{"id":11452,"date":"2016-09-16T05:30:41","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T09:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=11452"},"modified":"2016-09-16T08:33:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T12:33:40","slug":"prix-the-band-that-never-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/16\/prix-the-band-that-never-was\/","title":{"rendered":"PRIX: The Band that Never Was"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March 1974, Jon Tiven<\/strong> 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 \u2013 while the stuff of legend today \u2013 went almost wholly unnoticed at the time. He variously played, wrote, recorded and\/or performed with members of Big Star<\/strong><\/a>, as well as other, lesser-known yet important artists. Historix<\/i> by Prix (pronounced \u201cpree\u201d) is a new CD that features the music that he and some of his musician friends \u2013 a sort of group-that-never-was \u2013 would make during that time.<\/p>\n

Bill Kopp: <\/b>How did you come to Memphis and to meet former Box Tops<\/strong> singer Alex Chilton<\/strong><\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n

Jon Tiven:<\/b> I reviewed the first Big Star record for Fusion<\/i>. I think I was one of the first, if not the first to review #1 Record<\/i> in a national publication. Their label, Ardent Records, called me and said, \u201cWe are so excited about this review that you did. We want to fly you down to Memphis so you can hang around with the band.\u201d I said, \u201cGreat! But I don’t have an article assigned.\u201d And they said \u201cOh, that doesn’t matter; we just want you to check us out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Bell<\/strong> had left the band; this was shortly after release of the first record, and Chris was nowhere to be seen. They flew me out, and I got together and had dinner with Alex and Jody Stephens<\/strong><\/a>. As far as Ardent were concerned, I was the guy in the rock press who wrote more about the band than anybody. They flew me out on several other occasions, including to San Francisco for a Gavin [music and radio industry] convention with them, just hanging out.<\/p>\n

BK: <\/b>So then when did you meet Chris Bell?<\/span><\/p>\n

JT:<\/b> I came down to Memphis in [September] 1975 and produced Alex’s first solo record, \u201cThe Singer Not the Song.\u201d The album was called Bach’s Bottom<\/i>. I got to be friendly with Chris at that point. [Bell took part in some session dates.]<\/p>\n

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BK: <\/b>And singer\/guitarist Tommy Hoehn<\/strong>; how did you connect with him?<\/span><\/p>\n

JT: <\/b>I was living in New York working for Chess Records; Tommy sent me reels of tapes of stuff he had been working on with Rick Clark<\/strong>, and I guess [Ardent’s] John Fry<\/strong> thought that I would be a good person for them to hook up with. I enjoyed what they were working on.<\/p>\n

I met Tommy when I went down to do the Bach’s Bottom<\/i> record. I needed some young, un-jaded musicians to play on Alex’s sessions, because Alex was surrounding himself with people who were full of negative energy at that point. And I really didn’t want that on my sessions; I wanted people who were enthused at the prospect of recording, not people who were already sort of burned out and who looked upon it as an excuse to raise hell and document that kind of behavior. [They wanted to] make a recording that nobody would ever hear, which was basically what Alex was up to at that point.<\/p>\n

BK: <\/b>Were the Bach’s Bottom<\/i> sessions as dissolute and debauched as legend suggests?<\/span><\/p>\n

JT:<\/b> The first night was as wild as I’ve ever experienced. If live demons were flying around the room, they wouldn’t have been out of place. Seriously, it was insanity. But the other sessions after that were fairly structured and \u2026 Alex would say businesslike, but I would say inspired. After Alex died [in 2010], people started re-evaluating his catalog, and realized that Bach’s Bottom<\/i> is a very important record for him. It may be his best solo record.<\/p>\n

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BK: <\/b>What did you do once the first sessions were over? <\/span><\/p>\n

JT:<\/b> I returned to Memphis a couple of months later. I liked Memphis; I liked the people I met there a lot. There was a guy named Van Duren<\/strong><\/a>, and I was helping out with his career. [Tiven would produce Duren’s highly-regarded Are You Serious?<\/i> in 1977.] He invited me to live at his place and join a band that he had formed with Chris Bell and Jody Stephens. I came down to do that, but Jody had left the band by the time I got down there. The band continued with John Hampton<\/strong> on drums; Van on bass and guitar alternating with Mike Briggs<\/strong>, who’s a really well-known session bass player now known as Mike Brignardello; Chris Bell; and myself on lead guitar parts.<\/p>\n

That didn’t last long, because we had too many guitar players in the band: Mike, Van, Chris, and me.<\/p>\n

BK: <\/b>Did that group ever record?<\/span><\/p>\n

JT:<\/b> No, we never went into the studio. I can really only remember doing maybe three or four gigs with that particular lineup, and then they continued without me. And I don’t think they ever went into the studio. I don’t think anybody had any thoughts of doing that as a real group until it was all over. The idea was that we’d all do songs from our own projects, and hopefully something would come of it. But nothing did.<\/p>\n

So after about a month of that, I refocused on doing stuff with Tommy.<\/p>\n

BK: <\/b>So Prix started out as a Tommy Hoehn vehicle?<\/span><\/p>\n

JT: <\/b>Initially it was going to be a Tommy project, but he convinced me that he wanted me to be in a group with him. So we made it into a group thing, pooled everything that we had, and went for a record deal. We took all of the songs that we had cut for Alex’s thing and put them with that.<\/p>\n

BK: <\/b>Those were cut at Ardent. But some of the songs collected on Historix<\/i> were recorded in New York City…<\/span><\/p>\n

JT:<\/b> It was an audition session for Columbia Records, because there was an A&R guy there who wanted to sign Prix. He flew Tommy up to rehearse with us and then do a showcase at Columbia Recording Studio [September 8, 1976].<\/p>\n