From the weekly playlist of Bob's Scratchy Records, one of America's greatest radio programs, and the brainchild of photographer / rock'n'roll wild man / man-about-St. Louis Bob Reuter, in re: the death of Alex Chilton:
"I saw your very soul naked, stark naked….I suffered the pangs of disillusionment; I saw a man in torment struggling towards inward harmony... Forgive me, I cannot feel in halves." - Schoenberg wrote to Mahler after hearing the latter's Third
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I suppose it's possible for someone to like, or at least appreciate, all the wildly different phases of Alex Chilton's career - The Box Tops, Big Star, the dark, weird post-Big Star solo work of the '70s, the eclectic r'n'b/soul/rock of the '80s EPs, the reunited Big Star, the reunited Box Tops, etc. - but it's not possible to like them all equally. Everyone has a favorite and a different opinion on when he reached his peak. For me, it's probably Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers, a kind of perfect midpoint between the power pop that preceded it and the damaged, primitive, mutant rock'n'roll that followed.
As Chilton's music evolved or veered from one phase to another, his persona changed too. He was a teen idol/garage rocker, an Anglophilic semi-dandy, a CBGB art rocker/punk, a folkie, a collector, a Southern gentleman and an asshole, a hipster connoisseur of black music, and finally, an elder statesman able to embrace (if sometimes warily) several of the earlier selves, which he probably would've said were all one anyway.
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Something I've been thinking about in revisiting some of Chilton's music over the last week is how much his later work has in common with his sometime producer Jim Dickinson. They were both great at digging up worthy and often rare or forgotten r'n'b, country, soul, and jazz tunes to record, a proclivity that was inseparable from their seeming unconcern with commercial success. They recorded the songs that interested them, and their musical interests were very broad. As a recording artist, Dickinson had the advantages of having one of those gritty, imperfect voices that gets cooler with age and of having raised his own world-class backing band - his sons Luther (guitar) and Cody (drums). I would guess that the opportunity to make music with his sons was a big reason for Dickinson's recording as much as he did in his final decade.
-----------------------
With those, probably my final thoughts on Alex Chilton for a while, out of the way, I'll give you my list of recommended listening from the post-Big Star years, a confusing, sometimes frustrating period on which there is little agreement, but which, like it or not, amounts to the bulk of Chilton's career:
[Ass-covering note:
This list is necessarily non-definitive, since I haven't heard everything Chilton released after Big Star. I think it does give a sense of the range of material he released in the past 30+ years, though, and hits most of the high points.]
Baron of Love, Pt. 2 - this is really Chilton associate Ross Johnson's show, a messed-up mashup of a trashy Elvis biography and The Doors' "The End" being narrated by an apocalyptic weirdo at 4 AM in a Memphis t*tty bar. The version of Like Flies On Sherbert I have leads off with this track, which is not the case on other versions. Hard to imagine it any other way now, though. (I also have a version of this labeled Part 1, which seems to just be an alternate take - nearly as good but quite similar to the more familiar Part 2.)
My Rival - the tape sounds at the beginning, the shaky-but-real sense of rock'n'roll danger and menace, the coming-unhinged lyric and vocal - if you wanted to grasp the Like Flies On Sherbert "concept" by listening to just one track, this would be an excellent choice.
Hey! Little Child - in a discography with many funny and perverse moments, the roll call of Catholic girls' schools near the end of this stands out as one of the funniest and most perverse. "Hey! Little Child" is to Like Flies on Sherbert as "Cyprus Avenue" is to Astral Weeks, or something like that.
Like Flies on Sherbert - "IT'S...so fiiii-i-ine" - I notice that AC Newman has cited this as his favorite Chilton song - "beautiful and messed up" indeed - only the Chilton-Dickinson pairing could have yielded something with this track's very specific, yet impossible-to-define quality of strangeness.
