Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its Movie Night on Vinyl in the Valley!
Tonight we're watching the documentary, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (Magnolia Pictures) directed by first timers, Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori. The documentary is about the band Big Star, a band formed by Chris Bell and Alex Chilton in Memphis, Tennessee in 1971. Bell and Chilton were both moody and ambitious songwriters kicking around the Memphis area in the early 70's. Both were incredible songwriting talents with knacks for melodies and ears for harmonies. Both men were looking to form over a band and take over the world. The main difference between the two is that Chris Bell was a local boy, known by some in Memphis music circles, while Chilton was already a full-fledged rock star, who provided lead vocals for the chart-topping 60's band, The Box Tops ("The Letter", "Cry Like A Baby", etc.) This duality is what brought them initially together, but its also what drove them apart. Bell's eagerness for recognition seemed to clash with Chilton's cynicism and self-sabotage. The results, however, were fantastic as evidenced in their debut album, the ironically-titled, #1 Record. The movie goes into detail explaining how Big Star released three landmark records that due to record company / distribution fuck-ups went largely unheard by the general public. Sure the critics loved them but this is before the internet, so if your local Woolworth's didn't carry the LP chances are you never got it! Their re-discovery in the 80's & 90's was due in large part to bands, like R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, The Replacements, etc., who name-checked them in interviews and considered them on the same plane as bands like The Beatles or The Stones. Its been said of the Velvet Underground that there were only a handful of people who bought their records when they first came out but all those people went out and formed bands; the same can be said of Big Star.
Overall the documentary is pretty great but that has tons to do with its subject matter. After all, Big Star may be the greatest band you never heard of. The three records they released in the 70's are all masterpieces. Buy them all or just get their box set, Keep An Eye On The Sky (2009). If you haven't heard them before, you're in for a real treat! Pre-punk power pop at its absolute finest! Think of them as the stepchildren of The Beatles and The Byrds, or as Cheap Trick's estranged, but genius, uncle.
The documentary covers most of the bases. It seems to gloss over a lot of the dickish stuff Chris Bell did before his untimely death in 1978 and it also, in our opinion, doesn't spend enough time with the band's third album, Third / Sister Lovers, which is a melancholy masterpiece in its own right. Its a great rock & roll story thats marred by sadness and tragedy, but one that's ultimately about redemption! If we had to rate it, we'd give it two enthusiastic cocktail glasses up! Cheers!
We'll see you next time, friends, until then the Tiki Bar is closed*.
Hello friends! All aboard for Non-Stop, the third LP by Memphis's The Box Tops. There's no chart-topping hits on this one but its a pretty decent sampling of late 60's blue-eyed soul. Young Alex Chilton sounds particularly gravel-voiced on this record; on "Yesterday Where's My Mind" it sound like he might be trying out for the Muppets! Buried on side two is Chilton's first original Box Tops' composition, the bluesy "I Can Dig It". Other songs are written by producer Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, Eddie Hinton and Wayne Carson Thompson (who wrote the megahit, "The Letter" for the 'Tops a year earlier!) Overall, not a bad album, just nothing spectacular. It's interesting for fans of Chilton to see where he was at this point in his career: post-"The Letter" fame and pre-Big Star obscurity. RATING: 3.5 Choo Choo Trains out of 5
