ALEX CHILTON DIED TODAY :(

JOEJOEJOE

Very sad...he was 59.

His band, Big Star, was supposed to play a show on Saturday at SXSW.

Wobbie

sorry to say, I don't really know his music.

....but I love the Replacement's ode to Alex.

R.I.P.

JDB

I'd be gutted about this if I knew who Alex Chilton was.

JOEJOEJOE

JDB wrote:

I'd be gutted about this if I knew who Alex Chilton was.

Alex Chilton (born William Alexander Chilton, December 28, 1950, in Memphis, Tennessee – March 17, 2010 in New Orleans)[1] was an American songwriter, guitarist, singer and producer best known for his work with the pop-music bands the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial sales success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was not repeated in later years with Big Star and in his indie music solo career on small labels, but he did draw a loyal following in the indie and alternative music fields.

Chilton said in the September 1994 issue of Guitar Player that he considered himself a "musical performer, not a songwriter" and that some of his songs sound only "half-baked" to him. Nonetheless, his compositions have been performed by a number of artists, including This Mortal Coil, The Bangles, Wilco, Graham Coxon, Garbage, Son Volt, Counting Crows, Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Cheap Trick, Superdrag, Evan Dando, Cat Power, Yo La Tengo, You Am I, Placebo, Xiu Xiu, and His Name Is Alive.

The Replacements wrote the song "Alex Chilton" in his honor, for their 1987 album Pleased to Meet Me.

Wobbie

JOEJOEJOE wrote:

Nonetheless, his compositions have been performed by a number of artists, including This Mortal Coil, The Bangles, Wilco, Graham Coxon, Garbage, Son Volt, Counting Crows, Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Cheap Trick, Superdrag, Evan Dando, Cat Power, Yo La Tengo, You Am I, Placebo, Xiu Xiu, and His Name Is Alive.

such as? specifically, the Counting Crows.

catefrances

oh fucking bullshit. that sux. i dont like everything hes done but i think im gonna go play thirteen on repeat for a while. :(

RIP alex.

reflectedfromafar

This truly sucks. Met him twice: once nasty, once nice. Seemed about right.

Always a great musician.

RIP

Byrnzie

Just heard the news through a friend on Facebook.

Shit.

Byrnzie

imalive wrote:

sorry to say, I don't really know his music.

....but I love the Replacement's ode to Alex.

R.I.P.

Get all three Big Star albums. Or just get the recently released compilation album which includes all of their studio songs and more 'Keep An Eye on The Sky'.

One of the best bands of all time.

Byrnzie

Thank You Friends:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC0Wa3P_dO0


Thirteen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pte3Jg-2Ax4

Byrnzie

September Gurls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNKSs1J38EA

Byrnzie

My Life Is White: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyzJnHeA4lg

Byrnzie

http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/ ... bands.html
"He's been popular, his music is pervasive, and yet he's virtually unknown," Memphis music journalist Robert Gordon once told the Tribune. "He's a magnificent obscurity."

Byrnzie

If a thread about a T-Shirt deserves to get a sticky on this page of the message board then surely the death of Alex Chilton deserves to be stickied for a few days?

Byrnzie

The Replacements - 'Alex Chilton':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSJYZyouek

Byrnzie

Alex Chilton - Bangkok:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OryFZwd0HNA

Byrnzie

The Box Tops - The Letter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD9mCp8SifM

Look at how seriously they took this t.v appearance

Byrnzie

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-sach ... 03798.html

Tony Sachs

The Huffington Post - March 18, 2010

Remembering Alex Chilton: Icon And Iconoclast


I had the opportunity to meet Alex Chilton a few months ago, at the afterparty for a Big Star gig in Brooklyn. We stood no more than a few feet away from each other for an hour or so, but I never wound up interacting with him beyond saying hello and getting an autograph. First off, he was talking with a couple of attractive women, and it's rude to interrupt a guy in the middle of that. And beyond that, what was I going to say to him? That his music had touched me profoundly for decades? That I'd spent countless hours listening to it, reading about it, analyzing it and debating it with my friends? By all accounts, he didn't seem to give his own music much thought, so why would he have cared about what it did for a total stranger?