Bangkok - Chilton takes his listeners on an ultra-sleazy Southeast Asian sex tour with this bizarro punk rocker from 1978 - tough choice between the eccentric production of the single (including machine gun fire) and the Live In London version, where it fits in well with sloppy/edgy renditions of several Like Flies tracks.
Walking Dead - one of the weirder entries in the Chilton catalogue (and that's saying something), this is arguably the best thing to come out of the semi-disastrous Jon Tiven sessions (the results of which were released on The Singer Not The Song EP and the LP Bach's Bottom - and the CD version of Bach's Bottom, which is apparently very different - Chilton's '70s/'80s discography is a minefield) - this finds Chilton getting into Roky Erickson territory with the subject matter while reaching new heights of hazy weirdness with the sound.
Tramp - dangerous-sounding live version (from the Sherbert-era Live in London, with the Soft Boys rhythm section) of the Lowell Fulsom blues/soul standard made most famous by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas' duet. When Chilton says that he "won't even smack ya in the face" on this track, you're not sure whether to believe him.
Train Kept A Rollin' - hiccuping rockabilly energy - a fine loose version (from Live In London) of fellow Memphian Johnny Burnette's horny, hopped-up all-time classic.
No Sex - Chilton's musical response to the AIDS crisis, from 1986, including one of the greatest lines of his career, "c'mon baby, f*ck me and die". "Streets of Philadephia" (or "Philadelphia") it ain't.
Dalai Lama - from 1987's High Priest, a wacky ode to the Lama and his swingin' pad ("he had a far-out decorator") in the Himalayas. This is just good, ridiculous fun, and I love it.
I Remember Mama - a highlight from what is perhaps Chilton's best-titled album, Loose Shoes and Tight P*ssy (originally on a small French label with a great cover, it was lamely retitled Set when first released in the US), this was a Shirley Caesar gospel/soul heart-tugger played by Chilton as a gritty Southern rock anthem.
Single Again - Alex goes honky-tonk on this Gary Stewart cover, also from Loose Shoes.
Il Ribelle - the source version of this Chilton live set staple is a nice piece of honkin' sax Elvis/Chuck Berry-style rock'n'roll, Italian-style. On paper, this seemed like one of his more left-field cover choices, but it gave AC a chance to show off his rockabilly chops (and foreign language singing). First appearing on the very solid, well-produced if not-quite-transcendent studio album A Man Called Destruction, this also shows up on the 2004 Live In Anvers.
What's Your Sign Girl - another staple of Chilton's later-period live shows (and also on A Man Called Destruction), this tune is a nearly forgotten, smooth late-70s Philly-style r'n'b gem from Barry White protege Danny Pearson.
Bonus Links
An incredible piece on Chilton's bizarre, harrowing, and sporadically brilliant '75-'81 period, rivaling It Came From Memphis as a depiction of pure, undistilled Mid-South weirdness.
I love this footage, from a New Orleans cemetery, which has been linked to and embedded in a lot of places in the last week.
Steve Scariano has some amazing true-life tales of interviewing Chilton for Bomp! Magazine and getting more than he bargained for.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Roundup of Recent Music Things
Realized last night that I was extremely remiss in overlooking the death of Willie Mitchell, which occurred early this year, between those of his fellow Memphis legends/recording artists/producers Jim Dickinson and Alex Chilton.
As a producer and label head at Hi Records, he was responsible for some of the best-sounding records of all time. Some of these productions, most notably Al Green's peak period hits, still stop me in my tracks even though I've heard them countless times. Check out the documentary Gospel According To Al Green for a peek into Mitchell's soul factory (a converted movie theater).
------------------
Speaking of notable drum sounds, listening to the new Paul Motian record (Lost In A Dream, recorded last year at the Vanguard) and seeing him at the Vanguard (with Jason Moran and Greg Osby) got me thinking about live music vs. recordings of live music. My home stereo setup is, to say the least, not hi-fi, but I have a strong sense that even on the beautifully recorded Lost In A Dream, some of the sound that the musicians made got left behind in the room (I get the same feeling listening to Fred Hersch's also beautifully recorded Vanguard record). Being in the room, especially that room, in the moment, there's just more music. I guess this is an obvious point, the existence of an indefinable (at least for me) gap, the thing that drives audio engineers to keep pushing toward truer and truer sound reproduction.
