I’m the guest on the latest episode of the fabulous Discograffiti podcast discussing the work of ‘70s cult band, Big Star. Host Dave Gebroe and I recently had a splendid chat about the group, and the conversation was so epic it’s been divided into two parts. Check out the first installment at the conclusion of this post.

While I love all three of the Big Star albums released in the 1970s, I’ve always had a soft spot for Radio City. It’s the first one I bought, and I instantly fell for the tight-yet-loose, catchy rock ‘n’ roll embedded in the LP’s grooves. Years after becoming a huge fan of the band, I was surprised to discover that three of the songs on Radio City aren’t really Big Star at all.

The Dolby Fuckers were a studio project that consisted of Big Star’s Alex Chilton, drummer Richard Rosebrough, and bassist Danny Jones. Chilton and Rosebrough first met back when the former was fronting the Box Tops, and at the time of the recordings Rosebrough was working full-time as an engineer at Ardent Studios. Jones, a local musician, roomed with Chilton after Alex’s marriage fell apart.

There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Dolby Fuckers tracks, but one thing is for sure—no one remembers, exactly, when they were recorded. It seems most likely that the sessions took place during the months-long stretch in 1973 when Big Star were inactive. After they played a series of January shows at Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis, which were Big Star’s first public performances following the departure of Chris Bell in late 1972, the group effectively went on hiatus. They reconvened for a now legendary concert at the first and only Rock Writers’ Convention, held on May 25-26 at Lafayette’s. The band received such a positive response from notables like Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, and a teenage Cameron Crowe, that they decided to keep Big Star going. In the fall of 1973, the group went into Ardent to cut what would become Radio City.
 

Big Star: Jody Stephens, Andy Hummel, and Alex Chilton in the William Eggleston photo that appears on the back cover of ‘Radio City.’

Here’s Richard Rosebrough on the wild late night sessions at Ardent that produced two of the songs that wound up on Radio City—“She’s a Mover” and “Mod Lang”:

The Dolby Fuckers were just some sessions we did. There was a period when I was hanging out with Alex and I may have been working all day, then we’d meet at the bar later that night. The bar was just two doors down from the studio and we’d go in the studio at 2 a.m. and just start going crazy and making these recordings…Alex at that point was starting to fall into chaos. It got to be anything could happen. (from Big Star’s Radio City (33 1/3))

 

Richard Rosebrough.

A third Dolby Fuckers track, “What’s Goin’ Ahn,” was recorded during a formal Chilton session at Ardent. 

Big Star recorded everything in their arsenal for Radio City, but it wasn’t enough for a full LP, so the Dolby Fuckers tracks were added to round out the record. The only information on the album related to the Chilton-led project is this credit: “Danny Jones and Richard Rosebrough played too.”

The British Invasion-sounding “She’s a Mover” is probably the oldest track on Radio City, possibly dating as far back as mid-to-late 1972. The looseness of the evening it was captured in is preserved in the recording, which ends with a jam. The odd feedback sounds came from waving a pair of headphones over a microphone. Andy Hummel later overdubbed a bass part, so he’s on the final version. Big Star took a stab at the song, but their rendering was shelved, as it was felt it didn’t have the spirit of the Dolby Fuckers’ take.
 

 
Chilton was reportedly so pleased with how “She’s a Mover” turned out that he booked a session at Ardent with Rosebrough and Jones. The result was the achingly lovely “What’s Goin’ Ahn.” The song was written by Hummel and Chilton in Alex’s bedroom, many moons before Radio City was conceived.
 

 
The rocker “Mod Lang,” credited to Chilton and Rosebrough, comes from another debaucherous evening session at Ardent. Its title is an abbreviation for “Modern Languages,” a Memphis State department. Chilton later admitted he stole the lyrics from a bunch of old blues songs.
 

 
Despite the fact that they aren’t actually Big Star songs, the Dolby Fuckers recordings fit seamlessly with the rest of the tracks, contributing to the album’s greatness.

