Tag: big star

Big Star – #1 Record…Desert Island Albums

This is my third round choice from Hanspostcard’s album draft…100 albums in 100 days.
2020 ALBUM DRAFT-ROUND 3 PICK 6- BADFINGER20 SELECTS- BIG STAR- #1 RECORD

“Big Star is like a letter that was mailed in 1971 but didn’t arrive until 1985.”
Musician Robyn Hitchcock 

I never travel far, without a little Big Star
The Replacements

“We’ve sort of flirted with greatness, but we’ve yet to make a record as good as Revolver or Highway 61 Revisited or Exile on Main Street or Big Star’s Third.”
Peter Buck

The band didn’t chart a record when they were active. I still hold their music up along with The Who, Beatles. and Kinks…they never had the sales but they did have a giant influence. They released this album as their debut in August of 1972.  I had to stop myself from writing an open love letter (I may have failed) about this band. Was it the mystique of them? Was it the coolness factor of liking a band that not many people knew? No and no. It’s about the music. Mystique and coolness wear off and all you are left with is the music…We are fortunate to have 3 albums by Big Star to enjoy.

In the early eighties, I heard stories from an older brother of a friend about Big Star out of Memphis…but their records were hard to come by.  I loved what little I heard and it got lost in the shuffle but it planted a seed for later. 

By the mid-80s I heard more of their songs. In 1986 The Bangles released “September Gurls” and I knew it sounded familiar…and the DJ said it was a Big Star song…then came the song, Alex Chilton, by The Replacements and  I’m ashamed to say it wasn’t until the early nineties, I finally had Big Star’s music along with the Raspberries and Badfinger. My power-pop fandom kicked into high gear and I have never left that genre.

Big Star was the best band never heard. Such a great band but a long frustrating story. They made three albums that were among the best of the decade that were not heard until much later. They signed with Ardent which was a subsidiary of Stax Records.

A power-pop band on the soul Stax label doesn’t sound like a good idea now and it wasn’t then. Stax was failing at that time and could not distribute the records to the stores. Kids loved the music on the radio only to go to a record store with no Big Star records. Rolling Stone gave them rave reviews…but that doesn’t help if the album is not out there to purchase. They were through by 1974 after recording their 3rd album.

When their albums were finally discovered by eighties bands, they influenced many artists such as REM, The Replacements, Cars, Cheap Trick, Sloan, Matthew Sweet, KISS, Wilco, Gin Blossoms, and many more. They influenced alternative rock of the 80s and 90s and continue to this day.

Listening to this album with each song you think…Oh, that could have been a single. Alex Chilton and Chris Bell wrote most of the songs and wanted to emulate Lennon/McCartney and they did a great job but with an obvious American slant to make it their own. After the commercial failure of this album, Chris Bell quit but the other three continued for one more album and then bass player Andy Hummel quit after the second album, and Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens recorded the third.

I could have gone with ANY three of their albums. I picked this one because of Chris Bell. The songs are a bit more polished on this one than the other two but it fits the songs they present. Chris Bell added a lot to Big Star and after hearing his solo song I Am The Cosmos you see how much. Radio City, their second album, with Chilton in charge many consider their best and their third album, Third/Sister Lovers is not as commercially accessible but I still love it. All three are in Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time.

I’ll go over four songs.

The Ballad Of El Goodo  A song about Vietnam conscientious objector…but it is much more than that. It is one of the most perfect pop/rock songs recorded to my ears. This would make it in my own top 10 songs of all time. The tone of the guitars, harmonies and the perfectly constructed chorus keeps calling me back listen after listen. This is when pop music becomes more.

In The Street is a song that everyone will know. It was used as the theme of That Seventies Show. Cheap Trick covered it for the show. I was not a teenager in the early seventies but with this song, I am there front and center. Steal your car and bring it down, Pick me up, we’ll drive around, Wish we had, A joint so bad.

Thirteen is a song that Chilton finds that spot between the innocence of childhood and the first teenage year where they meet and intertwine with confusion. Won’t you tell your dad, “get off my back” Tell him what we said ’bout “Paint It Black”

When My Baby’s Beside Me has a great guitar riff to open it up. This is power pop at it’s best. A nice rocker that should have been blaring out of AM radios in the 70’s.

