BIG STAR might change your life...

[Smitty]

Essential listening for any Big Star fan.

Yup - I prefer Alex Chilton's solo work, especially



twisted masterpiece

[Lurleen McQueen]

This is very nice...

[cortez the killer]

You ain't lyin' Lurleen.

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A friend gifted me with the box recently. Since the Big Star tribute shows over the past few days I'm sure I'll be digging deeper and deeper into that in the days to come. It was Brent Best who tipped me to Chris Bell in a big way with The Drams' cover of "I Am The Cosmos" in Raleigh a few years ago. Glad they covered that one during the tribute. Chris Stamey did an excellent job all around.

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If anyone's interested in listening to an interview with Chris Stamey, Jody Stephens, Mike Mills and other participants in the production of Big Star's Third that was held at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC this past Thursday & Friday click here. The interview was conducted Friday by Frank Stasio the host of WUNC's radio program The State of Things.

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More clips from the Big Star tribute last month at the Cat's Cradle. BTW, Sidney Dixon (in the first clip) is Don Dixon's daughter. As you'll soon find out, that girl can sing.

[cortez the killer]

Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story

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Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story

I've mentioned this before but the film crew from this movie was at the Cradle shooting the Third concert for inclusion in the documentary. Speaking of which, a Media section has been added to the Big Star's Third blog so folks can have a place to share their videos and photos from the concerts.

[cortez the killer]

Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story

I've mentioned this before but the film crew from this movie was at the Cradle shooting the Third concert for inclusion in the documentary.

I must have missed it. My bad.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story

I've mentioned this before but the film crew from this movie was at the Cradle shooting the Third concert for inclusion in the documentary.

I must have missed it. My bad.

Not a problem. I just hope it's one of those projects that actually gets completed and we get to see it. Not to mention the recognition it would help bring to Big Star themselves.

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An update from the BigStarThird blog:



Big Star’s Third will perform an encore performance at Historic Playmakers Theatre on the University of North Carolina campus on February 15, 2011 and is currently booking additional engagements throughout the United States. The concerts are being filmed as a major component of “Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story,” a documentary film by Danielle McCarthy and Drew DeNicola slated for 2011 release.

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There will be an Encore Concert on Tuesday, February 15th at Playmakers Theatre on UNC's campus featuring members of Lost in Trees, Old Ceremony, Birds & Arrows, The dBs, NC Symphony, Mayflies USA, the Tomahawks and more with guests Brett Harris, Sidney Dixon & Greg Humphreys. Tickets are $15 ($8/$10 for students).

This special encore performance will be preceded that afternoon at 2:30 with a talk, “The Search for Blind Lemon: Jim Dickinson’s Legacy,” that explores the lasting legacy of Jim Dickinson, the producer of Big Star’s Sister/Lovers album as well as a seminal figure in the Memphis music scene. Participants to include Mary Lindsey, Chris Stamey, with Jody Stevens and John Fry via Skype.

[cortez the killer]

Looks like the Third/Sister Lovers tribute will make its way to NYC too.

http://www.jambase.com/Articles/Story.a ... ryID=26132

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From The Village Voice:

Big Star's Third, Onstage in New York at Last
An all-star tribute to American power pop's finest, bleakest hour


Chris Stamey, lifting up the room Daniel Coston

By 1974, half of Big Star's original four members were gone. Singer-guitarist Chris Bell and bassist Andy Hummel had left the band; only drummer Jody Stephens and former Box Tops singer Alex Chilton remained. The pair returned to Ardent Studios in their hometown of Memphis and recorded the third in a trinity of discs that may well represent the sum total of American power pop in the early 1970s.

Having built little or no audience for their first two works, 1972's #1 Record and 1974's Radio City, the frustrated Chilton created raw moments of poignancy and pain, threw some strings behind it at Stephens's bidding, and then walked away from everything. Big Star's Third (often called Third/Sister Lovers, as Chilton and Stephens were dating a pair of sisters at the time) wasn't released until 1978 and was never performed as it was recorded—that is, with a backing orchestra—until last year, where it served almost as a memorial. Stephens is now the only original Big Star member still alive: Bell died in a car accident in '78, while last year claimed both Chilton (heart problems) and Hummel (cancer).

