RIP: Alex Chilton, 1950 – 2010
March 17th, 2010 — 10:04 pmThe New York Times has confirmed that Alex Chilton, lead singer of Big Star and the Box Tops, passed on today of a suspected heart attack.
Chilton’s music was potent, and his influence immense; I still find new meaning in those simple lyrics, and nuance in those deceptively plain chords and melodies, each time I listen to them anew.
And tonight, I’m listening to them again, over and over.
In memory of the man who crafted some of the finest, most direct songs I know – the master of our adolescent hearts, still beating unbidden in our chests even as his own has stilled – today, we revisit one of my favorite features from last year.
Covered in Folk: Big Star
(Kathryn Williams, Son Volt, Evan Dando, Kelly Willis +10 more!)
Bloggers love Big Star. So much so, in fact, that mere mention of their names to a certain sort of audiophile is like a secret handshake, a wink and a nod that marks the listener as a well-informed, well-cultured aesthete of a particular underground substream which defined the modern musical map.
And deservedly so. Led by highly conflicted and conflicting personalities Alex Chilton & Chris Bell in the early seventies, the original incarnation of Big Star never had much mainstream success, perhaps because they were way ahead of their time, though label mismanagement and inter-band tensions certainly took their toll. Lineup changes had an effect, too: Bell left the band before Chilton and remaining band member Jody Stephens came back to record Third/Sister Lovers, a third and final masterpiece, and after that, the project pretty much petered out.
But thanks to mid-eighties back-catalog attention from both labels and the rising alt-rock movement, the post-British invasion proto alt-rock which Big Star produced during their short-lived first-wave career would go on to become a strong and heady influence for musicians and fans searching for a pound of powerpop truth in the lean rock decades which followed.
Singer-songwriters prone to pensive coverage love Big Star’s songbook, too. Short enough to fit in a thin box set, it is nonetheless chock full of easily learned, easily covered odes to timeless angst and adolescence, ranging from brooding acoustic ballads to powerful rockers.
The band’s underground cachet allows coverage to serve as a nod to smart listeners looking for an acknowledgement of the history of music which creates the time/space of performance and its corresponding experience. The songs themselves remain powerful enough to speak raw emotion in oft-hushed tones to anyone who might care to hear, regardless of familiarity with the original. It’s the ideal situation for covers, allowing the recreation of songs to serve as a community grounding for those that need it, while simultaneously providing a stage for just plumb good performance.
Which is not to say that it’s impossible to mess up a Big Star song. Only that there’s more than enough gems out there, and that we have the whole process — from the songwriters and original performances to the interconnected history which brings forth our experience of interpretation — to thank for it. We’ve posted a few of these before, and I’m certainly not the first to share most of ‘em, but for completeness’ sake, here’s the breathtaking best of a surprisingly large collection, from grungy electric folkrock to hard-edged alt-country to sparse and sultry singer-songwriter.
- Kathryn Williams: Thirteen
(from Relations, 2004) - Mary Lou Lord: Thirteen
(from Live: City Sounds, 2001; more Mary Lou Lord) - Elliott Smith: Thirteen
(from unreleased demos/outtakes; more Elliott Smith)
- Evan Dando: The Ballad of El Goodo
(from the Empire Records soundtrack, 1995; more Evan Dando) - Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: The Ballad of El Goodo
(live, 2006; more Ted Leo)
- Rainy Day: Holocaust
(from Rainy Day [out of print], 1983) - Son Volt: Holocaust
(from Retrospective: 1995 – 2000)
- Whiskeytown: Give Me Another Chance
(from Big Star, Small World, 2006; more Whiskeytown)
- Bat For Lashes: Kangaroo
(unknown source, 2009; more Bat For Lashes)
- Denison Witmer: Nighttime
(from Recovered, 2003)
- Okkervil River: O, Dana
(from the Overboard and Down EP [out of print], 2006)
- Kelly Willis: When My Baby’s Beside Me
(from Big Star, Small World, 2006; more Kelly Willis)
- Superdrag: September Gurls
(from I Know The Score [out of print; promotional], 1996)
- Bonus Track*
This Mortal Coil: You and Your Sister
(from Blood, 1991)
*You and Your Sister was a Chris Bell solo track, released as a b-side just a few months before Bell passed in a car crash at the age of 27 in December, 1978. It also featured Alex Chilton on backing vocals.
What with multiple Big Star reissues and compilations coming at us this year — most notably upcoming four-disk Rhino demos-and-all retrospective Keep The Eye On The Sky, which drops September 15 — I’m not the only one to pick up on the buzz. For more relatively recent blogger paeans, including links to a few more great Big Star covers, check out August tributes from Mainstream Isn’t So Bad and Aquarium Drunkard. And don’t forget to pick up 2006 tribute album Big Star, Small World if you’re up for some additional coverage of the late nineties post-grunge and Americana type.
Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk features and sets Wednesdays, Sundays, and the very occasional otherday.