I’m not going over every song (but I could easily) because reading this won’t do it…you have to listen if you haven’t already. You will not regret it. Not just these songs but the complete album.

It’s a mixture of songs on the album…rockers, mid-tempo songs, and ballads. Even the weaker song called The India Song is very listenable. My favorites besides the ones I listed are  Watch the Sunrise, Don’t Lie To Me, Feel, and Give Me Another Chance.

I now have rounded out my albums on my island. The variety of The White Album, The rock of Who’s Next, and the ringing power-pop beauty of Big Star…swim or use a boat and come over to my island and we will listen…the Pina Coladas and High Tides (hey it’s an island) are flowing… let’s drink to BIG STAR.

On a side note. If you want to learn more there is a good documentary out about them called: Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.

Feel
The Ballad Of El Goodo
In The Street
Thirteen
Don’t Lie To Me
The India Song
When My Baby’s Beside Me
My Life Is Right
Give Me Another Chance
Try Again
Watch The Sunrise
ST 100/6

  • Chris Bell – guitar, vocals
  • Alex Chilton – guitar, vocals
  • Andy Hummel – bass guitar, vocals
  • Jody Stephens – drums

 

 

 

My 10 Favorite Powerpop Songs

As you may have guessed by now I’m an extreme fan of power pop. This list was hard to write…I kept changing most of it… but I knew the top choice and worked from there.

I just gave my self ten choices or I would have gone on and on. A lot of artists and their songs were left off…such as Todd Rundgren, The Cars, Sloan, The Lemon Twigs, The Flamin’ Groovies, The Shivvers, The Jayhawks,  and too many more to mention.

10. The Ride – Twisterella– 1992 – I found this a few months back and have been listening to it ever since.

9. The Records – Starry Eyes– 1979 – Great song. Starry Eyes would end up being The Record’s best-known song. Robert John “Mutt” Lange produced their debut album for The Records.

8. The La’s – There She Goes– 1990 – A very good power pop song that has no verses…It just repeats the chorus four different ways four different times…but that doesn’t matter.

7. Cheap Trick – Voices– 1980 – One of my top Cheap Trick songs. Robin Zanders voice sounds great in this Beatlesque song.

6. The Who –Pictures of Lily– 1967 –  When this song came out Pete Townshend coined the name “power pop” and this song is about the childhood…lusts…of a boy.

5. Raspberries – Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)– 1974 – An epic song by the Raspberries. Not their most popular…that would be “Go All The Way” but this encapsulates everything power pop is about. Bruce Springsteen on Overnight Sensation: It’s one of the best little pop symphonies you’ll ever hear.

4. Big Star – The Ballad of El Goodo – 1972 – The tone of the guitars, harmonies and the perfect constructed chorus keeps me coming back listen after listen.

3. Badfinger –No Matter What– 1971 – The only band to make this list twice. Why? because this song defines the crunchy power pop of bands like Cheap Trick to come.

 2. Tom Petty – American Girl– 1977 – The Rickenbacker, the hook, and a Byrds sounding track.

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  1. Badfinger – Baby Blue – 1972 – The number one song was the easiest decision of the list. The rest were changed a few times…this one for me is a no-brainer. This song is the perfect power pop song…strong vocals, Crunchy Brit  guitar, great hook,  and great melody

Big Star – When My Baby ‘s Beside Me

Great riff by Alex Chilton and full of the hooks that Big Star is known for. This song was the A-side to In The Street released in 1972. Both songs are on Big Star’s album #1 Record.

With the exception of some smart critics, at the time of their existence, Big Star was all but ignored. Big Star played a one-off promotional show for the Memphis Rock Writer’s Convention at Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis in May of 1973. It cemented them into legendary status due to the writers who witnessed it and carried the message of Big Star out in their writing. Chris Bell had left the band by the time this live show was recorded.

The song is credited to Alex Chilton and Chris Bell.

