3/18 RIP Alex Chilton
SXSW recaps coming, but for now...
An earlier follower of theirs, Cheap Trick, brought "In The Street" back when they covered it as the theme song to "That 70s Show."
Here's Alex Chilton with his first band, the Box Tops. Even your mom knows this song:
And here's one of those cheesy YouTube slide shows of my favorite Big Star song, "The Ballad of El Goodo"
Alex Chilton, the influential musician and producer who worked first with The Box Tops and then with the power pop group Big Star, died this week from a heart attack at age 59.Chilton is somebody who has really started to influence me in a huge way as I've started to play more pop-oriented, "accessible" music. Big Star were an anachronism when they came out, a Beatles/Byrds-influenced shiny pop group in the early '70s heyday of heavy metal. They enjoyed few record sales, and an interview recorded after their second album finds Chilton calling their first one "rare" and hard to find. But their sound looked as much to the future as the past, and by the 1980s bands like R.E.M. and the Replacements were making a solid living with a jangly Big-Star-influenced sound.
An earlier follower of theirs, Cheap Trick, brought "In The Street" back when they covered it as the theme song to "That 70s Show."
Here's Alex Chilton with his first band, the Box Tops. Even your mom knows this song:
And here's one of those cheesy YouTube slide shows of my favorite Big Star song, "The Ballad of El Goodo"