alex chilton Archive
15 Nov 2018
Hundred-word Reviews, November 2018 Part 1
More hundred-word reviews. If you’ve wandered in here before, you know the drill: they’re all worthwhile and deserve deeper coverage. These ten are all archival, reissue or compilation releases. Oakland Elementary School Arkestra – The Saga of Padani Let’s begin by acknowledging that this disc isn’t for all tastes. Imagine the Residents meeting Sun Ra,
26 Dec 2016
Best Music of 2016: Reissue/archival Releases
I love new music, but I’m also attuned to keeping up with the latest in reissues and archival releases. Sometimes those feature some of my favorite artists; other times they turn me on to music of the past that I’ve never even heard. In 2016 I’ve been able to select my Top Ten reissue and/or
12 Dec 2016
Album Review: Big Star — Complete Third
The third album from Big Star is the most difficult in the Memphis group’s slim catalog of 1970s releases, and quite unlike its predecessors. The band’s debut – 1972’s #1 Record – is full of gems in an off-kilter power pop vein. Thanks in no small part to distribution problems at Ardent Records’ parent label
16 Sep 2016
PRIX: The Band that Never Was
In March 1974, Jon Tiven had just turned 19 and was living in New York City. In the next two and half years, he’d find himself deeply enmeshed in a Memphis musical scene and saga that – while the stuff of legend today – went almost wholly unnoticed at the time. He variously played, wrote,
14 Mar 2016
Album Review: Big Star — South West
Though they were resolutely ignored during their time together in the 1970s, Memphis-based Big Star eventually got both their critical due and some exceedingly belated recognition and commercial success. The reunion shows and tours featured original members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens plus – from The Posies – Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow (a full-concert
01 Jan 2016
Album Mini-review: Alan Vega / Alex Chilton / Ben Vaughn – Cubist Blues
File next to: Tav Falco and Panther Burns, Suicide, Jesus and Mary Chain One of the more unlikely musical summits in recorded history, this one-off album was made in two days in December 1994 and is finally back in print. All three participants brought the baggage of their individual reputations: Big Star refugee Alex Chilton
04 Nov 2014
Big Star Lives! with “Live in Memphis” (Part 2)
Continued from Part One… As Jon Auer pointed out in metaphor form during our conversation, speaking of Big Star in a slightly different context, “You can write the greatest letter in the world to someone, but if the postman loses it, or doesn’t deliver it, and no one ever gets it, no one’s gonna know
03 Nov 2014
Big Star Lives! with “Live in Memphis” (Part 1)
The story of Big Star – a band once so obscure, only critics, musicians and a small handful of in-the-know fans even knew of their brief existence – has now passed into popular culture. I’ve always considered myself a hardcore fan of their general style of music: back in the early- to mid-1970s, I was
09 Oct 2013
Album Review: Alex Chilton – Electricity by Candlelight
Bootlegs or ROIOs* or fan recordings: however one wishes to label them, they play an often important and unappreciated part in documenting musical history. As Clinton Heylin explains in his excellent 1994 book Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry, surreptitious and/or unauthorized fan recordings have been responsible for capturing otherwise unheard performances
14 Jun 2013
Album Review: Big Star – Nothing Can Hurt Me
On paper, it reads like textbook case in how not to succeed, how not to make a mark in musical history: release your debut on a label rife with distribution problems; have one of your two main songwriters leave before the second album is done; record a gauzy, downbeat and decidedly noncommercial third album with