And where to they get “Dolby Fuckers” from anyway? During one of the sessions, Alex, wondering what the point of Dolby Noise Reduction was, asked Richard, “What’s this Dolby fucker do?” Needing a way to label the recordings, that’s the name they wrote on the tape boxes.

As with #1 Record, Radio City (released in early 1974), wasn’t properly distributed, playing a large role in its failure. Their final LP, Third (a/k/a Sister Lovers), is comprised of material taken from a Chilton/Stephens project. Released years after it was recorded, it’s a Big Star album in name only.

On April 25th, 1993, Chilton and Stephens reunited, along with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, for the first Big Star show in nearly two decades. From that gig, here they are, playing the majestic Radio City track “September Gurls.”
 

 
Discograffiti is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Spotfiy.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Found Alex Chilton demo reveals final team-up with Big Star bandmate, Chris Bell (a DM premiere)
What’s Your Sign?: Big Star’s Alex Chilton and his obsession with astrology
William Eggleston’s photos of Big Star

 
While I love all three of the Big Star albums released in the 1970s, I’ve always had a soft spot for Radio City. It’s the first one I bought, and I instantly fell for the tight-yet-loose, catchy rock ‘n’ roll embedded in the LP’s grooves. Years after becoming a huge fan of the band, I was surprised to discover that three of the songs on Radio City aren’t really Big Star at all.

The Dolby Fuckers were a studio project that consisted of Big Star’s Alex Chilton, drummer Richard Rosebrough, and bassist Danny Jones. Chilton and Rosebrough first met back when the former was fronting the Box Tops, and at the time of the recordings Rosebrough was working full-time as an engineer at Ardent Studios. Jones, a local musician, roomed with Chilton after Alex’s marriage fell apart.

There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Dolby Fuckers tracks, but one thing is for sure—no one remembers, exactly, when they were recorded. It seems most likely that the sessions took place during the months-long stretch in 1973 when Big Star were inactive. After they played a series of January shows at Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis, which were Big Star’s first public performances following the departure of Chris Bell in late 1972, the group effectively went on hiatus. They reconvened for a now legendary concert at the first and only Rock Writers’ Convention, held on May 25-26 at Lafayette’s. The band received such a positive response from notables like Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, and a teenage Cameron Crowe, that they decided to keep Big Star going. In the fall of 1973, the group went into Ardent to cut what would become Radio City.
 

Big Star: Jody Stephens, Andy Hummel, and Alex Chilton in the William Eggleston photo that appears on the back cover of ‘Radio City.’

Here’s Richard Rosebrough on the wild late night sessions at Ardent that produced two of the songs that wound up on Radio City—“She’s a Mover” and “Mod Lang”:

The Dolby Fuckers were just some sessions we did. There was a period when I was hanging out with Alex and I may have been working all day, then we’d meet at the bar later that night. The bar was just two doors down from the studio and we’d go in the studio at 2 a.m. and just start going crazy and making these recordings…Alex at that point was starting to fall into chaos. It got to be anything could happen. (from Big Star’s Radio City (33 1/3))

 

Richard Rosebrough.

A third Dolby Fuckers track, “What’s Goin’ Ahn,” was recorded during a formal Chilton session at Ardent. 

Big Star recorded everything in their arsenal for Radio City, but it wasn’t enough for a full LP, so the Dolby Fuckers tracks were added to round out the record. The only information on the album related to the Chilton-led project is this credit: “Danny Jones and Richard Rosebrough played too.”

The British Invasion-sounding “She’s a Mover” is probably the oldest track on Radio City, possibly dating as far back as mid-to-late 1972. The looseness of the evening it was captured in is preserved in the recording, which ends with a jam. The odd feedback sounds came from waving a pair of headphones over a microphone. For reasons that are unclear, Andy Hummel later overdubbed a bass part, so he plays on the final version. Big Star took a stab at the song, but their rendering was shelved, as it was felt it didn’t have the spirit of the Dolby Fuckers’ take.
 

