band, even then exhibiting that Chiltonian offhandedness and almost-good revamping of outside material (almost a good version of "Hot Burrito #2," but in the end, it just needed more than drum wallop and half-assed rhythm guitar). But maybe the graverobbing here for the third album will mean something, hard to say, since it was their most studio-manipulated record in every way and the one that most benefited from the tension between naturalistic performance and expressionistic music. I've watched a lot of live stuff from Chilton lately via Youtube and so far I've not found one performance that was really good all the way thru, though I remember a Nashville show around 1986 that seemed particularly committed--good version of "The In Crowd"--and so I kind of think that yes, the myth of Big Star really is a myth, an example of someone whose talents (Alex) were always a bit just beyond his ability to really find a suitable form for. Chris Bell was far too immersed in being the Beatles or the Creation or whoever it was that he visualized moderately rocking on a foggy morn in a fsr-off land to suffer from the same, what could I call it, indecision that Alex always had. Seeing him many times, I always got the feeling: this guy doesn't really know how he feels about what he's doing, and the Italisn covers and the Danny Pearson astrology song and the licks that almost coalesce, and the insistence on delving into hoary rock-and-roll history via schlock covers of "Satisfaction" and Charlie Rich were all just smokescreens. You'd go along with it, you'd recognize the real skill he had as a great rhythm guitarist and a great singer (in a way--his ability to really hold the notes decreased as he smoked all those American Spirits and all that weed, a real shame given what he did on the Big Star records and intermittently, on the Elektra demo "She Might Look My Way," probably the best post-Big Star recording he ever did), but then it would inevitably give off a Bad Aura. Mannerism pure and simple. No other performer I ever saw exuded such a duality of purpose. He played his guitar way too loud all over the Hi Rhythm Section in 1999 in Memphis, and did "Big Boss Man." A waste of the nuance that the Hodges brothers could bring, but then he was happy playing Huey Piano Smith covers, just his guitar, on a 1998 date with Davis Rogan in New Orleans.
The third Big Star record was the first one I ever heard, the wrong side as a matter of fact: "Da da da, da da da, da da da da," it went, what the fuck is this, and then "Jesus Christ." I mentioned nuance above, and that's what the third album is about, and suggestiveness, too. Who was this guy playing this guitar stuff on "You Can't Have Me" and "Thank You Friends," who was this singer on "O, Dana" and "Nightime," and where did they get those strings? There's a heroic dimension to the third record that's a result of a cutoff point imposed by Dickinson and Fry--enough, this is enough, let's make sure Alex doesn't turn it into another example of his inability to commit, his inability to cop to the little pop fantasy world he wants to live in, all Jan and Dean and offhand remarks and backlit abandoned movie sets. Dickinson was right: it was the last time Alex did the thing for real, and part of its power is how you can hear him overcome that ambivalence on virtually every song on the record. Then, when Alex finally emerged a decade later, the movie set had been dismantled. His later stuff is Mr. Arkadin versus Kane and Ambersons, or maybe Edgar Ulmer versus Fritz Lang. So maybe the new box will shed some light on all that, but I doubt it.

The Chilton acoustic demos were my favorite thing about that last Big Star box set -- I think even with the Sister Lovers stuff, it showed off the overall intentionality and craft that went into those songs. And I enjoy the 1973 live tape, though it is ragged in parts. I don't know, I'm lookin forward to hearing this new set, but yeah, there is something that feels a little like they can give the Big Star legacy a rest after this.

Wow, Edd Hurt goes to the head of the class yet again.

