awww man, Alex Chilton died...

[DRGUN]

DRGUN: you're a prick. Grow up.

 

 

I was super drunk when i wrote that last night. had just played a huge st paddys day show, didnt mean to sound like such dick in retrospect.

 

still, put this death in perspective, so many kids die everyday because they dont have food/water/medicine.

[fuzzface71]

One of the greatest. R.I.P Mr. Chilton


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[The P-Man]

I was super drunk when i wrote that last night. had just played a huge st paddys day show, didnt mean to sound like such dick in retrospect. still, put this death in perspective, so many kids die everyday because they dont have food/water/medicine.

 

 

What kind of perspective is that? People die of malnutrition therefore we shouldn't care about Alex Chilton dying?! ! Looks like the beer killed a few brain cells.

[Instrospection]

The even sadder part is that Chilton has long disowned alot of his work in Big Star....he only likes a small selection of songs. I think he even really strongly dislikes "The Ballad Of El Goodo". The way that I look at his career is that alot of it sounds like a "you can't fire me, I quit!" reaction.....the more that he put in his best efforts ("#1 Record" is still my favorite....the craft and effort and meticulous attention to detail), the more that it seemed to fall on deaf ears. So it seemed like when he was in any sort of spotlight (ensuing releases, live shows, etc), the easier thing to do was to purposely destroy things as a protection mechanism so that maybe the blow was lessened. When you put in your best effort and people don't like it....where do you go from there? If you gave everything, technically, there's nothing left to give. Most artists buy into the philosophy of always getting better with time, but what if Alex felt that he was only ever as good as he'd get on the first two Big Star albums?

 

"Third/ Sister Lovers" is definetely Alex's baby, and it was sort of an unofficial solo debut in anything but name. And in fairness, it wasn't an actual "release".....various bootlegs of it leaked out over the years with various song orders, and Rykodisc took it upon themselves to do a proper release of it. That was the first Big Star release that i'd bought, and i'd thought that it was......underwhelming of the accolades that i'd been hearing about the band for years at that point. I love that record now, but I was pretty bewildered as to what was going on.....as one quote goes (something like), it's the "sound of a disintegrating vision". There's this feeling of voyeurism that you're accidentally peering into someone's weird mad scientist project--almost like this environment where it's demos and rough sketches of songs-- but it's not fully destroyed.....it's still discernible as rock music, but there's this detachment from it. That's the best way that I can describe how I felt when I first heard it.

 

Alex:

 

"I never made a dime off of Big Star"

 

That's obviously up for revision since the bands that they'd influenced (Replacements, REM, Gigolo Aunts, Teenage Fanclub) had kept their name alive and created an actual continued demand for the band's material, but it certainly wasn't the case back then at the time. It was "sorry our distro screwed up, you have no chance of getting your records much past Memphis and good luck with those tours with little to no label support".

[Naterel]

[rileykill]

RIP Alex C.

[companyman]

LOL...wat?