To read the rest of the article click here.

[cortez the killer]

last year claimed Chilton (heart problems)

And, ironically enough, your post was made on the one-year anniversary of his death.

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From RollingStone.com:

Big Star Disciples Recreate 'Third' in Concert


Conni Freestone/breathlessmini.wordpress.com

It should have been impossible to perform. Recorded in 1974 by the final Seventies incarnation of the power-pop band Big Star, and now lionized as one of the most brutally cathartic rock albums ever made, Third (also known as Sister Lovers) was the work of a once-magnificent group reduced to survivors – singer-guitarist Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens – and emotional cinders. It was a document of great anger and pain, rendered in uneasy listening: juxtapositions of masterful rapture and radically violated pop convention, sung by Chilton in a soul-choirboy voice hypnotized by haunting. At the time, Third barely made it out of the studio; it wasn't released until 1978. By then, there was no Big Star at all.

To read the rest of the article click here.

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Mike Mills and Tift Merritt at the Big Star concert in NYC

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The Vinyl District blog has a great article on the upcoming Record Store Day only release of the remastered version of Big Star's Third that you can read all about here.

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[Tequila Cowboy]

Every time I listen to Big Star I feel like I'm listening to the best band most people have never heard. They were simply spectacular. I'll take Alex and the gang over the Beatles any day of the week.

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Seeing those Big Star Third/Sister Lovers concerts at the Cat's Cradle last year really opened my ears to them in a way just listening to #1 Record and Radio City never have but it's going to take a lot more than that to put them in Beatles territory for me.

[oilpiers]

Every time I listen to Big Star I feel like I'm listening to the best band most people have never heard. They were simply spectacular. I'll take Alex and the gang over the Beatles any day of the week.

They remind me a little bit of Paul Mccartney. Not in style so much. I hear the enormous impact they have had on other bands, but tend to like listening to the bands they influenced more. Bis Star is like college/alternative pop, 15 years before anyone ever heard of it. They were clearly ahead of their time. I have had the 2 album CD for almost 20 years, listened to it dozens of times, but right now I can't even recall a tune on it. Wico does the same thing to me.

[Smitty]

The thing about Big Star to me is that even though they influenced so many alternative/left-of-the-dial bands, their music is remarkably mainstream (ish) pop. It's hard to fathom how they weren't super-famous.

edit: of course they had less-mainstream-friendly stuff (especially on Third) but overall their sound wasn't very radical. Not a diss, I absolutely worship Big Star and when it comes to writing pop songs, they're a top-tier band.

[oilpiers]

The thing about Big Star to me is that even though they influenced so many alternative/left-of-the-dial bands, their music is remarkably mainstream (ish) pop. It's hard to fathom how they weren't super-famous.

One reason they were not famous was the times. The Stones the Who and Zep were huge. Bowie was making waves. The long haired rock and roll post hippie scene was mainstream. Journey, Kansas, Foreigner, Bad Company etc. was the eventual succesor to that. Big Star was just too far ahead of it's time.

[RolanK]

The thing about Big Star to me is that even though they influenced so many alternative/left-of-the-dial bands, their music is remarkably mainstream (ish) pop. It's hard to fathom how they weren't super-famous.

One reason they were not famous was the times. The Stones the Who and Zep were huge. Bowie was making waves. The long haired rock and roll post hippie scene was mainstream. Journey, Kansas, Foreigner, Bad Company etc. was the eventual succesor to that. Big Star was just too far ahead of it's time.

I also read somewhere that they really had problems with the record label at the time. If I remember correctly they were signed to Stax(?), who at the time were struggling financially, and the records were just not distributed to the market and into the record stores...

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Exclusive Trailer for Nothing Can Hurt Me: the Big Star Story, more info here.

[joelle]

i may bump this every single time i log in.

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As I've said before, those Big Star tribute shows at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro last year really helped me connect with their music in a way multiple listens to my copy of #1 Record/Radio City never have. Both concerts were filmed so I imagine bits and pieces will show up in the documentary but they're also deserving of a separate release. Same for the concert that was held in NYC shortly thereafter. There's also more to come when Chis Stamey and company take it over to London in 2012.