remnants: Big Star's Third, March 26, 2011

Big Star remains the mythical beast it was when I first heard about them in the 80s, and rightly so. Folks in San Francisco are posting about last night's tribute show at the Great American Music Hall, which made me remember this particular event from 13 years ago. I was super hopeful that I'd written something about it, and I did but it's super not-great, mostly because of the opening graf ("there is not much to say" - then don't publish this, girlfriend, is what I said to myself as I dug it out of an ancient PDF export from my old blog). But! It does singlehandedly include a video of a moment that is both the most brilliant and the most hilarious onstage interlude I have ever seen, so I am publishing it here for subscribers anyway.

I am off to Chicago tomorrow to promote HOW WOMEN MADE MUSIC (come see us if you're in town!) and there will be a Detroit event the following week. There's a fantastic interview with book editor Alison Fensterstock and Ann Powers on Michigan Public Radio (they're at the 12:15-ish mark) and a nice note in the Detroit News.

I have a very large piece about the new MC5 book to be published imminently and there are multiple events here in town next weekend to celebrate its publication. This is a long way of saying that there will not be new content on the newsletter until next weekend, when I'll write about those events and do a notebook dump from the book review, so I'll still be keeping my weekly schedule, but it'll be on the weekend vs the middle of the week. I don't know if that matters to you, subscribers of this newsletter, but if it does, you can hit 'reply' and let me know. Anecdotally I have heard from many of you that you tend to save up newsletters and read them in one batch (I do the same with my favorites!) but I watch other more newsletters stay diligent with adhering to a schedule and people with very popular newsletters fretting about meeting their deadlines, so throwing it out there to find out if it matters.

Big Star Third, Baruch College, NYC, March 26, 2011

Featuring: Norman Blake, Mitch Easter, Ira Kaplan, Tift Merritt, Mike Mills, Will Rigby, Matthew Sweet, Chris Stamey, Jody Stephens and M. Ward, joined by The Lost in the Trees Orchestra with Jane Scarpantoni, Django Haskins (The Old Ceremony), Brett Harris, Sidney Dixon and Matt McMichaels

There is not much to say, not much that needs to be said. The night was about playing the songs, making them as big and bold and bright as the fantasies everyone had the first time they heard them, songs that made them pick up a guitar or write a song, take a chance.

I was thinking tonight that as many musical touchstones that I have, that this is my musical lineage, from Big Star to the dBs to R.E.M. to the Replacements and beyond, that connection that once upon a time meant everything – back when R.E.M. couldn’t get commercial FM airplay in New York City without calling in favors. When everything else – even my beloved Bruce – was HUGE and BIG and LOUD, we had our bands that we cared about, the bands that forged a foundation and a network, the bands that acknowledged what they loved, Peter Buck going to look for Alex in Memphis and the story about people telling him to go to a hotel, and when he asked why, does he live there, being told it was because he was driving a cab and often hung out there looking for fares.

The show was the third album – Sister Lovers – all the way through. But this was not a tribute show in which artists interpret or put their own stamp on the music – the point of this show was to recreate the record, in its big, messy, complicated gloriousness. You have to care, a lot, about getting it right, to do something like this. It has to matter. You have to find musicians to whom it also matters. And given that this was a benefit, you have to find people who will do this for free.

It was an astonishing night of music, which, given the people involved, I fully expected. It was perfectly executed, which, given Chris Stamey was musical director, I also fully expected. There wasn’t a disappointing note the entire evening. There was one false start – Jody Stephens looked at everyone and said something like, “This is live music,” – but that was it. They were able to duplicate the feeling of listening to those records, of being enveloped by the sound. Everything about the evening – even the tardy start, due to over-the-top security – was thoroughly Chiltonesque in vision.

For me, personally, I had half of the dBs and half of R.E.M. and Mitch Easter and then they played “Alex Chilton” – which, you might think is totally hokey and totally obvious and it was all of those things but it was also MIKE MILLS PLAYING BASS ON “ALEX CHILTON” which is the kind of thing that would have spawned long- distance phone calls from payphones back in the day. And Stamey took the solo, impeccably, and Mike rocked out and Jody Stephens himself played drums.

They went through the album – covers included, Mitch picking up the Kinks, even – and then we got the hit parade, your “September Gurls” and “I Am The Cosmos” and Tift Merritt sang “Thirteen” and the aforementioned Replacements nod. The cast of thousands returns to the stage, led by Michael Stipe, and just when I’m starting to parse what is left for the group to sing:

“Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane...ain’t got time to take a fast train...”

Holy FUCK! “The Letter”. I have heard a lot of R.E.M. covers in my day but never got to hear Stipe sing this. I am caught off guard. I forget I have a camera that can FILM things until we’re one verse in. Chris Stamey told a story earlier about one of those shows he played at CB’s with Alex and how Alex took the blender that Hilly had there, back when they served food, and he played the blender, and so when Michael Stipe holds up a hairdryer at the microphone and I am thinking "what is that" until I realize it is making that WHOOOSH sound at the end of the song and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry or both.

And then Jody comes out one more time, to mention Andy Hummel and Chris Bell and Jim Dickinson, this is after a heartfelt speech about Alex and how he is missed and how he is still with him and how he is here. I feel like finally I got to say goodbye to Alex, Alex who left us too soon, Alex who will always be with us.