Alex Chilton Tribute (South By Southwest, 20-3-2010)

Homenaje a Alex Chilton en Micropsia (FM 93.7)

#1 RECORD (1972)

1 - "Feel" – 3:34
2 - "The Ballad of El Goodo" – 4:21
3 - "In the Street" – 2:55
4 - "Thirteen" – 2:34
9 - "Give Me Another Chance" – 3:26
10 - "Try Again" – 3:31
11 - "Watch the Sunrise" – 3:45

RADIO CITY (1974)

2 - "Life Is White" - 3:19
4 - "What's Going Ahn" - 2:40
5 - "You Get What You Deserve" - 3:08
7 - "Back of a Car" - 2:46
8 - "Daisy Glaze" - 3:49
10 - "September Gurls" - 2:49
11- "Morpha Too" - 1:27

THIRD/SISTER LOVERS (1977)

1 - “Kizza Me” - 2:44
2 - "Thank You Friends" – 3:05
4 - "Jesus Christ" – 2:37
6 - "O, Dana" – 2:34
7 - "Holocaust" – 3:47
12 - "Nightime" – 2:53
13 - "Blue Moon" – 2:06

Radio Micropsia - Episodio 18

Por Radio Nacional (FM 93.7), domingos de 20 a 22hs.
O por internet, entrando por aquí.

Tras la muerte de Alex Chilton -para mí, uno de los más grandes compositores de la historia del rock e injustamente poco conocido más allá del culto- esta nueva edición de Radio Micropsia será, en buena parte, un Especial Big Star, con temas de su caja de cuatro discos editada el año pasado. Y también habrá tiempo para algunas otras músicas, películas, festivales y para empezar a desentrañar el BAFICI.

Paul Westerberg on Alex Chilton (The New York Times)

Beyond the Box Tops

By PAUL WESTERBERG

Minneapolis

HOW does one react to the death of one’s mentor? My mind instantly slammed down the inner trouble-door that guards against all thought, emotion, sadness. Survival mode. Rock guitar players are all dead men walking. It’s only a matter of time, I tell myself as I finger my calluses. Those who fail to click with the world and society at large find safe haven in music — to sing, write songs, create, perform. Each an active art in itself that offers no promise of success, let alone happiness.

Yet success shone early on Alex Chilton, as the 16-year-old soulful singer of the hit-making Box Tops. Possessing more talent than necessary, he tired as a very young man of playing the game — touring, performing at state fairs, etc. So he returned home to Memphis. Focusing on his pop writing and his rock guitar skills, he formed the group Big Star with Chris Bell. Now he had creative control, and his versatility shone bright. Beautiful melodies, heart-wrenching lyrics: “I’m in Love with a Girl,” “September Gurls.”

On Big Star’s masterpiece third album, Alex sang my favorite song of his, “Nighttime” — a haunting and gorgeous ballad that I will forever associate with my floor-sleeping days in New York. Strangely, the desperation in the line “I hate it here, get me out of here” made me, of all things, happy. He went on to produce more artistic, challenging records. One equipped with the take-it-or-leave-it — no, excuse me, with the take-it-like-I-make-it — title “Like Flies on Sherbert.” The man had a sense of humor, believe me.

It was some years back, the last time I saw Alex Chilton. We miraculously bumped into each other one autumn evening in New York, he in a Memphis Minnie T-shirt, with take-out Thai, en route to his hotel. He invited me along to watch the World Series on TV, and I immediately discarded whatever flimsy obligation I may have had. We watched baseball, talked and laughed, especially about his current residence — he was living in, get this, a tent in Tennessee.

Because we were musicians, our talk inevitably turned toward women, and Al, ever the Southern gentleman, was having a hard time between bites communicating to me the difficulty in ... you see, the difficulty in (me taking my last swig that didn’t end up on the wall, as I boldly supplied the punch line) “... in asking a young lady if she’d like to come back to your tent?” We both darn near died there in a fit of laughter.

Yeah, December boys got it bad, as “September Gurls” notes. The great Alex Chilton is gone — folk troubadour, blues shouter, master singer, songwriter and guitarist. Someone should write a tune about him. Then again, nah, that would be impossible. Or just plain stupid.

Paul Westerberg, a musician, was the lead singer of the Replacements.

Big Star - Pick Some Posies and Let's Play - 6/8/94, Cabaret Metro, Chicago (Wilfully Obscure)

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Children by the millions mourn for Alex Chilton, and I suppose you can count me among one of them. I never felt a connection to the Big Star frontman, rather his music - an enormous one at that. Ultimately, I'm not here to eulogize (though there are a couple of excellent online articles to check out). There's no such thing as a convenient time to die, but what makes Chilton's March 17th passing all the more tragic and ironic is thatBig Star were not only going to perform at the presently underway SXSW festival in Austin, the band was to be the province of a discussion panel this Saturday dubbed "I Never Travel Far Without A Little Big Star." The panel, which still might proceed (albeit under far different circumstances than initially planned) wasn't to feature Chilton, but instead original bandmatesJody Stephens and Andy Hummel, along with recent Big Star alumni Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of the Posies.

