Take him home and make him like it.

Dear Creator!

I am not referring to you very often. Maybe that's a shame. Maybe I would have gotten more out of life if I have had a stronger belief and faith in something. Maybe it was You after all.
My mother and my biological father had sex and I was created. End of story.

But now I know creation doesn't stop. The creation will not stop even after an magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake or by dictators spitting out things like "Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice".
After I was born I was a baby, then a bigger baby. Then a big lonely baby. I didn't turn to religion when I grew a little older. Music saved my soul. Yeah, I know, the story of many angst ridden teenage souls. But it is true nevertheless. I found something to reflect my anxiety in and I stumbled into a world of Heavy Metal. 80s Heavy Metal was a treasure for a 12-13 year old awkward shy little kid with more enemies than friends. Knights in armours and hot princesses and the gods of thunder and lightning. I felt secure in this world. Of course I knew that the world I had cut out for myself, amidst tight leather panted legs surrounded by outstretched delicate female hands begging for just one tiny moment of "his" approval, wasn't a real one or even something to strive for. But I was just a kid feeling alone and desperate for approval.

The metal phase turned into a love for hard music in general - and in the long run - a life-long relationship to music.

Some day in the end of my teens I found Big Star. Loved their two first records. I still do. But it was when I by chance bought Alex Chilton's "Bach's Bottom" and listened to the first track "Take me home and make me like it" I knew I had found my musical soul mate, my reflection, my distant and awkward friend willing to fight the battle for me.

Let's stop there.


Alex Chilton - Take Me Home And Make Me Like It (sorry about the lousy sound quality)

It would be useless gibberish to everyone if I continue to praise this song in a more poetical and philosophical way than that. It is indeed a song falling apart at times and a voice on the edge accompanied by what sounds like a drunk rock'n'roll band, some clowns, some guitar students, and a choir of male retards from the local football team and a couple of people Alex didn't know were there in the first place. As I said the song sounds like falling apart several times, like the energy vanishes. As many times the track goes straight through the roof and the whole band is alert and ready to deliver the best rock and roll ever. Sounds come and go. It's spontaneous. It's alive. It's life.

Life is what I'm looking for in music. Music doesn't always need to make me feel better. But music that doesn't make me feel alive suck. I need to FEEL life. We all need that.
This is music that wakes up on Saturday morning and doesn't care putting on clothes. This is music with a bad breath because it had a fantastic dinner yesterday with a lot of garlic involved and a few bears afterwards which probably lead to another thing and suddenly wound up in bed with the dinner hostess and ate her out long after midnight.

Life.

I need it. Alex gave it to me. I am afraid of life. But I still need it. Alex has covered for me soooo many times.

The whole third album by Big Star is an installment of life. Alex and Jody Stevens and friends.
"Kizza me", "Thank You Friends", "Holocaust", "Kangaroo", "Nightime". I could count them all in. Magnificent album, and by far their best. It's life. Up or down or even doomed. I have these moments. Alex apparetly had them a lot.


Big Star - Nighttime

"I've had it" and "Rock Hard" on 'Like Flies on Sherbert'. Magic moments.

Most obituaries today probably talks about a letter and the founder of power pop as we know it. Rightously so!
But this is also the man who produced "Human Fly" and deconstructed blues-rock on 'Behind the Magnolia Curtain' with Tav Falco for crying out loud!

This was a man who understood: It's the Singer, Not the song.



So, please, creator: Take him home and make him like it.

/Z aka mrdantefontana