•
Rating: Everything begins with the light bulb in the center of the red ceiling. Above a mute and unaware world.
Jingle-jangling guitars, hard-rock-like riffs, pop melodies, and fertile, alluring vocal harmonies, but also intimate inflections, a constantly guitar-centric sound portrayed with crystalline clarity, with a stunning presence effect. The Big Star are an archetype in the history of rock. Their sound has a primitive expressive strength. Naturally, they have had a cult status. Their three records, in the '70s, sold nothing.
When you listen to Big Star, the soul suffers. It falls ill, but it falls ill with beauty. A beauty that digs ditches and fills them. You wouldn't expect there to be spleen, right at the end of power-pop.
The Big Star are Alex Chilton and Chris Bell. Two magnificent compositional talents. Chilton (12/28/1950, Memphis, TN) debuted with the Box Tops, a kind of boy band before its time with a blue-eyed soul orientation. Still in Memphis, he meets Chris Bell and his Big Star, dedicated to rambunctious pop rock. The name comes from a chain of supermarkets; before it was Icewater and Rock City. It’s 1971. Chris (01/12/1951, Memphis – 12/27/1978 Memphis) is equally distinguished. If Chilton brings the passion for soul to the group, Bell contributes Beatles, Who, Kinks, and Byrds. From their synergy immediately comes a masterpiece: "#1 Record" (Ardent, 1972). In "#1 Record," power pop melodies and sharp guitar symmetries stand out, mixing Mersey-beat, garage rock, and Californian jingle-jangle, immediately focusing on a poetic language of their own (splendid "The Ballad Of El Goodo", "In The Streets", "Thirteen").
Bell, however, due to an already impossible coexistence, leaves the project in the hands of Chilton, who in 1974 replicates with "Radio City". Alongside him are the other two Big Star, Jody Stephens on drums and Andy Hummell on bass.
"Radio City" (Ardent, 1974) has a rougher sound than its predecessor, partly dark; it's a cohesive album of guitar pop, with flowing showers of chords. Chilton's singing is moderately abrasive. Hummel co-writes half of the tracks, a couple — uncredited — were started by Bell, but the songwriting is Chilton's forte, evidencing both his rebelliousness and his troubled disillusionment. Bell was more subtle and refined in composition, more versed and capable of finding hidden sweetness in harmonies. But Chilton can be extraordinarily effective and is not inferior. There is regret for their irreparable friction.
Power-pop reigns in the twelve songs: from the rhythmic ups and downs of "O My Soul", the elongated and then condensed melody of "What’s Goin Ahn", to the poignant and venomous "You Get What You Deserve" and "Daisy Glaze", to the insistent riffs of the anthems "Back of a Car" and, of course, "September Gurls", the quintessential perfection of guitar pop.
«I loved you, well, nevermind
I’ve been crying all the time».
["September Gurls"]
Intricate moods and feelings follow in the flowing and dense textures of the album. We find within nostalgia and melancholy, happiness and bitterness, a bit of irony and disdain. The whole album best expresses the end of a beautiful and damned adolescence. Not nihilism, but inertia. Indolence in the face of great impulses. A bit, in the end, like what Tonio Kröger, Mann's character, felt deeply:
«To those who asked him what he meant to do in the world, he gave contradictory answers, because, as he used to say, he carried within himself possibilities for a thousand ways of existence, along with the secret awareness that, in the end, they were as many impossibilities».
Then came "Third" (PVC), recorded in 1974, but distributed only four years later; even Hummel leaves, Chilton composes alone with a sensitivity — partly — changed and dark, achieving unexpected peaks of lyricism (“Holocaust,” “Kangaroo”). It is the third must-have of a trilogy, where Chilton combines soul with the gentler Velvet Underground. The album, a victim of repeated distribution issues, would only receive justice with the 1992 reissue, featuring additional material and the title "Sister Lovers", by Rykodisc.