Personally, I never would have seated Big Star under the "power pop" umbrella. As much as I treasure and revere#1 Record and Radio City (both required listening, just as much as Pet Sounds or Revolver), I was never able to rationalize the band as ambassadors of the "genre," given the sobering and reflective temperament of so much of their music. This may sound like a gross oversimplification, but to this pair of ears, Big Star were the finest classic rock/pop band that never made the migration to FM radio. The albums speak for themselves, and although I was dismayed with the unrepresentative reunion LP, 2005's In Space, they compensated for it in a major way with last years ultra-comprehensive four-disk, Keep an Eye on the Sky box set. BTW, two years ago I featured a collection of Big Star alternate takes and demos on Wilfully Obscure.

Tonight, I'm sharing a live show from Chicago 1994, featuring the revamped lineup of Chilton/Stephens/Stringfellow/Auer, that would perform many times over the next decade and a half. I'm pretty certain this is a soundboard recording, if not an excellent audience tape. Enjoy.

Alex Chilton, thank you friend.

01. In the Street
02. Don't Lie to Me
03. When My Baby's Beside Me
04. I am the Cosmos
05. Way Out West
06. 'Til the End of the Day
07. The Ballad of El Goodo
08. Back of a Car
09. Jesus Christ
10. Daisy Glaze
11. Thirteen
12. For You
13. Baby Strange
14. Feel
15. September Gurls
16. Big Black Car
17. Thank You Friends
18. Slut
19. Patty Girl
20. O' My Soul

Alex Chilton: un breve homenaje personal

Creo que fue en 1998. Yo venía de Florida y pasé por Nueva York unos días. Allá estaba Marcelo Panozzo, parando en un hotel de Little Italy. Yo me quedé en un cuarto de ese hotel --baratísimo y penoso, tal vez el peor que fui en mi vida, pero los costos de cualquier otro eran imposibles--, pero que alcanzaba para poder dar unas vueltas por la ciudad un par de días.

Lo recuerdo como un sueño, ni siquiera estoy del todo convencido de que sucedió. Tengo imágenes sueltas. Panox me dice que toca Alex Chilton cerca de donde estábamos. Sacamos entradas que creo ean muy baratas y en la puerta no me quieren dejar entrar porque no tengo documentos (los que no lo saben, aviso: aunque tengan 60 años, lleven documentos a cualquier show “sólo para mayores de 18” en USA). No sé bien cómo pero los convenzo y pasamos.

Era un lugar muy chico cuyo nombre no recuerdo y que estaba llenísimo de gente. Recuerdo que ese día descubrí que en los bares había que dejar propina cuando pedías una cerveza (eran épocas del “uno a uno”, no importaba igual) y que mi inglés era bastante incomprensible con el sonido tan alto.

Salió Alex Chilton a escena y no había mucha forma de acercarse (y ni Panox ni yo éramos fanas de meternos en masas humanas en recitales). Se lo veía bastante desmejorado, con pocas energías, como cumpliendo nomás (luego iba a descubrir que su cara impávida y sus pocos movimientos eran rutinarios en él). Recuerdo que hizo covers como de clásicos del rock, muchos, y que eso me fastidiaba un poco. Fue un show corto, de no más de una hora, e hizo apenas algún tema de Big Star que en ese entonces alcancé a reconocer. Ahora recuerdo con cierta bronca que estaba bastante distraído durante el show, como observando lo que sucedía a mi alrededor, la mecánica de un show en los Estados Unidos (hasta ese momento había ido a muy pocos): la gente, las conversaciones, los códigos.

Luego compraría todos los discos (no son tantos después de todo) de la banda y hasta algunos solistas de Alex, que no eran tan buenos. Y de a poco se fue convirtiendo en una de mis bandas-faro. Escuchás Big Star y escuchas a los Beatles y también glam, y melancolía pura y dura mezclada con un power pop que se acerca por momentos a cierto rock duro. Y hay algo de country y de soul dando vueltas. Todo eso mezclado con la voz casi negra de Chilton y el enorme aporte compositivo de Chris Bell. La caja de cuatro discos que salió el año pasado es un must: allí están todas las versiones de Big Star posibles, de sus demos crudos a su energía en vivo, pasando por versiones alternativas y canciones inéditas (Link). Y, claro, de aí salen sus heredeos de los ochentas: Replacements (a través de quienes escuché su nombre por primera vez, como lo hicieron muchos otros), Pavement, REM, Guided By Voices, Sebadoh e incontables otras bandas que hacían pop disimulado de rock...