When My Baby’s Beside Me

Don’t need to talk to my doctor
Don’t need to talk to my shrink
Don’t need to hide behind no locked door
I don’t need to think

‘Cause when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me, all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me, all I know

Read all my books and talked about
Listen to my radio
Been in school and dropped right out
Tryin’ to find out what I didn’t know

But when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me, all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me, all I know

Don’t need to talk to my doctor
Don’t need to talk to my shrink
Don’t need to hide behind no locked door
I don’t need to think

‘Cause when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me, all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me, all I know

When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me, all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me, all I know

Big Star – September Gurls

A great Big Star song and one of their most popular. It was one of the best pop songs that didn’t chart. September Gurls was rated #180 by Rolling Stone in the magazine’s top 500 songs of all time.

Released as a single, it did not chart despite receiving excellent reviews, due mainly to poor marketing and distribution. It was on their second studio album Radio City. The song was later covered by The Bangles on their album Different Light.

From Songfacts

This paean to “September Gurls” was penned by vocalist Alex Chilton for Big Star’s second album Radio City. 

Alex Chilton once said of his songwriting: “I really loved the mid-’60s British pop music, all two and a half minutes long, really appealing songs. So I’ve always aspired to that same format, that’s what I like.”

The Bangles covered this on their 1988 album, Different Light.

Alex Chilton died of a heart attack on March 17, 2010, aged 59. He had experienced shortness of breath and chills while cutting the lawn but did not seek medical attention, in part because he had no health insurance.

September Girls

September girls 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 boy’s got it bad 
December boy’s got it bad 

September girls, I don’t know why 
How can I deny what’s inside 
Even though I’ll keep away 
They we’ll love all our days 
December boy’s got it bad 
December boy’s 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 girls 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 boy’s got it bad 
December boy’s got it bad 
December boy’s got it bad, woo ooo

 

Big Star – In The Street

Most people today know this song as the theme to That 70s Show. They never used Big Star’s version for some reason. Todd Griffin covered it the first season and by the second season, Cheap Trick’s version was used. Big Star’s drummer Jody Stephens said, “I don’t know if the general population even knows that Big Star had anything to do with it.” …that is unfortunately true. The general population doesn’t know Big Star which is a crime.

The song was on their great debut album named #1 Record which was released in August of 1972. Billboard went as far as to say, “Every cut could be a single”…On the picture above it says “Distributed by Stax Records”…unfortunately it WASN’T… They did a tour and no one could find the album because many record stores didn’t have it. Stax was not equipped to distribute rock records.

By the second album, this was going to be resolved. Columbia was gonna distribute Stax, and then they would have got Big Star into big-box retail outlets. But what happened was Clive Davis, who’s huge in the music world, was the one who brokered that deal… and then he was fired. So the whole thing fell apart after that. America lost out on one of the best bands it ever produced. I would recommend to anyone the documentary on Big Star called…Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me

The song has a great riff and wonderful teenage seventies lyrics.

 

From Songfacts

Stephens played in a band called Golden Smog with Jeff Tweedy, and when Tweedy’s band Wilco came to Memphis, Jody sat in with the group. “We played ‘In The Street’ together – I sat in on drums and Glenn Kotche played the cowbell part and John Stirratt sang lead,” he recounts. “My wife was in the audience and she said when we started playing ‘In The Street,’ somebody sitting in back of her said, ‘Why are they playing That ’70s Show song?'”

In what he described as “ironic” in a 2000 Rolling Stone interview, Alex Chilton received $70 in royalty payments every time That ’70s Show was broadcast.

Cheap Trick’s cover features the lyrics “We’re all all right,” an allusion to their 1978 hit “Surrender” from the album Heaven Tonight. Perhaps a chirpy re-interpretation to suit a primetime network sitcom, the inclusion undermines the ambiguity of the original, which evokes adolescent boredom without either romanticizing or condemning it.

This ambiguity is perfectly encapsulated in the lyric, “wish we had a joint so bad” (also absent from the theme tune, although pot smoking was a recurring theme on the show), the double meaning of which can be read as meaning the protagonist’s craving to get high or for a place to go with his friends. There is certainly a theme of being disposed that runs throughout the deceptively simple lyrics, which is juxtaposed with the major key Power-Pop music.

