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Big Star

Certain Songs #745: The Jayhawks – “Big Star”

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Album: The Sound of Lies
Year: 1997

Mark Olson left The Jayhawks after Tomorrow The Green Grass to go work with his wife, Victoria Williams, and — like Peter Holsapple after Chris Stamey left the dBs — Gary Louris decided to carry on with the band under the established brand name.

Working with long-time bassist, Marc Perlman, the songs that Louris came up with for The Sound of Lies are somewhat different than the Americana that dominated their previous records: the guitars are louder, for one thing, and songs like “Sixteen Down” and “Poor Little Fish” have experimental textures to boot.

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Certain Songs #193: Chris Bell – “I Am The Cosmos”

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I am the cosmos

Album: I Am The Cosmos.

Year: 1974.

Posthumous releases are a tricky thing. But posthumous releases of an album that was never quite officially finished are even trickier – as we don’t really know what the artist truly wanted – so it was with trepidation that I approached Rkyodisc’s 1992 release of Chris Bell’s I Am The Cosmos.  For one thing, we don’t even know if he wanted to call it I Am The Cosmos.

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Certain Songs #52: Big Star – “Kangaroo”

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Album: Third.

Year: 1978.

When people talk about the madness and disintegration of Big Star’s Third, they’re really mostly talking about this song and “Holocaust,” twin sisters of desolation and despair, and – at least in the version of this album I originally had – back to back near the end of the record, sealing it in people’s minds for all time as a masterpiece of sadness and weirdness.

And they have a point: “Kangaroo” is a meandering soundscape chalk full of acoustic guitar feedback, ghostly strings, and drums that sound like a distant battlefield getting ever closer.

It’s really more of a mood than a song, and that mood is “Holy mother of god, am I depressed!”  And while it’s arguably not as depressed as the piano-based “Holocaust,” I like it more because it’s less on-the-nose lyrically, and it’s constantly changing – like the cowbells that come in near the end of the song, just for the sheer fuck of it.

Fan-made video for “Kangaroo”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #51: Big Star – “Stroke It Noel”

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Album: Third.

Year: 1978.

While the first two Big Star albums were basically unheard mysteries when I first encountered them, by the time I bought the 1985 PVC reissue of Third, I was well aware of the tales of madness and disintegration that surrounded its recording. So it’s kinda ironic that side one, track one of this record that is supposed to experimental and off-putting is this perfectly composed, meticulously arranged pop nugget.

Not much more than Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens and a simple string arrangement, “Stroke It Noel” might be the least raucous song in rock history that features a chorus of “Do you wanna dance?”

Of course, it was a feint: there was plenty of madness and disintegration on Third, so “Stroke It Noel” served as the same kind of palate cleanser / misdirection as “Sunday Morning” did on The Velvet Underground & Nico.  

It was also an indicator of one of the types of songs on the record, which I would roughly classify as Acoustic with Strings (“Stroke it Noel,” “For You” “Nighttime); Big Offbeat Rock ("You Can’t Have Me,” “Thank You Friends,”  "Jesus Christ" and, of course, Madness and Disintegration (“Holocaust,”  "Kangaroo").

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When I saw the Big Star’s Third concert in Los Angeles earlier this year, not only did they have Ken Stringfellow do the lead vocals on “Stroke It Noel,” (which made sense, as it would have fit in on any Posies album)  they had the legendary Van Dyke Parks do the string arrangements.  Like so much of the rest of that evening, it was equal parts sad, joyous and sublime.

Fan-made video for “Stroke It Noel)

My Certain Songs Playlist on Spotify

Every "Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #50: Big Star – “September Gurls”

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Album: Radio City
Year: 1974

…

While my favorite Big Star album has always been #1 Record (just in case you couldn’t tell), I can’t argue against anybody who prefers the raggedness of Radio City to the more pristine predecessor – or the unprecedented follow-up.  And a lot of that rests on the eternal charms of “September Gurls.”

With the 12-string rhythm guitar ringing ringing ringing ringing in one channel like the fucking 1966 Beatles, and Chilton contrasting the hope of summer with the despair of winter while Stephens and Hummel ooh and ahh at strategic points, what can you even say about this 2:47 of bliss that hasn’t been said before?

That its opening riff is not only sacred and profound, but a promise that is kept by the rest of the song?

That Paul Westerberg stole its “Riff-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Solo-Verse-Chorus-Chorus-Coda” structure for some of his greatest songs, including “Alex Chilton?”

That while the three Big Star songs I’ve previously posted were what initially drew me into them way back in ‘84, but it was instant classic familiarity of “September Gurls” that sealed the deal?

That The Bangles version was pretty great, totally inferior to the original, and the best song on Different Light?  And incredibly important because it was probably the first time that millions of people heard the song?