otm - edd should write a Chilton book

I agree, the live 1973 set has its allure. I just wish someone had recorded the 4-piece live, who knows what they could've sounded like. Bell was such a creature of the studio, though. Really a shame that he couldn't have stuck around to play for the people.
Over the years, I've gotten to know Jon Tiven, whose work for various soul and r&b performers I've often taken issue with, and whose view of Chilton and Bell, and the Big Star story, is jaundiced, to say the least. Of course, the stuff Tiven did with Chilton is not completely awful, but it's not really all that good, except for a few things that ended up on that long-ago Singer Not the Song EP. Tiven tried to turn Alex into a "tuneful" power pop singer when Alex was already in the throes of doing stuff like "The Walking Dead" and the weird mono-chord version of "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" he did at Ardent around 1975. I like Jon as a person, and I think he likes me and has some kind of respect for what I do, but I've always defended the third Big Star album in the face of what Jon says, which is that all Alex was doing was ripping off Lou Reed. Lou Reed never had the access to the pop sensibility that Alex dismantles, and exalts, on the third album.
I don't think anyone really gets at this stuff with Big Star or with Alex, at least not in any form you could sit down and read. A lot of people sense what I said above, that there was something off about Alex's work after 1974. He could have so easily gotten in with a real producer and made some real records after he came back in 1984, it seems to me, even given his bad reputation among record-label folk. It's a real shame that his guitar style wasn't used in a more expansive context, by someone who could get to the avant-skronk-jazz-R&B thing he almost does in so many of his performances. Something like "Don't Stop" on his 1995 album almost gets there, as does maybe "What's Your Sign Girl." Almost. It's the fantasy world of pop that Alex lived in that maybe got in the way, which isn't to say that I don't love what he did with Brian Wilson's "Solar System" or Goffin-King's "Let Me Get Close to You" or Penn's "Nobody's Fool," the latter which could've been so great had it only been produced.
I'll be interested to see how the press interprets this new box. No doubt the same platitudes will be trotted out. As with something like Orson Welles' first movie, the third Big Star album was quite well understood in 1978 when it appeared--Creem got it, and it was probably from that review that we all went out and bought it, before we got that U.K. reissue of the first two albums.
Maybe there's something like a book in all this, I don't know. I always felt, for better or worse, that I understood what Chilton was trying to do, because I shared his ambivalent feelings about pop and its relationship to "progressive" music and the more conservative impulses of pre-1960 popular music. But it took me years to comprehend just how twisted he must have been by his family trauma and the fact that he never really had an adolescence. Or how soul-sucking it must have been to have achieved success, only to doubt your own involvement in it and fear that no one would take you seriously. Perhaps this is why he never could really collaborate--when he did, with Bell and with Chris Stamey on the nice "Summer Sun" single in the '70s, the results could've been amazing. And I like to contrast the non-work ethic of Chilton with the discipline of Marshall Crenshaw, the one figure in the era who is most like Alex, and who never gave up trying. So while I think the third Big Star album is one of the greatest records of all time, I wonder sometimes why people keep on digging into this Big Star stuff, perhaps it's not healthy. If I had the opportunity to write about all this, I'd do it, but god only knows who would be interested after that Holly George-Warren book (which has its merits but doesn't delve into the music as much as maybe it could).

xpost O yes, and he has written so much already over the many years since his AC interview; here's one of my fave raves: http://www.nashvillescene.com/music/article/13012262/mod-lang As always, a trove of insights, about the man, the band, the roots and influence, down through thee ages---also, as in this latest post, he can write as a frustrated fan, but/and also also, what he mentions in "Mod Lang" piece as "desiccated glamour" accurately reflects continued appeal: the way success and failure, attraction and repulsion etc go 2gether like flies on sherbet. If you came across him in a "rock novel", of course you'd say, "Oh no, fuck another 'rock novel'!" But the musical reality is skeezy-plus compensation, often enough, I think.
Ditto somewhat dodgy, campy but always listenable and sometimes rockin' OUT live solo tapes I have, from an early-ish 80s ("still haven't paid by the Bangles") Tuscaloosa dive, somewhat later Public Radio, etc. (ditto the radio interviews, outtakes etc. Edd long ago sent me, on tapes labelled as Memphis Oblique.)

I don't recall the specific 70s Creem review Edd refers to, although they were republishing xgau's Consumer Guide columns from the Voice, so their coverage prob incl. this:

Third [PVC, 1978]
In late 1974, Alex Chilton--already the inventor of self-conscious power pop--transmogrified himself into some hybrid of Lou Reed (circa The Velvet Underground and/or Berlin) and Michael Brown (circa "Walk Away, Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina"). This is the album that resulted--fourteen songs in all, only two or three of which wander off into the psycho ward. Halting, depressive, eccentrically shaped, it will seem completely beyond the pale to those who already find his regular stuff weird. I think it's prophetically idiosyncratic and breathtakingly lyrical. A-

Dunno how much of the pop elements in VU records came from Cale and Yule (though some Reed-only copyrights are lyrical and/or popwise as hell); dunno how much of Left Banke came from Michael Brown's Dad, Harry Lookofsky, who later did some deft string arrangements for Blood Sweat & Tears' first (Al Kooper-Brecker-Brothers, etc. era) garishly engaging LP, also Quincy Jones' Sounds...And Stuff Like That!. Really want to check his own Stringville
Xgau also liked the live-in-Missouri Big Star 2.0 album, and I go him one better by even liking In Space

The sometimes-but-not-always soggy solo saga!
http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Alex+Chilton

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