No hace falta decir que “Thirteen” es un clásico imbatible (en una época me armé un disco entero solo de versiones de esa canción, unas quince), pero también está “The Ballad of El Goodo”, “Feel”, “Back of a Car”, “Jesus Christ”, “Kizza Me”, “Holocaust”, “She’s a Mover”, “Watch the Sunrise” y asi, decenas. Las pocas canciones que editaron a lo largo de su carrera (tres discos) en realidad parecen los grandes éxitos de una banda mucho más longeva. Fíjense en "Adventureland", en "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist", en "That 70's Show": la herencia de Big Star está en todos lados.

Si no les arranca una lágrima el arranque de “The Ballad…” o no entran en éxtasis pop cuando larga “Thank You Friends” tal vez no entiendan mi entusiasmo por la banda y la tristeza que me produce la muerte de Alex Chilton. Busquen esos disquitos por ahí. Es un viaje de ida…

Tributo a Alex Chilton, por Jim DeRogatis (Chicago Sun-Times)

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Alex Chilton, a legend of the Memphis music scene and one of the founding fathers of the power-pop movement, died at a hospital in New Orleans on Wednesday, the victim of an apparent heart attack. He was 59 years old.

Chilton's hugely influential band Big Star was about to be celebrated at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, partaking in a panel session and a showcase gig on Saturday. The band was experiencing the latest in a series of career resurgences, thanks to the recent reissues of its celebrated albums from the '70s as the box set, "Keep an Eye on the Sky."

According to the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Chilton's native Memphis, the singer, guitarist and songwriter had been complaining about his health early Wednesday and was taken to the emergency room, where he was pronounced dead. "Alex passed away a couple of hours ago," Big Star drummer Jody Stephens told the paper. "I don't have a lot of particulars, but they kind of suspect that it was a heart attack."

Born William Alexander Chilton and raised in a musical family, Alex experienced his first taste of musical stardom at the tender age of 16 as a member of the Box Tops. His surprisingly deep, soulful and mature vocals propelled the 1967 single "The Letter" to No. 1 on the singles chart in the U.S. and many other countries, and his first group went on to score several other hits, including "Cry Like a Baby" (1968) and "Soul Deep" (1969).

When the Box Tops broke up in 1970, Chilton was left feeling jaded and bitter about the music industry, which he felt had exploited the group. He had lost none of his joy in playing music, however, and in 1971, he linked up with an existing group of Memphis musicians--Stephens, fellow guitarist and vocalist Chris Bell and bassist Andy Hummel--and Big Star was born as a band with a distinctive sound based in equal parts on the grit of Southern soul and the chiming guitars and irresistible harmonies of British Invasion pop.

Despite two brilliant records whose titles evinced Chilton's sardonic sense of humor and ingrained skepticism about the music industry--"#1 Record" (1972) and "Radio City" (1974)--and the warm embrace of pioneering rock critics such as Lester Bangs and Cameron Crowe, the band's label, Ardent Records, was unable to break the group on radio, and it struggled to find an audience during its original incarnation.

Reduced to just Chilton and Stephens, Big Star made one final record in 1978, alternately called "Third" or "Sister Lovers," and a dark night of the soul classic. "We've sort of flirted with greatness, but we've yet to make a record as good as Big Star's 'Third,'" R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck once said.

After Big Star broke up, Chilton went on to make a series of solo albums--among them strong discs such as "Like Flies on Sherbert" (1979) and "Bach's Bottom" (1981)--that won him a place on the fringes of the punk scene. But as punk yielded to the indie-rock movement of the mid-'80s, he became a true hero to a new generation of musicians, and elements of Big Star's sound were embraced by a new wave of bands led by R.E.M.

Such is the level of devotion in Chicago, where power-pop remains a thriving and much-loved genre, that a group of local musicians has for years thrown an annual "Alex Chilton Birthday Bash" to celebrate his songs every December.

Among the many bands that have proudly cited Big Star as an influence and put their own interpretations on its sounds are Chicago's Wilco and Material Issue, the dB's, Teenage Fanclub, the Posies (whose Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow fleshed out the reunited version of the band that has performed over the last decade), Game Theory, Matthew Sweet, Velvet Crush, the Bangles (who scored a hit with a cover of "September Gurls"), Ryan Adams, Cheap Trick (which covered "In the Street" as the theme song for the sitcom "That '70s Show") and of course the Replacements, who went so far as to write a song called "Alex Chilton."

"Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round," Paul Westerberg sang in the Replacements' tribute. "They sing... I'm in love with that song."

Those words stand as a fitting tribute to a great talent, survived by his wife, Laura, son, Timothy, and legions of fans whose lives were enriched by his music.

Se murió Alex Chilton

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