POX: Big Star

Chris Bell "You and Yr Sister"

ding!

What's Going Ahn, Holocaust, O My Soul, You Get What You Deserve, Life is White, Nighttime, Daisy Glaze, You Can't Have Me, Thank You Friends, Ballad of El Goodo

bought a posies record [frosting on the beater] first; had distant but growing admiration for cheap trick; a couple years later, bought the reissue of the first 2 from best buy, and quickly sold it. was expecting something louder, i guess. but of course after about 18 months i started getting songs i had heard exactly twice running through my head - at first i couldn't even place the band.

after a while of this i was buying wowee zowee, alien lanes, [being sort of familiar with both their stuff but not into it very much yet; but both bands were coming to town soon], king of america/blood and chocolate reissues, the only ones peel sessions, and i decided to get the sister lovers reissue.

that indie enough for you?

never anywhere near my favorite band, anywhere close; to tell the truth, for me it's about his voice more than the amazing songs, which i don't really relate to very well. like, i like like flies on sherbet better than any track by big star. feel kinda dumb about that but oh well.

it's big star that makes me want to try to give the stripes a chance, though i haven't gotten around to it yet.

alex chilton's voice in big star and the "lost era" that followed is my favorite voice in music. i have told a few tales on the chilton thread in the archives.

Honorable Mentions (covers division)-I think the Big Star version of "Till The End of The Day" surpasses the Kinks' original. I also feel Magnapop did a better job with "Thirteen" than Chilton, Bell & Co.

and just about everything else they recorded.

When I was seventeen, coming down from my first acid trip and staring at my soon-to-be-first-girlfriend, someone stuck "Sister Lovers" on the turntable (another first) and I've been devoted to it, and them, ever since...

Corny and indie enough for ya?

Since I used to be obsessive about Big Star, it's mostly the songs I didn't appreciate then that I still love, particularly "Daisy Glaze" and "Morpha Too." I always did think that Third/Sister Lovers was overrated, though.

Isn't this thread a little too hipster for ILM anyway?

(And yeah..."Third/Sister Lovers" is my least favorite, but it sure worked at the time.)

still my favorite band ever I guess.

"Jesus Christ" is one my favorite rock Christmas songs. It's way up there with "Father Christmas" by the Kinks. Of course it wasn't Chilton's intention for it to be a holiday song, but I've included it on Christmas comps I've made now and again.

I love Chilton's version of Eden Abhez's "Nature Boy." I've been collecting covers of that song over the years, and Chilton's take on it is one of my favorites along with Coltrane's and Caetano Veloso's.

I first heard Big Star's music back in '85 when someone gave me a taped copy of This Mortal Coil's It'll End in Tears. At the time I had no idea who any of the artists on the tape were or that it was an album of cover songs. I remember not enjoying it much at first, but I kept listening and it grew on me tremendously. I remember being particularly drawn to the covers of "Kanga-Roo" and "Holocaust."

Years later in 1993, I caught a live performance by a short-lived band from Tampa, FL, called The Rickets. They sounded pretty promising, so I decided to review their 7". They told me their biggest influences were Husker Du and Big Star, which makes complete sense to me now. I knew Husker Du very well at the time, but Big Star was still unknown to me. The group's leader went on and on about them, so, being impressed by her music, I had to check out Big Star. Lucky for me, all of the reissues were out by that time. I went out and bought the #1 Record/Radio City CD and became an instant fanatic. I bought everything else that was available and have been quite devoted to their music ever since.

It's funny that had Big Star been marketed properly, they could at least have been as popular as (or maybe more popular than) Badfinger or The Raspberries, and I find it even stranger still that their music ended up influencing so much of what has come to be known as indie.

Jody, it was great to see "Watch the Sunrise" right up front, on your list. What a beautiful tune. Is there any song more blissful?

Gygax, interesting choice with that #1 Record outtake. You've reminded me that I need to listen to that bootleg again.

