Alex Chilton S&D

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