 
Much more Big Star, after the jump…

 
In mid-1975, Alex Chilton was down on his luck—way down. No record label was interested in issuing the third Big Star LP, so the album was shelved, and the band broke up. He was struggling financially, as Big Star had failed to make an impact on the charts, and it had been years since the pop success of his first band, the Box Tops. Drugs and alcohol weren’t helping matters, either. All the while, Chilton was still writing great songs, and he was looking for a new record deal, as his contract with Ardent Records was about to expire. A demo tape documenting this era made at Ardent with Chris Bell, his former bandmate and songwriting collaborator in Big Star, is about to be put out—and Dangerous Minds has the premiere of one of the tunes.

Due to a variety of factors—including musical and personal conflicts in and around the band—Chris Bell left Big Star in late 1972, but in 1975, while in Europe looking to kickstart his solo career, he told music journalists he was open to the idea of a Big Star reunion. When Bell returned to the States, he got in touch with Chilton, and soon Alex was at Ardent Studios, singing a lovely harmony vocal on Chris’s gorgeous, tender ballad, “You and Your Sister.” Ultimately, a Big Star reunion didn’t happen, and it’s been thought that the session for “You and Your Sister” marked the final time Chilton and Bell worked together in the studio, but the recent unearthing of the Chilton demo has essentially changed history.
 

The original Big Star (L-R): Andy Hummel, Chris Bell, Alex Chilton, and Jody Stephens.

The 1975 demo engineered by Chris Bell at Ardent was discovered on a tape reel labeled simply “Alex Chilton.” The recordings, which exhibit Alex at the beginning of his charmingly ramshackle period, are of Chilton solo, just his voice and instrumentation. For the session, he tracked early versions of “My Rival” and “All of the Time,” as well as the rarity “Windows Hotel,” and “She Might Look My Way,” which was co-written by Tommy Hoehn and included on Hoehn’s 1978 LP, though a studio version hasn’t been included on an official Chilton release before. The demo has two stabs at the song, and on the second, Bell layers AC’s vocals to fine effect, contributing to the sweetness of the tune.

As off-kilter as these songs sound at times, Chilton’s melodic gifts can’t be obscured—in fact, the combination of chaos and songcraft is precisely what makes this material so appealing.
 

 
The recently discovered Chilton demo is about to be issued by Omnivore Recordings as My Rival, a 10-inch EP that arrives on November 29th—Record Store Day. A digital edition will be released on December 6th. The set contains liner notes penned by Rich Tupica, author of the essential 2018 book, There Was a Light: The Cosmic History of Chris Bell and the Rise of Big Star.
 

 
Here’s the premiere of “My Rival” from the EP:
 

 
It’s possible that Chris Bell, realizing that he and Alex Chilton were in very different places musically in 1975, never even brought up the idea of Big Star reunion with Chilton, though Alex later said if Chris had, he wouldn’t have been interested. Tragically, Bell died in a car accident in late 1978, leaving the ‘75 Chilton demo session as their final team-up. In the spring of 1993, Alex reunited with drummer Jody Stephens for a Big Star gig, with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies filling out the lineup. The unit continued to play on and off until Chilton’s sudden death in 2010.
 

 
We’ll bid you adieu with video of Alex Chilton and Sid Selvidge playing “My Rival,” circa 1975:
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Downs’: A stoned and chaotic unreleased Alex Chilton track from new Big Star box, ‘Complete Third’
What’s Your Sign?: Big Star’s Alex Chilton and his obsession with astrology
The Baker Street Regulars: Obscure ‘70s band that featured former members of Big Star

 
Alex Chilton’s 1986 EP, No Sex, was his second release after a period of self-imposed exile. Following the debaucherous recording sessions that resulted in his chaotic 1979 LP, Like Flies on Sherbert, Alex took a step back from recording and touring as a solo act, preferring to play the role of sideman. He eventually moved from Memphis to New Orleans, where he cleaned up a bit. He worked jobs outside of the music business for a while, before easing back into performing, playing anonymously in various bands. The 1985 EP, Feudalist Tarts, marked his return to releasing studio records, and it was a fine effort, for sure, but nothing on it was as great—or shocking—as “No Sex.”