That when I made any kind of Big Star mixtape at all – for me, for a friend, for the fucking universe – the last song was always “September Gurls?”

“September Gurls”

Certain Songs #49: Big Star – “Thirteen”

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Album: #1 Record
Year: 1972

. . .

And so, after the three-song opening gut punch of “Feel,” “The Ballad of El Goodo” and “In The Street” we suddenly hear an insanely well-miked acoustic guitar over which a totally vulnerable-sounding Alex Chilton inhabits yet another teenager.

Won’t you let me walk you home from school?
Won’t you let me meet you at the pool?
Maybe Friday I can
Get tickets for the dance
And I’ll take you, ooh-oh

Unlike “In The Street,” which is chock full of verisimilitude and incident, I think that “Thirteen” is more a mystery. It’s basically a series of questions to Alex Chilton’s love object, but it’s unclear whether or not she ever answer those questions. Or that he ever even asked them of her face to face.

Won’t you tell your dad get off my back?
Tell him what we said ‘bout “Paint It Black”
Rock and roll is here to stay
Come inside where it’s okay
And I’ll shake you, ooh ooh

And really, what teenage girl is going to use the awesomeness of “Paint it Black” and the permanence of rock and roll as a reason for her father to hang out with a teenaged Alex Chilton? (I mean, honestly, using “The Letter” might be a way better strategy. “Dad, he’s going to get money from that song for a long time!”)

Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of?
Would you be an outlaw for my love?
If it’s so, well let me know
If it’s no, well I can go
I won’t make you, ooh ooh

So what ends up happening? We never find out.

And of course, the only reason that we’re even wondering about the words at all is because of how this song sounds, anchored by those amazing acoustic guitars.

One of the many things that makes #1 Record so special is the acoustic guitar sound.On “Thirteen” (and also “Watch The Sunrise”)  it feels like Alex Chilton and Chris Bell are sitting in your living room (or your car, or your bedroom, or wherever you happen to be when those songs come up) (which should be anywhere, because it’s Big Star), staring eye to eye, playing off of each other.

Add that guitar sound to the mysterious lyrics, Chiton’s tender singing, and the spacy backround vocals, and you get one of the more achingly gorgeous songs ever recorded. 

“Thirteen”

Certain Songs #47: Big Star – “The Ballad of El Goodo”

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Album: #1 Record
Year: 1972.

I’ve told the story before about how Kirk & I discovered a two-disc reissue of the unheard but not unknown Big Star’s #1 Record and Radio City languishing in the Record Library in CSUF Speech Arts building, rushed back to our condo and put it on.

What sealed the Big Star deal for me — besides “September Gurls,” which was instant and eternal — were the three songs in the middle of side one of #1 Record, which for decades have drawn me into listening to the whole album, which was a combination of incredibly weird and amazingly tuneful. Or maybe it was incredibly tuneful and amazingly weird.

Like, for example, “The Ballad of El Goodo,” which is chock-full of ringing 12-string guitar, heavenly backing vocals, perfectly placed drum fills and the chants of:

And there ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round
Aint no one going to turn me ‘round

and later in the song

Hold on 
Hold on
Hold on
Hold on

In 1984, this was like discovering The Velvet Underground for jangly guitars. Clearly an influence on so many things I loved, and yet not sounding like an influence at all — like say, The Who or The Beatles or even Dylan — but rather completely out of the time and place from where it supposedly came.

Also: I have always thought that maybe one of the best ways to illustrate the endearing idiosyncracies of Alex Chilton as a songwriter was in the lyrics to this song.  In the first verse, he sings:

I’ve been trying hard against unbelievable odds

And in the last verse, he sings:

I’ve been trying hard against strong odds

This is so weird! Every other songwriter ever when writing words about a personal struggle would put “strong odds” in the first verse, and as the song went on, up the ante, until he was facing the “unbelievable odds” at the end. If’d I’d ever gotten the chance to interview Alex Chilton, my first question would have been about this choice.

Which probably also would have been my last question, I’m sure.

“The Ballad of El Goodo”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Singing For Alex Chilton

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“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.

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17 Musical Moments to Die For

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Camper Van Beethoven play a house party in Fresno, CA in 1985.It has been four months since I’ve done one of these, a far cry from my original plan of doing one a month, and I can’t promise when the next one will be, or even if there will be a next one.

So, really quickly, the ground rules. These aren’t about artists, or albums, or even songs, but rather, moments: that piece of a song that draws you into it; that piece of a song that you wait to happen again; that piece of a song that is running in your head when you can’t sleep; that piece of a song that you find yourself humming at inopportune times.

That piece of a song that you can’t live without.

This is the ninth in a series: The first one had 25; the second one had 24; the third one had 23; the fourth one had 22; the fifth one had 21; and the sixth had 20; the seventh had 19 and the eighth had 18.

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