Alex Chilton S&D

"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

William Eggleston^

Love that 96 Tears

Tav is in the replies saying that the 96 Tears was filmed at his house in Memphis (perhaps filmed by Tav himself?)

Those '60s super villain sunglasses...

otm

Always a good time to reshare this clip...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPl4_vQ9vZo

Was wondering when that was coming.

Oh sorry, I was thinking of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-k32L0KCc

Yeah, there are some decent live Chilton sets around some of them legit-released, as mentioned upthread--- otherwise, for instance somewhere I've got a good radio tape (an aircheck, like in jazz) of him on some Public Radio show (if it's Mountain Stage, might be in their online archives, if they still have those), performing originals, Memphis covers, also some of his favorite Italian pop ballads, adept guitar picking, geniality.
Legit-release/YouTube-wise, one of my fave raves is Live In London, with Morris Windsor and RIP Matthew Seligman of Soft Boys, Knox of the Vibrators---supposedly, somebody showed up at his place of dishwashing business, presented him with a round-trip ticket, and said, "You *are* going to do this." Oh ok go.

I still need to check this---from Xgau's site:
Ocean Club '77 [Norton, 2015]
Chilton's 1977 NYC residency fell apart before the year was over, but it began on a high--the young punk/alt godfather gigging amongst us, nowhere more mythically than at his February 21-22 engagement at Mickey Ruskin's short-lived, way-downtown successor to Max's Kansas City. I attended the first of these shows, and it was incandescent--jammed, noisy, charged with ambient adrenaline. Even a quality recording like this one can't capture such an up, but you can definitely hear a more raucous, confident, and engaged Chilton than was his quirky norm. The 16-song set leads with the brand new "All of the Time," includes five loud Big Star covers plus a rough-hewn reading of the Box Tops smash "The Letter," introduces Chilton's great nonhit "My Rival," and covers the Ventures, the Beach Boys, the Seeds, and Chuck Berry's "Memphis." Cult history is being made. Of course we were psyched. A-

I had that set on some late 90s bootleg, it's pretty great.

some version of it is on Spotify

More videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaOstl-eQ6I
@BigStarBand

@OmnivoreRecords

@rebel7449 or post even more of your favs here, of course.

I wonder if writer Robert Gordon's new updated version of his book "It Came from Memphis" has new details and stories on Alex Chilton?

Hm. Updated you say?

He would have been 70 yesterday.

from ilxor tylerw's crucial blog (yes still a few):

https://64.media.tumblr.com/84b6815f9035ec678ca1f8f5339b1855/7593e9061c0cd0a6-ea/s1280x1920/05ca7825489dfc281a943f45f09983e1a235fe14.jpg

Here’s something unusual — and uncirculated, perhaps — to get your day started. An audio verité document of the one and only Alex Chilton playing records late into the night at a pal’s loft back in ‘77.
https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/640752212251983872/alex-chilton-richard-freys-loft-246-bowery

@tywilc

Replying to
@williamtylertn
and
@jasonpwoodbury
let's just say that Alex REALLY liked The Beach Boys Love You.

It Csmr from Memphis Robert Gordon book reading event with Ann Powers tonight may touch on Chilton. Thursday Jan 21 6 pm central which I guess is 7 pm eastern, on Facebook

https://fb.me/e/1SC0LQXXA