A couple more quick notes on the Motian-Moran-Osby trio:
It seem to me that the Motian-Moran hookup has become a little deeper since the last time I saw them together (the week Lost In A Dream was recorded, when it was already quite deep). As with so many of the fleeting pairings in today's jazz world, it's a shame they don't play together more often.
Osby has a substantially different sound than Chris Potter, who appears on Lost In A Dream, and he brought some things to Motian's music that I hadn't heard from any of his other collaborators. On one tune, he achieved a very bird-like (though not especially Bird-like) sound, almost reminiscent of the gentler moments of Eric Dolphy. He turned another tune into a clinic on the discipline and rewards of playing very softly, something he's given substantial thought to lately.
On the closing "Drum Music", I experienced the pure pleasure of seeing and hearing a 78 year-old man beating the living f*ck out a drum kit. By the way, I think today is Motian's 79th birthday - WKCR and Phil Schaap, isn't it about time to give this man a birthday broadcast?
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At the risk of running this post into the ground by hitting too many of my usual subjects, I thought I would toss in a few notes on this week's Clientele/Field Music show at the Bowery Ballroom:
Going in, I would have just referred to it as this week's Clientele show, but Field Music was just about good enough to receive co-billing. Walking to the show, I overheard someone with an English accent outside a bar say something like, "they're great, like XTC meets Yes". I thought it was funny at the time, but at the show I started to suspect that he'd been talking about Field Music. They are a fun band to play spot-the-influences with, but they've been around long enough now to have integrated the various strands of their sound into something pretty cohesive and individual. Hearing their new album in a record store over the weekend, I thought I detected hints of Steely Dan, Grizzly Bear, and Emitt Rhodes (all mostly in the vocals and melodies), but live I could see where XTC might be present in some of the rhythms (though this may just be a more generalized post-punk thing). There were also some sounds that said "70s" to me without pointing to any specific acts, though at a couple points, I half-expected Jeff "Skunk" Baxter to step on stage and take a solo.
These guys are all really good on their (multiple) instruments, and the well-structured songs allow them to show off a tight group sound and one of the more distinctive vocal blends going (having a pair of siblings as vocalists usually helps). If I was feeling flippant, I'd be tempted to say that Field Music, from the wilds of Sunderland, NE England, has got more going on right now than anyone in Brooklyn, but that would probably be going too far.
The Clientele was sharper than the last couple times I'd seen them (perhaps seeing them at the end of a tour helped), and the songs from Bonfires On The Heath especially seem to have benefited from some road time. Mark Keen (drums) and James Hornsey (bass) are always in the pocket, but the whole band was more consistently together than at last year's Music Hall show. Maybe following Field Music for several nights pushed them to raise their game. The Violet Hour's "Lamplight" (with the usual NYC addition of Gary Olson on trumpet) was a highlight, possibly the best version of it I've seen, with Alasdair's psych freak-out solos sounding particularly inspired. The addition of pedal steel (courtesy of a member of Vetiver whose name I didn't catch) to a few songs was a nice surprise, but didn't stray far from replicating some of Bonfire's slide parts. Might've been fun to hear what steel would've sounded like on some older Clientele material.
And I was glad they brought back their stellar version of "Nighttime" as an Alex Chilton tribute. I don't really think of the Clientele as a Chilton- or Big Star-influenced band, but "Nighttime" points up something they share, the rare ability to imbue a simple vignette or image with the emotional resonance of a suddenly resurfacing memory.