The song focuses on the then-developing HIV/AIDS crisis. AIDS was first identified in 1981, and in the mid ‘80s there was a lot of confusion surrounding the disease. It was still unclear how it was spread, but sexual contact had been identified as one way the disease was acquired. There was no treatment, no vaccine, and no cure. People were scared. In January 1986, the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) revealed that in 1985 more people were diagnosed with AIDS than in all previous years combined. The following month, Alex Chilton went into the studio to record “No Sex.” His lyrics address a new, stark reality—sex was a possible death sentence.
 

 
If you’ve never heard “No Sex” before, you’re probably assuming it’s a depressing tune, but despite the bleak subject matter, it’s actually an overall upbeat number, reflecting Alex’s off-kilter sense of humor, while giving voice to the anxiety of the times. Much of its tone has to do with the music, an infectious (sorry, no pun intended), blend of rockabilly and Stax-like soul, executed in a tight yet loose fashion. Even with its profane refrain of “C’mon baby, fuck me and die,” the song did receive some college radio airplay—it’s that good.
 

 
Doug Garrison, who played drums on the track, gave us some insight into the recording of “No Sex,” as well as Chilton’s general production methods.

I’d be surprised if there were more than two or three takes on this. Alex didn’t like to belabor the point. His producing style was to preserve the edge, the little mistakes that give character to a performance in the studio. The first song I ever recorded with him was done in one take.

“No Sex” has been included on one of two new Alex Chilton collections recently released by Bar/None Records. From Memphis to New Orleans is a best-of spanning the years 1985-89, featuring a mix of solid originals and inspired covers. Songs from Robin Hood Lane highlights Alex’s love of Chet Baker and jazz standards. Amongst the fabulous recordings on this set, which all date from the 1990s, are four previously unreleased cuts.
 

 
The newly remastered “No Sex” is embedded below. Log in to Spotify to hear the whole song, or listen to it on YouTube.
 

 
We’ll part with video of an Alex Chilton performance from 1985.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Alex Chilton’s rarely heard ‘tribute’ song for the Replacements
What’s Your Sign?: Big Star’s Alex Chilton and his obsession with astrology
Tav Falco and the meaning of ‘anti’-rockabilly (with special guest Alex Chilton)

 
One of the most beloved songs by the Replacements is “Alex Chilton”. This hook-filled number from their 1987 LP, Please To Meet Me, is a tribute to Memphis musician and fabled cult hero, Alex Chilton (Box Tops, Big Star). It’s been performed during virtually every ‘Mats concert since its release. This includes their 2013-2015 reunion, in which it carried a new weight, as Chilton had passed away in 2010. In 2014, the Replacements appeared on The Tonight Show, and “Alex Chilton” is what they played.

Replacements leader Paul Westerberg first met Alex Chilton at a 1984 gig in New York City. Westerberg, not knowing exactly what to say, blurted out, “I’m in love with that one song of yours—what’s that song?” Chilton would produce the demos for the next Replacements album, Tim (1985), and sang back-up on their ode to college radio, “Left of the Dial”.
 

 
The Replacements recorded Pleased To Meet Me in Memphis at Ardent Studios, the same studio as Big Star. The man behind the board was Jim Dickinson, who produced the storied third Big Star album. Alex came into the studio a few times while the Replacements were working on the record (and laid down a guitar fill for “Can’t Hardly Wait”), but the band avoided the awkwardness of playing “Alex Chilton” whenever AC was around. Chilton eventually heard the track while on tour with the ‘Mats in April of ’87. He conceded that it was “a pretty good song,” and seemed to appreciate the gesture, which was to both honor him and increase his exposure. 
 

Westerberg and Chilton during an AC gig at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey, on November 20th, 1987.

Alex penned his own tribute, of sorts, for the Replacements. During a gig that took place at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa on October 23rd, 1987, Chilton performed the half-finished, “I’m a Replacement.” Not much is known about the tune, other than what AC tells the audience, and there are no other known recordings of the bluesy number. It’s been called a “spoof answer song,” which sounds about right to me. It’s definitely tongue-in-cheek.
 
