Big Star

on the box, the Chilton vox on "I Got Kinda Lost" are great.

lead vox, I should say

so does the box set have the fullness of the first two studio albums, in their correct orders?

― amateurist, Saturday, 19 September 2009 18:48 (Yesterday)

um, sort of... a bunch of tracks have been replaced with alternate versions but the running order is the same except for one Chris Bell song added near the end of Radio City. See here:

http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDetail.lasso?Number=519760

I don't think Sister Lovers ever really had a running order so I'm not sure about that, it looks different from the Ryko CD.

also "There Was A Light" with Chilton lead vox (and it's excellent; a demo sounding like a Sister Lovers outtake); so it has my four fav songs from I Am The Cosmos: the last two I mentioned (with Chilton as lead), plus "I Am The Cosmos" and "You And Your Sister" (the regular album versions).

yeah I like I Am The Cosmos (the album) a lot, but it's overshadowed by how unbelievably amazing You & Your Sister is ... one of my fave songs ever. other songs can't help bit suffer in comparison ...

Those four I listed are really great, but "You And Your Sister" (a B-side!) aches so hard; a cost of keeping it in the closet.

yeah, that's kinda what i think the song must be about. not easy being a closeted gay christian southern dude in the 70s i'd imagine.

"And I'm thinking, Christ, nullify my life."

Wow, the clarity really helps "Daisy Glaze"; before I just focused on the "you're gonna die" and "nullify my life" part but now the beginning part is spread wide open instrumentally, with lots going on in the background besides the ache...Radio City is such a great album.

btw the transposition of Christ with heroin ("Heroin") there is a genius pop lyrical move, like the kind that justifies a whole career.

(I'm guessing that's a Bell write despite it being a Chilton vocal)

love that dolly parton cover, tyler

I listened to the live set on the fourth disk of the box, and it was no big deal. It's good but I don't it justifies purchasing the set. The band seems a little edgy, probably because they were opening for Archie Bell and the Dells, and that's not a great match for songs like "ST 100" and "The India Song". A low point is the sequence "Thirteen" -> "The India Song" -> "Try Again" -> "Watch the Sunrise", where you can hear the crowd getting more and more restless; as a listen it's deflating. Then they come back strong with "Don't Lie To Me" and things improve a little, but they've lost the crowd by then. And on a box set where you already have multiple versions of many of these, saggy versions of them are bad value. I don't see myself relistening to the live set very often.

The Sister Lovers demos are pretty nice but I'll take the album versions over them easily.

Disks 1 and 2 are pretty great though!

tbf those bkg vocals ARE really slurred n blurred. I thought they were done by Alex's gf tho.

they sound terrible to me, and I wish they had been removed, honestly. They were indeed done by Alex's girlfriend Lisa, who apparently did a lot more vocals on the album. Alex deleted these, which if I remember correctly, upset both Lisa and Jim Dickinson a lot. The latter felt like it seriously damaged the album. This is all from the Big Star book, whose name eludes me at the moment.

"Kangaroo" is next-level. I don't like the This Mortal Coil version though

They were indeed done by Alex's girlfriend Lisa, who apparently did a lot more vocals on the album. Alex deleted these, which if I remember correctly, upset both Lisa and Jim Dickinson a lot. The latter felt like it seriously damaged the album. This is all from the Big Star book, whose name eludes me at the moment.

yeah, i was kinda meaning to chip in with this having read the book and being amazed that these have been released. it's kinda how the lp was intended until LX split and hastily deleted everything, apparently for the worse. still haven't heard but pretty intrigued.

i love the story in that book about jim dickinson's crutch & kid & piano on nature boy, it totally changed how i hear that song

wait, there ARE versions of Third w/ more female backing vocals that have been released? and what book are we talking about here?

the book's by rob jovanovic if i recall correctly, i forget the name; and i haven't heard the set but am under the impression that it has at least something offa third with lesa's vox

ooh guess what mother-in-law got me for my birthday!

I'm lovin a lot of the previously unreleased stuff - the evolution from the Lovely Day demo to Stroke It Noel is beautiful. Original version of Downs is shocking.

can you ask your mother in law to get this for me too?

maybe. when's yr birthday

So all I've ever had is the #1 Record/Radio City twofer, never managed to get ahold of Third/Sister Lovers. If I pick up the box, will I still be needing to track that down?

i actually found a CD copy of third/sister lovers at a sale a couple months ago. buried in a pile of garbage so i was shocked/pleased to find it. it's probably not all that rare tho

the box set has all the stuff on the Ryko CD reissue of 3rd/Sister Lovers with a couple extra/extended things so I would say no, you don't need to track down any other versions.

and yeah, there's no "official" running order really for the album - the box set has a completely different (and imho mostly better) running order than the Ryko reissue.