Bonus Links
A Field Music interview (in which they deny any Yes influence)
As a producer and label head at Hi Records, he was responsible for some of the best-sounding records of all time. Some of these productions, most notably Al Green's peak period hits, still stop me in my tracks even though I've heard them countless times. Check out the documentary Gospel According To Al Green for a peek into Mitchell's soul factory (a converted movie theater).
------------------
Speaking of notable drum sounds, listening to the new Paul Motian record (Lost In A Dream, recorded last year at the Vanguard) and seeing him at the Vanguard (with Jason Moran and Greg Osby) got me thinking about live music vs. recordings of live music. My home stereo setup is, to say the least, not hi-fi, but I have a strong sense that even on the beautifully recorded Lost In A Dream, some of the sound that the musicians made got left behind in the room (I get the same feeling listening to Fred Hersch's also beautifully recorded Vanguard record). Being in the room, especially that room, in the moment, there's just more music. I guess this is an obvious point, the existence of an indefinable (at least for me) gap, the thing that drives audio engineers to keep pushing toward truer and truer sound reproduction.
A couple more quick notes on the Motian-Moran-Osby trio:
It seem to me that the Motian-Moran hookup has become a little deeper since the last time I saw them together (the week Lost In A Dream was recorded, when it was already quite deep). As with so many of the fleeting pairings in today's jazz world, it's a shame they don't play together more often.
Osby has a substantially different sound than Chris Potter, who appears on Lost In A Dream, and he brought some things to Motian's music that I hadn't heard from any of his other collaborators. On one tune, he achieved a very bird-like (though not especially Bird-like) sound, almost reminiscent of the gentler moments of Eric Dolphy. He turned another tune into a clinic on the discipline and rewards of playing very softly, something he's given substantial thought to lately.
On the closing "Drum Music", I experienced the pure pleasure of seeing and hearing a 78 year-old man beating the living f*ck out a drum kit. By the way, I think today is Motian's 79th birthday - WKCR and Phil Schaap, isn't it about time to give this man a birthday broadcast?
-------------------
At the risk of running this post into the ground by hitting too many of my usual subjects, I thought I would toss in a few notes on this week's Clientele/Field Music show at the Bowery Ballroom:
Going in, I would have just referred to it as this week's Clientele show, but Field Music was just about good enough to receive co-billing. Walking to the show, I overheard someone with an English accent outside a bar say something like, "they're great, like XTC meets Yes". I thought it was funny at the time, but at the show I started to suspect that he'd been talking about Field Music. They are a fun band to play spot-the-influences with, but they've been around long enough now to have integrated the various strands of their sound into something pretty cohesive and individual. Hearing their new album in a record store over the weekend, I thought I detected hints of Steely Dan, Grizzly Bear, and Emitt Rhodes (all mostly in the vocals and melodies), but live I could see where XTC might be present in some of the rhythms (though this may just be a more generalized post-punk thing). There were also some sounds that said "70s" to me without pointing to any specific acts, though at a couple points, I half-expected Jeff "Skunk" Baxter to step on stage and take a solo.
These guys are all really good on their (multiple) instruments, and the well-structured songs allow them to show off a tight group sound and one of the more distinctive vocal blends going (having a pair of siblings as vocalists usually helps). If I was feeling flippant, I'd be tempted to say that Field Music, from the wilds of Sunderland, NE England, has got more going on right now than anyone in Brooklyn, but that would probably be going too far.
The Clientele was sharper than the last couple times I'd seen them (perhaps seeing them at the end of a tour helped), and the songs from Bonfires On The Heath especially seem to have benefited from some road time. Mark Keen (drums) and James Hornsey (bass) are always in the pocket, but the whole band was more consistently together than at last year's Music Hall show. Maybe following Field Music for several nights pushed them to raise their game. The Violet Hour's "Lamplight" (with the usual NYC addition of Gary Olson on trumpet) was a highlight, possibly the best version of it I've seen, with Alasdair's psych freak-out solos sounding particularly inspired. The addition of pedal steel (courtesy of a member of Vetiver whose name I didn't catch) to a few songs was a nice surprise, but didn't stray far from replicating some of Bonfire's slide parts. Might've been fun to hear what steel would've sounded like on some older Clientele material.
