alex chilton Archive
19 Apr 2019
We Get What We Deserve: Big Star — Live on WLIR
As the shopworn saying goes – it has been applied to other acts as well – Big Star was a group that sold very few records during its original existence, […]
18 Apr 2019
Album Reviews: Two Alex Chilton Compilations
Editor’s Note: Today’s something of a milestone: my 3,000th post. As a general matter, I make a point of not writing reviews that are a response or rebuttal to other […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]