Have a listen, after the jump…

 
Alex Chilton had quite a career in the music business. As the singer of his first group, the Box Tops, he had a number one hit with “The Letter”; he was just sixteen at the time. Later, he joined Big Star, writing pop gems that failed to find an audience then, but are now so beloved that the band has one of rock’s biggest cults. He recorded wonderfully chaotic material from the mid-to-late ‘70s, before setting on a steady course of gigging and albums that focused on his interpretations of other people’s songs, as well as periodic reunions with the Box Tops and Big Star. He died in 2010 at the age of 59.

When Chilton was around 20, he began using something he found useful in helping guide his life’s path: the zodiac. Alex initially became intrigued with astrology during his teenage years, but it was only after he moved to New York in 1970 did he fully embrace it. While living in Manhattan during the post-Box Tops/pre-Big Star period, Chilton befriended the Brooklyn musician, Grady Whitebread, who schooled Alex on astrology. Over the years, Chilton used horoscopes to decide who he should hang out with—including potential band members—and generally deal with life’s uncertainties. In a 1992 interview, Alex talked about the subject:

I’ve studied it rather extensively and I’ve gotten really, really sharp at it. I’m a pretty good interpreter of [astrological] charts. It is interesting as far as understanding people and it’s just darn interesting in and of itself. The longer you study something you believe in, the more profound it can get for you. (from the 2014 Chilton biography, A Man Called Destruction)

His fascination with astrology has, in turn, influenced his songwriting. Two tracks from the second Big Star album, Radio City, come to mind: “Morpha Too”,  which contains the line, “Kitty asked me to read her stars”; and “September Gurls,” arguably Chilton’s best tune. Alex was born on December 28, referenced in the song’s refrain, “December boy’s got it bad.”
 

 
Chilton frequently covered other artist’s material, and one choice in particular was surely swayed by the star signs.
 
Continues after the jump…

I was getting very destructive in a lot of ways then, and I was trying to capture that on recordings. –Alex Chilton

On October 14th, Omnivore Recordings will release the Big Star boxed set, Complete Third. Nearly ten years in the making, the collection includes all of the demos, rough mixes, alternate takes, and final masters that could be unearthed from the infamous 1974 Alex Chilton/Jody Stephens recording sessions that would produce the third—and for decades, final—studio album released under the Big Star moniker. As many of you reading this surely know, Big Star released two incredible albums on Ardent Records that should have been pop hits, but sank without a trace (largely due to poor distribution). By the time of the recording of what would become Third, two of the founding members—including Chilton’s songwriting partner, Chris Bell—had split. The Third sessions took place during a particularly rough patch for Chilton.

I was getting pretty crazy and into some pretty rotten drugs and drinking a lot. And I just wasn’t thinking in any practical terms at all after having the first Big Star albums go pretty much unsought.

Much of the Big Star mythology has to do with their third album, which wasn’t released until 1978, long after the band’s demise. The record label’s choice of album title, track listing, and even the use of the band’s name has been called into question—something that continues every subsequent time the record is retitled, reconfigured, and reissued. In the liner notes for Complete Third, the mysteries that still surround the project are explored: Why were the recordings shelved for so many years? What is the album title? Is there a definitive track sequence? Were the recordings meant to be released as “Big Star” or under another name entirely? Was it actually intended to be Alex Chilton’s solo debut? Was the album even formally completed?
 

Alex Chilton

What would become commonly known as Third was recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis over a four-month period. Jim Dickinson was the producer, and John Fry, owner of the Ardent label and studios, was the main engineer. Dickinson brought an experimental approach to the proceedings, which immediately impressed and inspired Chilton, and thus greatly influenced the outcome, while the strange and pleasing ambience captured on the album is attributed to Fry, who also created the final mixes. At the time of the recordings, Big Star was on the verge of collapse, and many of Chilton’s other relationships—like those with his girlfriend/muse, Lesa Aldridge, and John Fry—weren’t exactly stable either. The sessions were, by all accounts, tumultuous. For starters, Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens taped the basic tracks live—which would normally be fine and dandy, only Chilton didn’t play his demos for Stephens ahead of time. Things really got out of hand during wild late night overdubbing sessions, with all sorts of people coming and going and drinking and drugging. All this craziness ended up having a major impact on the recordings.

