SmileS - Music Reviews
SmileS - Music Reviews
So me and Mister Level were just shootin the breeze
electrically, the way we do, firing messages back and forth
every hour or so, talkin bout me coming out to the west
coast, and that Big Star reunion thing we were gonna do up.
On Thu, 19 May 1994, Mister Level wrote to Wilson Smith: >> ...back in the pigpen with Miss Rayon. BTW, *SHE* >> knew of Big Star, had put 'em on a few tapes for me >> which I'm now sposeta dig up... For me, just a >> vacant spot. What year did all this stuff happen? >> <Rip van Level> On Thu, 19 May 1994, Wilson Smith wrote to Mister Level: >> Big Star was *AGES* ago, and *EVERYBODY* missed it, >> Rip Van Everybody!!! It was like 71 or 72, and like, >> even though friends in Memphis told me from time to >> time when I visited down there that there was this guy, >> Alex Chilton, who usedta be in the Box Tops and who was >> like, going out with my grade-school sweetheart, and >> had been friends with my cousin Edmund, taught him >> Hey Joe, etc., and now had this pretty cool band called >> Big Star, I *still* didn't get it! I was like [nose in >> air], "Memphis! Box Tops! Feh!" Wasn't until 76 or 77 >> or so, when they'd long since broken up, that the buzz >> about em became pretty flippin deafening and I finally >> picked up on it...
Behind that counter in the back they had pinned to the wall lotsa picture sleeve 45s, and mixed in with a bunch of crud was a growing number of records that you simply DIDN'T FIND in any other record store that I knew about. I was like, "What *IS* that stuff? Are those real records?" I'd squint at em across the counter and try to figure out what the deal was... "Ork Records?" What the heck was that? First, Blank Generation by Richard Hell & the Voidoids, then Little Johnny Jewel by Television, then Marbles...
Meanwhile there was an increasing buzz in the local press (Village Voice and Soho Weekly News, primarily) bout this whole new scene, centered upon CBGBs and Max's, and I slowly started puttin two and two together... Went down to CBGB in 76 at some point to check out the then 3-piece Talking Heads, the friend I'd dragged along dismissing them mockingly, "'Oh, they're so intellectual!!'" Ah, but I thought they were cool as heck, was totally enchanted with and amused by the idea of preppy-dressin, awkward, geeky and kinda creepy-seemin David Byrne presenting himself as, and bein considered as, and finally onstage becoming, a thoroughly groovin hipster.
Once he started performing, there was this passion to him, his voice cracking all over the place, transfigured by the power of his own playing, going off on these long brilliant guitar perorations and totally losing his diffidence, awkwardness and self-consciousness. He was most def a great guitarist, but it wasn't just his playing that kept ya transfixed, it was the way he lost himself, gave himself up to it. Talking Heads were a million times better live than they were on the album that finally came out toward the end of the following year, because David Byrne only really went crazy when they played live....
I found CBGB kinda intimidating, and I didn't go back that year, mostly cause I had no one to go with; my friends were into the dead and jazz and [hock tuh!] progressive rock, and really, I just couldn't summon the will to go it alone; the Heads were unusual in the fact that there was nothing WHATSOEVER threatening or menacing about them, unlike most of the other punk bands, and the idea of checking out a band like the Dictators or the Ramones totally solo was completely out of the question for me then. I did continue to read about em all, tho, and started pickin up some of them oddball records in Colony.
Not completely sure about this next sequence of events here, which led to my dawning awareness that Alex Chilton was trying to insert himself into, or was being perceived as a part of, this new punk scene. Could have happened over a period of a couple of months, could have all happened the same flippin day, but there were basically three things:
1) His "Singer Not the Song" EP turned up in Colony and, lo and behold, it was on Ork, too. I bought it, loved it, noted that the grade-school sweetheart was co-author of one of the tunes, wondered if that was her on the front of the picture sleeve smoochin (jeez) another woman?, with Alex standing jaded in the background, cigarette dangling from his lips. I decided it wasn't *REALLY* punk (this was the guy from the *Box Tops*, eh?), but thought it was pretty snotty and out- there nonetheless, and way cool.
2) An article appeared in the Soho Weekly News bout Alex, detailing a thorough shambles of a recording session in which he beat up his girlfriend and was too fucked up to play guitar.
3) My buddy Stef, who was goin to NYU film school at the time, told me that she was bout to start working as editor on a documentary about Talking Heads, and that she'd be goin down to CBGB every night for three or four nights, and did I want to go? And oh yeah, opening for em was gonna be someone named Alex Chilton.
And I, of course, was like, boy, do I! This whole thing had been building up and I'd felt like totally helpless to participate to any degree at all, cept to read about it from *WAY* over on the sidelines... Here was an op to get right in the thick of it, and we did.
CBGBs looked then, really, EXACTLY like CBGBs now... there were some huge posters that are now gone, and the stage and sound system got rebuilt at some point, but the toilets downstairs, for instance, were already legendary for the graffiti and stench and depravity, and really, I'm sure it's the same shitty tables and chairs there today as back then, same wobbly, crooked floor. The help was a little ruder then, and there was the big goddamn dawg that usedta run around inside, and the huge old scary-lookin guy in the yellow construction helmet, "Merv," who was apparently the flippin *manager* of the place.
