Live On WLYX Memphis 1975. Just the song. No video. Just a picture.
Track uploaded by wesgriff1
Showing posts with label Alex Chilton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alex Chilton. Show all posts
Friday, November 26, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Perfect Sound Forever: Alex Chilton tribute
Alex Chilton tribute by Jason Gross for Perfect Sound Forever: "Sitting at a bar with one of my editors a few years ago, we were discussing who our musical heroes were. His choice was Mike Watt (which is a good choice) and mine was Alex Chilton. It wasn't just that the confused (post) adolescent fantasies he concocted on Big Star's Radio City spoke to me in a really personal way when I first heard it in high school, making me feel a little less afraid of that strange transitional period in my life.
It was also LX's whole attitude towards music and the biz. He'd been a Box Top with hits, a cult hero in Big Star and spent most of the rest of his life as a solo act, again in cult mode. He was immersed in the biz but never really concered with anything than playing and writing, even if it wasn't for a large audience. He just had to do it and if he put out weird, esoteric records that made sense only to a cult following, so be it. That was his statement and his life. I loved him for it.
I heard the news of his death a few days before I was hoping to see him perform with Big Star at SXSW. A lot of people there were crushed by the unexpected news. The fact that the rest of the band went on with the show with special guests filling in as a tribute was a lovely way to pay some respect to him.
PSF had ran a few articles about LX and Big Star that we wanted to highlight again, along with some further thoughts on about him from a blog posting I did soon after I heard the bad news.
Thank you Alex- no matter how many records you didn't manage to sell, you really were a big star."
Thursday, March 18, 2010
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
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
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thank You Friends
"In 1971, Memphis act Big Star laid down tracks for what became one of the greatest rock albums of all time, the aptly-titled "#1 Record." During the historic sessions, bassist Andy Hummel and co-founder Chris Bell shot the following footage."
Footage and music uploaded by conan1982
(via Up-Tight)
Note: The music, Big Star's "Thank You Friends", is from their "Third" album, also known as "Sister Lovers" recorded by Alex Chilton and friends in '74 (not to be released until 1978). A perhaps even greater album if you give it enough time.
Footage and music uploaded by conan1982
(via Up-Tight)
Note: The music, Big Star's "Thank You Friends", is from their "Third" album, also known as "Sister Lovers" recorded by Alex Chilton and friends in '74 (not to be released until 1978). A perhaps even greater album if you give it enough time.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
He wore a Paper Hat
"... In the spring of 1978, inspired more by Big Star's records than by those of Elvis or Otis or Al, I took a trip to Memphis with two singer- songwriter-guitarists, Peter Holsapple and Mitch Easter. They had just been in a band (without me) named the H-Bombs in Chapel Hill, and had recently done some recording that Alex Chilton was desultorily involved in. We were thinking of starting a new band and relocating. This was almost certainly the first of many musicians' pilgrimages in search of the Big Star essence. ......
On a little portable cassette machine Alex played us "I Am the Cosmos" for the first time. And told us some things about Chris Bell, Big Star, Ardent, and the whole scene that we probably didn't need to know: that John Fry, the owner of the studio and label, was gay, and so was Chris, and that Chris got jealous that John got interested in Alex (and that this was the reason that Chris erased the master tapes of #1 Record); or that Alex was better at tennis than Chris, who could never beat him no matter how hard he tried.
I know Alex to be an enthusiastic embellisher of the truth, but when "You Can't Have Me" appeared on the belated release of the third Big Star album later that year I recognized what/who it must be about, and I still can't hear it without thinking about all this. ..."
Will Rigby reminisces over events in 1978, his meetings with Chris Bell and Alex Chilton. The Big Star influence and a trip to Memphis, and later on the recording of a song about his meeting with Chris Bell.
boomp3.com
A wonderful story over at Boogie Woogie Flu: Paper Hat. And of course a couple of great tracks!
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