If you take enough bad drugs and drink enough you’re gonna be writing some pretty strange music. –Alex Chilton

The bleakness and debauchery present on a number of the songs is palpable, resulting in a voyeuristic quality that can be awkward and unsettling. Many of the arrangements will strike new listeners as odd, like on “Big Black Car,” in which the sound of silence was incorporated. How “Dream Lover” would flow wasn’t even thought out, so what’s heard on the album is the arrangement being created as it was recorded. The frequent presence of strings, which are absolutely gorgeous, add additional layers of melancholy to the somber, druggy tracks.
 

Jody Stephens

The darker tunes were offset by loose, up-tempo rock numbers, with many of the songs crashing to a halt at their conclusions. One of the notable highlights is Chilton’s defiant, “You Can’t Have Me,” featuring a dazzling synth-bass part and a rousing middle section that sounds like it’s gonna burst at the seams.

And then there’s “Downs.” Neither blue in mood, nor a joyous-sounding rocker, it IS stoned and chaotic—the oddest track on the fantastic, out-there LP. It’s also the spark that ignited the Third sessions.
 

Chilton and Lesa Aldridge

Written by Chilton and Aldridge, “Downs” is an ode to the couple’s preferred form of intoxicants. It was composed in Chilton’s apartment, with Chilton handling the music and Aldridge coming up with most of the lyrics. Chilton was so pleased with the results that he quickly recorded a guitar/vocal demo and rushed the tape over to John Fry, who was impressed enough with the track that he gave the go-ahead to record an album.
 

Chilton and John Fry

When it came time to record “Downs” at Ardent, Fry commented—within earshot of Chilton—that he thought the song had the potential to be a hit. BIG MISTAKE. Chilton, who made two commercial albums with Big Star, only to see them flop, was no longer interested in trying to make hits. In an act that could be described as self-sabotage, Chilton went out of his way to make the track radio unfriendly.

Chilton: “Let’s do the snare drum with a basketball!!”

“I remember the look on his (Fry’s) face,” Dickinson later recalled. “If Fry had just not said how good it was….” So, believe or not, a deflated basketball was indeed used on “Downs.” Steel drums were also brought in, giving the track a wobbly feel. Adding to the unsteadiness is Chilton’s vocal, as he slurred the melody, either to match the lyrical subject matter, or simply because he was out of his head.

Dickinson would go on to say that Chilton “destroyed” the song.
 

Jim Dickinson

I have to say that I dig “Downs.” It’s just so gloriously fucked up! How it turned out surely made an impression on the man himself, as it points towards the ramshackle form Chilton’s music would take during the second half of the 1970s.

But don’t take my word for it. Dangerous Minds has scored the premiere of John Fry’s early mix of the song, one of the previously unreleased alternate mixes included on ‘Complete Third,’ and you can hear it after the jump…

 
In the late 1970s, so many awesome punk bands looked to rockabilly for inspiration—think of the Cramps, X, the Gun Club. Not as renowned as those bands but possibly more authentically rockabilly than any of them were Tav Falco’s Panther Burns.

Early on, Gustavo Antonio Falco caught the attention of fellow Memphisian Alex Chilton, who saw him end a perfomance at the Orpheus in Memphis by cutting a guitar in half with a chainsaw. Chilton worked with the Cramps around the same time, and saw in Tav Falco someone who he could help take blues and rockabilly to new places. Falco did the titleing for Chilton’s notorious first solo album, Like Flies on Sherbert.