Alex Chilton died yesterday, but the guy that rock fans worshipped -- the musician who almost 40 years ago founded Big Star, and in the process helped give birth to power-pop and alternative rock -- died decades ago. The guy who could break your heart with a ballad like "Thirteen," who wrote the most beautiful punk-rock song in history with "The Ballad Of El Goodo," who made doing nothing seem irresistibly cool with "In The Street," who created the pluperfect pop song in "September Gurls" -- that guy was killed by his own cynicism and disgust back in the mid '70s, when Big Star collapsed under the weight of their own expectations, record company snafus and resounding commercial indifference.

You can hear that death in Big Star's never-quite-completed third album, recorded in 1974 and released years after the fact as Big Star's 3rd and, later on, as Sister Lovers. It's a beautiful, harrowing, and often impenetrable work, revealing depths of emotion that must have been too powerful for Chilton to ever put on tape again. As a solo artist, he reinvented himself as a punk rocker of sorts. Most of his songs sounded dashed off rather than composed, and he seemed to take more interest in deconstructing soul classics or pop ballads than writing originals, anyway. He was too talented to not turn out some gems in the two-plus decades of his off-again, on-again solo career, but they seemed almost accidental, like he didn't want to care too much.

A few years later, when the punk, indie and alternative rock revolutions redefined the meaning of fame and success, Chilton might have been able to wear the band's commercial failure as a badge of honor. Their small but fervent cult following could have been a point of pride and not frustration -- even for a guy who, as a teenager in the late '60s, had tasted fame and success with the Box Tops. But in retrospect, it seems like Big Star came along just a few years too soon.

At any rate, the fame that eluded Big Star the first time around grew in their absence. Fans belatedly discovered the band's three classic albums (#1 Record, Radio City and 3rd/Sister Lovers) through word of mouth, the critical raves that accompanied the records' periodic reissues; and praise from bands like R.E.M. and the Replacements, who piqued my own interest in 1987 with their classic tribute song "Alex Chilton."

Chilton finally agreed to reform Big Star for one show in 1993 with original drummer Jody Stephens, plus Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of The Posies replacing co-founders Chris Bell and Andy Hummel. It seemed to be a one-off at the time, but the foursome played together sporadically for the rest of Chilton's life -- they had a gig scheduled at Austin's SXSW festival this Saturday. Every show felt like an opportunity for us to thank Chilton in person, and show him the love he'd been denied at the time. But we were saying thank you to a ghost -- by then, Chilton was beyond caring. The shows seemed like nothing more than paydays to him. The set lists rarely changed. He'd get more animated playing a cover of Glenn Miller's "Pennsylvania 6-5000" than any of the Big Star catalog. He appeared oblivious to whatever magic the audience gleaned from those old songs.

Improbably, a new Big Star album, In Space, appeared in 2005. The songs that sounded the most like classic Big Star belonged to the other three members of the band. Chilton's own songs were largely improvised-sounding funk workouts. Fun at times, but not what the fans wanted -- which almost seemed to be the point by then. The record, which turned out to be his last, was almost universally ignored.

To the end, Alex Chilton was one of a very rare breed -- a veritable rock icon who also managed to be a first-rate iconoclast, especially when it came to himself. His ceaseless decades-long puncturing of his own myth practically became a myth in itself. I still have no idea what I'd say to him if I had a chance to relive that night in Brooklyn. But I wish I'd at least mumbled a quick "Thanks for everything," even if it might have fallen on deaf ears.

Byrnzie

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-sach ... 03798.html
'The guy who could break your heart with a ballad like "Thirteen," who wrote the most beautiful punk-rock song in history with "The Ballad Of El Goodo..'

The Ballad of El Goodo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn1t6l7UUPc

Wobbie

byrnzie - which AC song did the Counting Crows cover?

Byrnzie

imalive wrote:

byrnzie - which AC song did the Counting Crows cover?

Sorry, I've no idea.