And I was glad they brought back their stellar version of "Nighttime" as an Alex Chilton tribute. I don't really think of the Clientele as a Chilton- or Big Star-influenced band, but "Nighttime" points up something they share, the rare ability to imbue a simple vignette or image with the emotional resonance of a suddenly resurfacing memory.
Bonus Links
A Field Music interview (in which they deny any Yes influence)
Monday, March 22, 2010
A Quick Note
Comment moderation is doing weird stuff. If you've tried to post a comment and it hasn't shown up, please try again. It has probably disappeared into the weirdness. [Update: Things seem to be back to normal now, but I think a comment or two may have been vaporized.]
Dream Journal - Special Link Edition
I was pretty proud of my recent jazz-related dream, but I think Alex Balk's unconscious mind has outdone mine with this nocturnal concoction featuring Thelonious Monk, Fred Hersch, and the Curbed guy.
If You Get Hired To DJ A Tea Party, You'll Need This Record
Another gem, and an extremely timely one, from Crap Jazz Covers. Please, somebody find this LP and do a remix project.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Guru-Skeptic TV Death Match
Story of the day:
"The holy man then said he needed to conduct a ritual that could only be done at night, outdoors, and after he had slept with a woman, drunk alcohol and rubbed himself in ash."
Rationalism vs. magic, a fight to the death, live on TV.
"The holy man then said he needed to conduct a ritual that could only be done at night, outdoors, and after he had slept with a woman, drunk alcohol and rubbed himself in ash."
Rationalism vs. magic, a fight to the death, live on TV.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Alex Chilton - Part Two
1
The Alex Chilton line I'm thinking about today?
"But you know you don't have to / you can just say no"
People like to talk about the "power of Yes", but that line from "The Ballad of El Goodo" expresses an incredibly empowering (that word has been abused, but I think it's the right one here) sentiment when you think about it. And I think it's a sentiment that Chilton lived by, at least in terms of his post-Big Star career. He did the Big Star reunion, even a Box Tops reunion (that I'm sure no one expected), but after Radio City, he never really played the fame/music biz game, except by his own rules.
2
In reading all the tributes that have popped up today, I came across the word "sprezzatura" in one of Ben Greenman's pieces. After I looked up the definition, I had to say, "yeah, Alex Chilton definitely had sprezzatura". In spades. And as someone who could rock the house en Italiano, I think he would've liked that description.
3
I'm with The Gurgling Cod on this one:
"...'Jesus Christ''s failure to get traction as a Christmas staple continues to baffle me."
4
I wrote a bit about Chilton's shambolic some-kind-of-a-masterpiece Like Flies On Sherbert here.
The Alex Chilton line I'm thinking about today?
"But you know you don't have to / you can just say no"
People like to talk about the "power of Yes", but that line from "The Ballad of El Goodo" expresses an incredibly empowering (that word has been abused, but I think it's the right one here) sentiment when you think about it. And I think it's a sentiment that Chilton lived by, at least in terms of his post-Big Star career. He did the Big Star reunion, even a Box Tops reunion (that I'm sure no one expected), but after Radio City, he never really played the fame/music biz game, except by his own rules.
2
In reading all the tributes that have popped up today, I came across the word "sprezzatura" in one of Ben Greenman's pieces. After I looked up the definition, I had to say, "yeah, Alex Chilton definitely had sprezzatura". In spades. And as someone who could rock the house en Italiano, I think he would've liked that description.
3
I'm with The Gurgling Cod on this one:
"...'Jesus Christ''s failure to get traction as a Christmas staple continues to baffle me."
4
I wrote a bit about Chilton's shambolic some-kind-of-a-masterpiece Like Flies On Sherbert here.
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