Around the time all of this was happening, Falco booked a gig on a Memphis-area talk show hosted by the matronly and marvelously named Marge Thrasher. In Amy Wallace and Handsome Dick Manitoba’s Official Punk Rock Book of Lists, Eric Friedl ranks this TV appearance #2 in his list of “Things That Made Memphis Punk.” With Chilton shyly sporting a pair of Cons and slotted in as guitarist (Falco cheekily introduces him as “Axel Chitlin”), the Panther Burns did a rendition of the Burnette Brothers’ “Train Kept a Rollin’” before segueing into … well, it took quite while before they could get to that second song—over the apparent objections of La Thrasher.

Fascinating here is the yawning chasm between the song they actually play, which seems understated, spare, groovy, and otherwise unexceptional, and the well-nigh horrified reaction it gets from Thrasher. While it was not a performance designed to blow the roof off the joint, Falco must have been positively bumfuzzled to hear the middle-aged Thrasher deem the song possibly “the worst sound I’ve ever heard come out on television” and block Falco’s efforts to play a second song by engaging in a lengthy and hostile interrogation as to the inherently “anti-music” nature of Falco’s style, which frankly seems hardly to exist—there’s nothing particularly alienating about the music! Not unduly discomfited, Falco gamely offers up a bunch of philosophical mumbo-jumbo in defense.

Thrasher doesn’t even seem all that angry, she’s genuinely curious why anybody would choose to play music like that on live TV at 9 o’clock in the morning: “This is anti-music, is that right? ... Are you all all part of the federal grant, of money?” (You can almost hear the Tea Party in that question….) We encountered a similar theme in a recent post about the Jackson 5—our increasing inability to hear just how profound punk’s attack on the status quo was. I don’t know if Thrasher was expecting the Electric Light Orchestra or the Carpenters or Lawrence Welk, but she sure as hell wasn’t expecting the thrum and purr of a low-budget rockabilly machine such as Tav Falco’s Panther Burns. I don’t know; it’s a wonderfully resonant bit of television. (In the video, the interesting freeze effects and inserts are the work of Randall Lyon, who partnered with Falco to run a video company named TeleVista Projects, Inc.)
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Alex Chilton Honored In Congress By Representative Steve Cohen
Alex Chilton and The Box Tops live at The Bitter End in 1967

 
How sad is this? Paul Hooson writing on the Wizbang Pop blog:

The wife of indie-music icon, Alex Chilton, Laura Kersting, revealed how the legendary singer was suffering serious heart symptoms recently, but had to delay seeking medical help due to a lack of health insurance. According to his wife, the 59 year old singer had been mowing the lawn recently, when he developed shortness of breath and chills. Chilton lived in New Orleans.

Chilton was the lead vocalist of The Box Tops, and had a multi-gold 4 million selling single with “The Letter” at the tender age of just 16. Chilton was scheduled for a reunion show with Big Star only days before he called his wife at work to say that he wasn’t feeling very well. She rushed home to get him, and while in the car, Chilton lost consciousness only a block before they arrived at the hospital emergency room door. Chilton was soon pronounced dead.

Chilton lived in a mixed race neighborhood in New Orleans. He and and his wife managed to survive the great storm that ruined the city in recent years. Strangely, Chilton chose to use a push mower to mow his own lawn, and lived a very humble life. Although, Chilton had sold several million records over his career, he never became wealthy.

Despite a string of great singles and a huge imprint on American power pop music, Alex Chilton was just your “Average Joe” musician.

Thanks Steven Otero!

 
A very sincere tribute. Moving.
 

 
Before Alex Chilton discovered power pop with Memphis, Tennessee legends Big Star, he was one of the best blue-eyed soul singers around as part of The Box Tops.  Originally founded by drummer Danny Smythe in 1963 as The Devilles, they eventually became The Box Tops by 1967 along with members Chilton (lead vocal, guitar), John Evans (guitar, keyboards, background vocals), Bill Cunningham (bass guitar, keyboards, background vocal), and Gary Talley (lead guitar, electric sitar, bass, background vocals). 

Their first single, The Letter would give them a hit single in 1967, catapulting the band to national fame.  They would follow their debut hit with further chart toppers, including Cry Like A Baby in 1968, before disbanding in 1970.  Chilton would, of course, find his future Big Star pals around Tennessee and move on from there.