Chilton has said that along with “When My Baby’s Beside Me,” “In The Street” is the best song he ever wrote

In The Street

Hanging out, down the street
The same old thing we did last week
Not a thing to do
But talk to you

Steal your car, and bring it down
Pick me up, we’ll drive around
Wish we had
A joint so bad

Pass the street light
Out past midnight

Hanging out, down the street
The same old thing we did last week
Not a thing to do
But talk to you

Big Star – The Ballad of El Goodo

This would make it in my own top 10 songs of all time. The tone of the guitars, harmonies and the perfect constructed chorus keeps me coming back listen after listen. The song is on Big Star’s album Number1 Record.

Most of the songs on the album could have been a single.

From Songfacts.

In a 1992 interview with Oor magazine, the songs’ co-writer Alex Chilton (who is credited along with Chris Bell) revealed that, whilst he felt that Big Star’s “music is still a triumph – some of the time,” he said “I didn’t understand how to make the right sound with my voice, so things like ‘Ballad Of El Goodo’ and ‘Thirteen’ could have been better.”

Though the song can be interpreted as a broad, abstract paean to anti-conformity and independence, the lyrics could more specifically allude to the Vietnam War. The first verse plays with the idiom “stick to your guns,” which could easily be literalized with the second verse:

“There’s people around who tell you that they know
The places where they send you, and it’s easy to go
They’ll zip you up and dress you down, stand you in a row
But you know you don’t have to
You can just say no”

The Vietnam War was seemingly important to Chilton. In an 2010 obituary for Nashvillescene.com following Chilton’s death, John “Bucky” Wilkin, lead singer and songwriter for ’60s surf rock group Ronny & the Daytonas, said: “Vietnam was the war we both related to, more on the level of the Buddhist priests who set themselves on fire in protest than as the American combat soldiers – both of us somehow being able to avoid the draft.”

In our 2013 interview, Big Star drummer Jody Stephens expressed how he felt the song revealed Chilton and Bell to be a cut above the average rock n’ roller: “All of a sudden I’m playing with these guys that can write songs that are as engaging to me as the people I’d grown up listening to, so I felt incredibly lucky.” He also singled out the song as one of his favorites to play.

Counting Crows covered the song for their 2012 album of covers Underwater Sunshine (or What we did on our Summer Vacation). In a 2012 interview with Paste magazine, frontman Adam Duritz said “One of the last changes we made was putting ‘The Ballad of El Goodo’ at the end of the record. I find it hard to follow that song on a record. I really love that song… it’s speaking about survival.”

The Ballad of El Goodo

Years ago, my heart was set to live, oh
But I’ve been trying hard against unbelievable odds
It gets so hard in times like now to hold on
My guns they’re waiting to be stuck by
At my side is God

And there ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round
Ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round

There’s people around who tell you that they know
The places where they send you, and it’s easy to go
They’ll zip you up and dress you down
Stand you in a row
But you know you don’t have to
You could just say no

And there ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round
Ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round
Ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round
Ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round

I’ve been built up and trusted
Broke down and busted
But they’ll get theirs and we’ll get ours
Just if we can
Just, ah, hold on
Hold on
Hold on
Hold on

Years ago my heart was set to live, oh
But I’ve been trying hard against strong odds
It gets so hard at times like now to hold on
Well, I’ll fall if I don’t fight
And at my side is God

Ain’t there no one goin’ turn me ’round
Ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round
Ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round
Ain’t no one goin’ turn me ’round
Hold on
Hold on
Hold on
Hold on

Great Power Pop Bands that never got their due…

 

Seems like these bands were either too pop for rock radio or to rock for pop radio…The bands that come to mind are…

Badfinger – The most tragic story of any band in Rock History….although out of this list they did have the most hits… No Matter What, Day After Day Come and Get It and Baby Blue …one of my personal favorites out of many Midnight Caller…and Name of the Game…also  I would have loved to see what Pete Ham could have done later on if he would have lived…. This is the one that many people didn’t know that they wrote. Without You

Big Star – Great songs with great melodies that never caught on that influenced many bands to come after. September Gurls , Thirteen , Ballad of El Goodo In The Street these are just a few. This band should have been massive.

The Raspberries– Great hooks and they had a masterpiece that went unnoticed… Overnight Sensation…One of my favorite songs of all time. Their biggest hit was  Go All The Way. All their songs have great hooks with Carmen’s voice.

The Knack – Good Girls Don’t and of course My Sharona. 

The Jayhawks – I’m Gonna Make You Love Me , Blue

The Replacements

Who else?

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