We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Pleased to Meet Me
Year: 1987
. . .
I’m in love, what’s that song?
“Alex Chilton” just might be the greatest song Paul Westerberg ever wrote.
It might be possible that even Paul thinks so, as when The Replacements came back to TV and did a song on the Jimmy Fallon show — a video which is no longer available, because fuck nbc.com — the song they chose was “Alex Chilton.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1884: The Replacements – “Alex Chilton”
“Children by the millions sing for Alex Chilton when he comes round
They sing: I’m in love, what’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.”
— Paul Westerberg, 1987
I still remember precisely where I was when I first heard Big Star: the front room of the condo Kirk & I lived at during the exact center of the 1980s. At that point, Big Star was just a rumour, a murmur that had begun to percolate from the burgeoning indie scene. We, of course, were both DJs at CSUF’s radio station, KFSR, and Kirk was also the Music Director.
Being Music Director had a really nice perk: keys to the Music Library in the Speech Arts building. The Music Library held 1000s and 1000s of albums going back decades. A certain portion of those records had been deemed suitable for KFSR by the previous Music Directors, but that left a vast treasure of undiscovered music to dig through. So we did.
Of course, this really was like looking for gold in a silver mine (or trying to drink whiskey from a bottle of wine), and usually led to escapades like the great Heavy Metal Record Toss, which was competition to see who could fling a vinyl record the furthest from the stage of the CSUF Ampitheatre. I think that Tim won that one.
But occasionally, we’d find some amazing stuff for the radio station, and one time, we found Big Star.
You can talk about genres, artists, albums, or even songs, but sometimes what keeps us coming back to music is the discovery of the transcendent musical moment. For me, “the moment” is the part of the song that fully and utterly engages me; the reason that I keep coming back to it.
I’m not necessarily talking about hooks here, because the purpose of a hook is the draw you into a song. I’m really talking more about traps: the part of a song that that keeps you there.
The is the fifth in a series. The first one had 25, the second one had 24, the third one had 23, the fourth one had 22.
Also: there is a slight — but not total – Christmas theme going on with this one. More of an arc, really. And a couple of mini-arcs, too!
Every single moment I’ve listed below kills me single every time I hear it.
Oh, and this isn’t in any kind of order, despite the numbering.