Thanks, thats exactly what I was wondering.

what is the tracklist for the boxset? i wonder if it's the same that's on my italian bootleg from the 80s that i reprogrammed my ryko CD to.

^^^for sister lovers^^^

Here's the tracklist for the disc its on in the box:

1. Lovely Day (demo)
2. Downs (demo)
3. Jesus Christ (demo)
4. Holocaust (demo)
5. Big Black Car (alternate demo)
6. Manana
7. Jesus Christ
8. Femme Fatale
9. O, Dana
10. Kizza Me
11. You Can't Have Me
12. Nightime
13. Dream Lover
14. Big Black Car
15. Blue Moon
16. Holocaust
17. Stroke It Noel
18. For You
19. Downs
20. Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
21. Kanga Roo
22. Thank You Friends
23. Take Care
24. Lovely Day
25. Till the End of the Day (alternate mix)
26. Nature Boy (alternate mix)

it is not the same

(btw mo-in-law also got me the bio ref'd upthread so I am gonna be deep in Big Star country for a few weeks methinks)

So I did end up grabbing Keep An Eye on the Sky a couple nights ago and finished my first listen on the ride in this morning. Fantastic, such a revelation for me. But after reading some comments in this thread about the live disc, I'm wondering if anyone could point me to some good bootlegs. Because if that is a lackluster Big Star set, I'd certainly love to hear what is considered a great set.

yeah love the covers on the live set. T Rex! "Slut"!

i dont really know what album to buy by them, but i love thirteen, and was it alex chilton or cheap trick who sang the that 70's show theme song?

Cheap Trick covered the Big Star song "In the Street" for the That 70s Show themesong and appended a refrain from "Surrender" to the end

From wikipedia: "In a Rolling Stone magazine article in 2000, Chilton thought it was ironic that he is paid $70 in royalties each time the show is aired." (Dunno what's "ironic" about it, but kind of cool anyway. Alex deserves to make some money so he can keep on doing ... whatever it is he does with his time these days.)

being a dirty old man, I imagine

I think he referred to it as "That $70 Show"

the ironing is delicious

But srsly, is the Big Star "In Space" record the only thing he's done this decade? That's, um, not very much. I know Big Star has played maybe a handful of live shows ...

surely its no surprise that he's super lazy? post Big Star his output is totally sporadic

hey he's done some Box Tops reunion shows, too!

hey, how do i attack "keep an eye on the sky"? just listen all the way through or where should i start

Disk 3 is pretty inessential if you already have Sister Lovers, so I wouldn't say there...unless you're already in a Sister Lovers mood (which I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I love the album; I gather you know what I mean). Disks 1 and 2 are great, though the opening pre-Big Star songs are only good. But the alt takes of songs from the first two albums are great. I'd start there.

kind of am in a Sister Lovers mood to be honest, but i'll take your advice

After replying this morning I found myself in a Sister Lovers mood too and I listened to that 1975 radio session boot that Tyler made available, and that shit burns: like straight through Sister Lovers into an even darker place, if that's possible. There's an evil, dissolved vibe to the proceedings; Chilton tosses out the line "I'd rather shoot a woman than a man" so lazily that it's kinda shocking, the casualness of its violence mirroring the casualness of Chilton tossing his pop future away. The recording is shitty but some of the fuzz seems to be distortion on the guitar. It's well worth a listen.

interesting facts gleaned Jovanovic book: piano on Nature Boy is played by William Eggleston. You can hear one of Eggleston's young sons fiddling around with an organ in the background. Eggleston had hurt his leg recently and was on crutches. At 2:03 you can hear one of his crutches fall off the piano and hit the ground; Chilton stifles a giggle

I love that "Nature Boy" -- weirdly, it's the first version of that song I ever heard! Does Eggleston appear on anyone else's records?

I was totally oblivious to his involvement with Big Star, I only knew him from his photography. don't think he was much involved with music

his photos appear on other peoples records

well yeah I know but I mean I don't think he played music much