Even Lesa Aldredge, Chilton’s partner and a member of the curious all-female proto-punk band Klitz from Memphis, leaves him amid a tumultuous relationship (she was the dedicatee of "I’m in Love with a Girl"). Meanwhile, Chris Bell dies in a car accident, just after managing to release a truly sublime single "I Am the Cosmos / You and Your Sister". Chilton, having moved to New York, embarks on a sporadic solo career, between music, alcohol, and less red ceilings. He also produces the first two 45s of the Cramps, in "Cubist Blues" (Thirsty Ear, 1996) with Alan Vega and Ben Vaughn perhaps reaching his post-Big Star peak, finding himself driving a cab and washing dishes to survive. For some men, there is no right road. Despite a great star having illuminated their path.
«Baby, I'm too afraid
I just don't know if it's okay
Trying to get away
From everything».
["Back Of A Car"]
The Big Star, revived in the new millennium thanks also to the interest of many fellow musicians, have been one of the most influential bands in rock & roll.
Cheap Trick, R.E.M., Db’s, Feelies, This Mortal Coil, Teenage Fanclub, Replacements (who will pay a heartfelt tribute to Alex Chilton in “Tim”), Pixies, Wilco, Yo La Tengo all owe them. Even the Bangles. And many others still.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 O My Soul (05:39)
O my soul mama
I lose control
go ahead and shake if you wanna
and I'll never know
wull come on
you know it's alright
we've got all night
you're driving me mad
and you shouldn't do that
we're going to get on up
and drink till we drop.
You're really a nice girl
and I think you're the most
and when we're together
I feel like a boss
CHORUS Trying to see you
I'd knock off your doors
dying to see you
I'm down on the floor.
02 Life Is White (03:18)
Don't like to see your face
don't like to hear you talk at all
I could be with Ann
but I'd just get bored
CHORUS Can't even bring myself to call
03 Way Out West (02:49)
She's a schemer and she makes me bad
but I love her a lot those lonely nights
I was in a big room playing my things
oh I wish she were here she can be so kind
when she's not trying to hide
she tries not to love me but she knows
she can
CHORUS And why don't you come on back from
05 You Get What You Deserve (03:07)
Try to understand what I'm going through
and don't blame me for what folks will do
for some of us it's not a good time
but you're going to get used to
and you'd better resign yourself.
CHORUS You get what you deserve
you ought to find out what it's worth
and you've gotta have a lotta nerve.
You just do what pleases you
and go on and sign out every move
you're going to get place in the scene
all God's orphans get face in the dream.
Too bad such a drag ow !
so much pain down the drain
and a lot of us ain't got many friends.
Try to understand what I'm going through
and don't blame me for what folks will do
for some of us it's not a good time
but you're going to get used to
and you'd better resign yourself.
CHORUS
06 Mod Lang (02:44)
I can't be satisfied
what you want me to do
and so I moan
had to leave my home.
Love my gull oooh yeh
she got to save my soul
I want a witness I want to testify.
CHORUS How long can this go on ?
All night long I was howling
I was a barking dog
aahow aahow.
08 Daisy Glaze (03:49)
I'm driving alone
sad about you
not going home
what's to do
you better not leave me here
better not leave me here
ooh I want you here
how can you leave me here.
I lie in a stream
and floating fine
receiving things
in my beautiful mind
sometimes oh sometimes
sometimes oh sometimes
lover yes I am
Lover you know I am.
Now I'm in a bar
that's got to be where they are
going to dance in the bar
they're going to fight on the floor
faster than I can see.
Now I gonna score
make for the door
Who is this whore ?
soon be beggin drags.
And I'm thinking Christ
nullify my life.
You're going to die
you gonna decease.
10 September Gurls (02:49)
September gurls do so much
I was your butch and you were touched
I loved you, well, never mind
I've been crying all the time
December boys got it bad
December boys got it bad
September gurls, I don't know why
How can I deny what's inside
Even though I'll keep away
They will love all our days
December boys got it bad
December boys got it bad
When I get to bed late at night
That's the time she makes things right
Ooh, when she makes love to me
September gurls do so much
I was your butch and you were touched
I loved you, well, never mind
I've been crying all the time
December boys got it bad
December boys got it bad
December boys got it bad, ooh
Loading comments slowly
