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Big Star


mudshark

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Big Star is great!

What really surprised me is how Alex Chilton children sang so differently in the Box Tops and Big Star. As far as I know, in Big Star, he didn't use that low growly voice. Unless I missed it on a few tunes?

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52 minutes ago, sonic1974 said:

Big Star is great!

What really surprised me is how Alex Chilton children sang so differently in the Box Tops and Big Star. As far as I know, in Big Star, he didn't use that low growly voice. Unless I missed it on a few tunes?

I first saw Alex name on the first Cramps album. In the 80s. I never heard of Big Star. But that name "Alex Chilton" just stuck on me. Who had the guts to produce a band like The Cramps. This guy must be like the most awesome and cool man on the whole planet earth. I mean if Lux Interior was the coolest. Then how cool must the man be that produced the coolest man. He must be even cooler, right? That name "Alex Chilton" just grew to mythological proportions in my teen room. No internet, I could not Google it. In a suburb to Stockholm, in Sweden, I had no means of ever finding out who this cat was. Then, later in the 90's this band "Big Star" got all the rave in the UK music press. I read about them in Q or something, and BOOM ---- that name! Alex Chilton. I was floored. That guy, with the nerdy clothes and hippie haircut was Alex??? I could not comprehend this. I had to get that Big Star album. I think I bought in in London, a little later. Perhas in HMW at Piccadilly. Anyways, got home. put that CD in the player. Now I was really confused. This was the greatest music, but nothing like The Cramps - but oh so great. The songs, the production. I totally got it. Took me years until I read about how The Cramps choose Alex to produce the album. Suddenly it all made sense. Alex will still always be like a myth to me. What a hero!

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Saw Chilton play a lounge in Tallahassee in my yoof. He was great, but strangely did a cover of "Goldfinger." Man, I played Third/Sister Lovers until I had that album MEMORIZED.

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Huge Big Star fan here. Saw Alex Chilton perform at a college show in the 80's. He did some really weird stuff in the late 70's (see "Like Flies on Sherbert") and early 80's. His mid 80's "No Sex" was early gallows humor for the AIDS epidemic. "Bangkok," stupid as it is, will stick in your head for days.  I quite liked his "High Priest" album, and my previous band even covered Ti-Ni-Nee-Ni-Noo. Missed the Big Star reunion tours with the Posies, and the "comeback album" left me cold. But the first three Big Star albums are classics.

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I started listening to and digging up Big Star stuff in college in the '80s.  Couldn't find it at any regular mall-type record shop, that's for sure, but I snagged a bootleg cassette of the first two albums (off of vinyl, so there was a few record scratches and one particularly bad skip on "When My Baby's Beside Me" that I still sense is coming, even on a perfect copy).  Got more into them thanks to Let's Active/REM/Replacements/Bangles name-dropping and covering, and thought there might be something more.  Didn't know the whole story, etc., but finally got a "legit" CD in the very early '90s when I was getting into Teenage Fanclub and the Posies and critics kept comparing them...then Ken S. and Jon A. from the Posies WERE ACTUALLY IN Big Star with Alex and Jody.  

I've gotten to see two of the "All Star" Big Star album shows with Jody, and usually the REM, Posies, Wilco guys, Mitch Easter, Chris Stamey and a host of others.  A must-see if you're a fan, and a should-see if you're not.  I'm catching Ken Stringfellow and Parthenon Huxley in my neighborhood in a few weeks (at Hux' house), and they will definitely do some Big Star stuff.  Hux joined them for "Thirteen" at a DC venue last year, and it was incredibly powerful.  Ken will also be playing at Serial's guitarist's house this month, so hoping that there's some cool video from that one, most likely another Big Star cover...we'll see.

Maybe one of the best covers ever, if not the best versions of this (Chris Bell) song:

 

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1 hour ago, cmatthes said:

I started listening to and digging up Big Star stuff in college in the '80s.  Couldn't find it at any regular mall-type record shop, that's for sure, but I snagged a bootleg cassette of the first two albums (off of vinyl, so there was a few record scratches and one particularly bad skip on "When My Baby's Beside Me" that I still sense is coming, even on a perfect copy).  Got more into them thanks to Let's Active/REM/Replacements/Bangles name-dropping and covering, and thought there might be something more.  Didn't know the whole story, etc., but finally got a "legit" CD in the very early '90s when I was getting into Teenage Fanclub and the Posies and critics kept comparing them...then Ken S. and Jon A. from the Posies WERE ACTUALLY IN Big Star with Alex and Jody.  

I've gotten to see two of the "All Star" Big Star album shows with Jody, and usually the REM, Posies, Wilco guys, Mitch Easter, Chris Stamey and a host of others.  A must-see if you're a fan, and a should-see if you're not.  I'm catching Ken Stringfellow and Parthenon Huxley in my neighborhood in a few weeks (at Hux' house), and they will definitely do some Big Star stuff.  Hux joined them for "Thirteen" at a DC venue last year, and it was incredibly powerful.  Ken will also be playing at Serial's guitarist's house this month, so hoping that there's some cool video from that one, most likely another Big Star cover...we'll see.

Maybe one of the best covers ever, if not the best versions of this (Chris Bell) song:

 

Wilco does a great cover of 13, beautiful wistful tune. I love both the original and Wilco versions. 

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25 minutes ago, LucSulla said:

This is one of those bands I really do wish I liked as much as other people seem to, but they just never really did much for me.

Like a few other also-rans from the era, their influence often eclipses their recorded output, if that makes sense?

I’m a fan, but I like Anglophile power pop. 

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I am amazed I missed this band back in the 70s cause it is right up my alley. I LOVE discovering “new” artists that I missed BITD.

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11 hours ago, RobB said:

Like a few other also-rans from the era, their influence often eclipses their recorded output, if that makes sense?

I’m a fan, but I like Anglophile power pop. 

I'm close enough to Memphis that their legacy is turned up a notch.  Hell, we even have a Big Star Grocery (where they got the name) in town still. 

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4 hours ago, Jakeboy said:

I am amazed I missed this band back in the 70s cause it is right up my alley. I LOVE discovering “new” artists that I missed BITD.

Like Nick Drake, Big Star was easy to miss in the 70s. Their legends grew in small circles in the 80's, and eventually their songs found their way into car commercials and sitcom themes.

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On 8/26/2019 at 4:11 PM, polara said:

Saw Chilton play a lounge in Tallahassee in my yoof. He was great, but strangely did a cover of "Goldfinger." Man, I played Third/Sister Lovers until I had that album MEMORIZED.

I saw Alex Chilton do a solo show at The Cotton Club in Atlanta back in either the late 80's or early 90's.  He did not impress me. 

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