18/03/2010
Big Star’s September Gurls as covered by the Bangles.
I’m quite certain the first time I heard a Big Star song, it was from the lips of Susanna Hoffs. I’d heard Alex Chilton before, “The Letter,” a classic rock radio standard from his first band the Boxtops was pretty likely to get turned up by my Mom in her Chevy station wagon.
Like many other fans of music, I later “discovered” Big Star and found that many of my favorite artists, Elliot Smith, Wilco and REM to name a few were fans as well. Chilton and Bell’s material was extremely strong and not unlike the work of Dylan or Cohen, really shinned in the hands of other experts. It’s been said that once a song becomes a hit, it can become a hit again — I think something similar can be said of any great song — they bare repeating. I can easily listen to an album’s worth of “Thirteen” covers back to back — the same goes for most of the songs on the first two albums.
Still, I am reminded now that Alex Chilton is gone, that Big Star has been gone for close to 40 years. I know that Chilton was able to capitalize at least in a small way on the great accomplishment of his Big Star work by touring with the Poises under the original name, but in all honesty, I eventually had to admit to myself that I didn’t want “In Space” coming up on my iPod — it wasn’t bad, but I never really could connect with it like I could with “#1 Record.”
It also occurs to me that while the business of music today has many problems — getting great music to an audience isn’t one of them. Big Star is the textbook example of a band people wanted to hear, but couldn’t because they were unable to overcome the limitations of their obligations to a failing and incompetent corporation. It’s part of their myth and status as outsider heroes, but in the final analysis — I for one would like to remove the under from the appreciated line on the epitaph.
Alex Chilton, a great talent, recognized and appreciated in his time.
Audio posted at 11:02
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