WEIRDLAND: R.I.P. Alex Chilton (Big Star)

Friday, March 19, 2010

R.I.P. Alex Chilton (Big Star)


"SEPTEMBER GURLS" (Chilton)

"September gurls do so much
I was your butch and you were touched
I loved you, well, never mind
I've been crying all the time

December boys got it bad

September gurls, I don't know why
How can I deny what's inside
Even though I'll keep away
Maybe we'll love all our days

When I get to bed, late at night
That's the time she makes things right
Ooh when she makes love to me"


"James Brennan doesn’t have any scientific proof of it, but he suspects that he might very well be the world’s biggest fuck up. He’s just managed to graduate college with a degree he’ll never really be able to use and, worse yet, he’s still a virgin. His European Trip graduation gift trip has fallen through as well, cause his dad has just got demoted at work, and now he’s stuck for the summer working at the local amusement park Adventureland. Things could be worse though as he’s got a bag of grass to last the summer, and he’s really getting a kick out of the Henry Miller book that he is so engrossed in. Even better are some of the friends he has made at the park like Connell, the repair guy who jammed with Lou Reed back in the day and especially Em, the coolest girl he has ever met. He suspects that Em is the kind of girl that Alex Chilton wrote “September Gurls” for, and he finds the song playing in his head every time he looks at her". Source: mooninthegutter.blogspot.com

"The Bangles did a cover of “September Gurls”, and the Replacements did the tribute “Alex Chilton”, but it was R.E.M. who really set the table for Chilton’s late-’80s surge in popularity, a moment captured in last year’s movie Adventureland. The scene where Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg bond over “I’m in Love With A Girl” is a completely accurate picture of how it felt to discover Big Star in the Eighties, at a time when “indie rock” didn’t even have a name yet.
Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg as Em & James in "Adventureland" (2009).

Alex Chilton never seemed to have much interest in his career. He refused to milk the Big Star resurgence — by then, he was exploring a whole new sound, the lazy R&B raunch of records like High Priest. He was hilariously surly to fans requesting Big Star oldies. At a summer ‘88 show in New Haven, where some guy up front kept yelling for “Oh My Soul”, Alex just sneered, “Sorry — I don’t think this particular band has the capability to play that particular song.” Any time he faced the camera, he gave a mean glare and clenched his shoulders like a fighter. Despite years of hard living, he always seemed indestructible — and thanks to his music, he always will be.

Note: I didn’t witness that show in Roanoke. I heard about it from a Virginia girl I met in a bar, when the bartender put on Radio City. We both recognized the album, so we traded stories about Chilton shows we’d seen. A couple years later, we played Big Star’s “Thirteen” as the first dance at our wedding. Thank you for everything, Alex Chilton. You will always be the blue moon in the dark".
Source: www.rollingstone.com


Alan Vega, Alex Chilton, Ben Vaughn -Cubist Blues- Dream Baby Revisited.

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