Was certainly more a place to be seen then than it is now, was certainly far more happenin, but I think the joint is still a good deal: 4 or 5 or 6 up-and-coming bands for usually not much more than five dollars, and you can still occasionally spot a famous face, Thurston or Ira, frinstance, depending on who's playin..
They'd have fewer bands per night back then, usually just two, and they usedta do two shows, one ostensibly at 8:30, another supposedly at 11:00, instead of the long marathon they do now... things always always started late, and you could count on the 8:30 show startin at 9:30 or so, and the 11:00 o'clock to start at 12:30 or 1, maybe.
We wore special tees they'd made up that said "The Name of This Band is Talking Heads," as our way of identifying ourselves as part of the film crew. I dunno if I'd missed a night, or if maybe Alex had maybe played a couple of nights there the prior week, or what, but there was already a little bit of a buzz about him among the crew that he was usually kinda great, but occasionally and perhaps even sometimes willfully shitty... (the real deal for them, of course, being the Heads).
The first night, scanning the crowd before the show started, I picked out Alex C when I spotted the grade-school sweetheart (she and I said "Hi!" and "We'll talk later!" but never did, thankst gawd, cause really, what would I have said? "Say, is that you french-kissin that woman on the cover of that record?" And, "Hey, what was the deal with getting beat up in the studio? What the heck was *that* like?"). AC was wearing a gray pullover sweater, and surprised me and Stef by slinkin out the front door with his lil entourage round about the time (8:30 or 8:45?) we woulda thought he'd be hittin the stage.
They probably came on half an hour later: 3 of em, Alex front and center on guitar and vocals, Chris Stamey to his right on bass and backing vocals, and jeez, no idea who the drummer was... Alex was in a good mood and willing to please, tho still undeniably hep; maybe playin a little more for whatever rock crit ears might be listenin than those of the Heads' fans that made up most of the audience...
Talking Heads always looked really awkward on stage, like "What are we doing here in front of all these people??" By contrast, when AC got up on the stage, he was so relaxed, so confident in what he was doing, that it was wonderful to just let yourself go along for the ride... Alex Chilton was for sure every bit as good a guitarist as David Byrne, but he could toss off licks with an incredible ease that DB most def didn't have (or probably even aspire to).
It was a thoroughly rockin set, totally spontaneous and loose; Chris Stamey standin there 4'8" or so with his groovin shiny braces and Beatles 'do, keepin his eyes glued adoringly on Alex, the PERFECT sideman, the two of them playin off each other wonderfully. The glee and conspiratorial rapport between Stamey and Chilton was totally infectious, and enough to put big stoopid grins on everybody's faces.
They did a fair number of Big Star tunes; memory is, of course, hazy, but I distinctly remember September Gurls and Way Out West, and kinda sorta remember Thirteen and In The Street (one big prob bein my total unfamiliarity with Big Star's material at that point)... could sorta distinguish the Big Star material from other more recent originals (My Rival, the never-really-released Shakin the World) by the reactions of some of the folks in the audience.
Every night the show threatened to deconstruct completely when Alex played a tune called, I suppose, "Little Fishy." To this day I don't know if it was a cover or original or what, but it was slow as sin, and I thought it really kinda sucked, bigtime, and as he warbled, "She's.... a little fishy," I'd go, "aw, jeez" and turn to the bar to get another drink, or maybe run down to take a pee, or step outside to get some air... Some folks seemed to enjoy it, tho, laughin... Now that I think about, the whole point mighta been to slow things down to a crawl just so he could pick em back up again with the next number...
I'm pretty sure he was already doin the Seeds' "Can't Seem To Make You Mine" then which, whenever it was that I first heard him do it, blew me away and sold me totally, and he definitely did the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", which he introduced with some weird offhand comment (presumably fiction, but jeez, who knows?) bout hangin out in the 60s in Dennis Wilson's swimming pool with Dennis and Charles Manson.
And every set he'd close with a kickin encore of "The Letter."
None of this stuff was captured on fillum by the Heads' crew, and I'm not even positive if they recorded the music on their Nagra, tho they were all set up to, and jeez, man, why not??? But really, I bet they didn't... I don't think the "director" of the project, Jay Burnett, ever actually finished his film. At least I don't recollect ever seeing the finished product. I do remember later listenin to some thoroughly rockin tapes that he had of the Heads, and *pleading* with the guy for copies, to no avail. Jay later moved to L.A. where he became a male hustler for six or eight years. When his boyish good looks faded he returned to the family business in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he now works as a typist.
BTW, the faculty advisor for this never-finished shoulda- been-a-milestone-in-the-history-of-cinema was Alan Raymond, the guy who made AN AMERICAN FAMILY starring Lance Loud, later of Mumps. Raymond and his wife won an Academy Award last year.
Wilson Smith, neslon@panix.com, is alienation and dislocation incarnate, and continues to paw through the new release bins in NYC.
"Stefanie Brooks" is three years out of rehab, in a Federal Witness Protection Program in New Jersey.