The main thing that comes to mind to say about Big Star isn't very meaningful and would probably make you all puke, so let's leave it at that. Besides, I'm a dork who apparently only digs their more ballad-y side.

also: getting drunk with 'o my soul' on the jukebox (cf. communist's daughter in toronto) = nice

ballad of el goodo
on the street
i'm in love with a girl
daisy glaze
september gurls
life is white
o dana
blue moon
holocaust
kanga roo

well ive done a lot of chopping and changing to get this right and i still feel bad that ive missed out o my soul, back of a car, thirteen, try again, watch the sunrise, take care, nighttime, thank you friends, kizza me, jesus christ etc etc and their kinks cover which is the business

you people, 10 big star songs is not enough! big star are fast becoming a favorite of mine

wot, no one standing up for 'the india song'?

Oh yeah, and I like "The India Song" just fine. Is it widely derided for some reason?

Hard to pick only 10, as the first two LPs work well as a unit, and as I love "Third" as much as I do any other record.

I have noticed that Hummel's "India Song" is commonly derided. Why? Always seemed to fit into the general Anglophile vibe of the first LP just fine.

I was listening to the insane Chilton '78 KUT radio interview last nite. Doing "Jingle Bells" as a Nazi song--

Riding thru the Reich
On a big Mercedez-Benz
Killing lots of kikes
Making lots of friends.

What other rocker would namecheck Wilhelm Reich-- in Texas?

I actually heard them for the first time on the old PVC LP issue of "Third." One side of the record lists songs, the other is blank. Turned the record over on the wrong side, waited, and...the first bit of "Jesus Christ" came out. Hey, I was expecting the legendary jangle. By the time I got to "Kanga Roo" I knew this was the best record I'd ever heard. As far as I'm concerned "Third" is Alex's best singing with of course the exception of "Sweet Cream Ladies" by the Box Tops...

Being a Tenn. native, I was proud that a group from the state had done those records. I've been known to put on my worst Appalachian-style voice and insist to various Beatle-people that "We done whupped 'em...Big Star whupped the Beatles, got-dammit...y'all mighta won the War, but we won what counts...wait a minute, we won that 'un, but that other 'un...we whupped 'em."

the ballad of el goodo
thirteen
my life is right
watch the sunrise
o my soul
daisy glaze
september gurls
i'm in love with a girl
o, dana
kanga roo

ballad of el goodo
thirteen
watch the sunrise
o my soul
life is white
way out west
september gurls
o dana
stroke it noel
nighttime

kanga roo back of a car

anybody know what the originall recording of "downs" is supposed t sound like? rumor has it alecx chuil;ton intentionally destroyed the song's pop potential by puttin in basketball percussion and other stupid shit and i wonder if any recordings of the original version erxist. have they appeared on bootlegs or anything?

according to the Big Star book I read recently, Alex erased tracks to add the basketballs and shit.

...because John Fry told him it had "commercial potential." Chilton denies this apparently.

You can get a demo version of "Downs" on this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Pu-CDsIOL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

I don't know when it's from, but it does sound drastically different from the one on Third/Sister Lovers.

demo on Thank You Friends of Downs is pretty much Alex solo with electric guitar I think. More melodic than the one on the Third CD, but not much. Someone must've heard an inkling of a pop song there -- and then Chilton took it in uhhhh a different direction.

check out this utterly maddening quote:

When it came time to start to start recording, I said, "What are we going to do for tape?" Alex took out a couple of boxes and said we could use this. So we rolled, and it wasn't until we started mixing that I realized what we had used were outtake boxes for the third album. This became readily apparent when we came to the end of the last song and I heard a take of "Lovely Day."
- Jon Tiven, quoted in Rob Jovanovic's book Big Star

i just feel like doing this now so i can check in at a later date and see how much things have changed

what's going ahn
kizza me
nightime
for you
september gurls
the ballad of el goodo
life is white
i'm in love with a girl
thirteen
stroke it noel

Remember POXes?

What kind of EOY POX should we have this year?

wtf i never realized jody stephens wrote "for you", aka one of the most sublime songs ever recorded
the lyrics are undeniably corny by themselves, but with the melody it's just ugh
perfect

this 2013 performance totally warms my heart and it sounds great without all the strings. i wonder how many people in the audience were respectfully stifling themselves from singing along
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNngHukpLHE