{"id":24352,"date":"2021-06-28T13:40:09","date_gmt":"2021-06-28T17:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=24352"},"modified":"2021-06-28T23:03:39","modified_gmt":"2021-06-29T03:03:39","slug":"turns-out-everybody-especially-me-was-wrong-about-alex-chilton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/turns-out-everybody-especially-me-was-wrong-about-alex-chilton\/","title":{"rendered":"Turns Out Everybody, Especially Me, Was Wrong About Alex Chilton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Alex Chilton - Take It Off\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-OGaMOaFDpY?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It takes a big man to admit when he\u2019s wrong \u2014 but it takes a much, much smaller man to take nearly 40 years to \u2018fess up to his mistakes.\u00a0And that\u2019s just the kind of man I am.\u00a0So here I am, stripped naked of shame and regret, chained to the Orockle doors, megaphone in hand, ready to scream into the howling wind:\u00a0I WAS WRONG ABOUT ALEX CHILTON\u2019S 1980s OUTPUT!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like everybody else who came into rock maturity in the 1980s (other than E. Pluribus Gergeley), I fell deeply in love with Big Star upon hearing them as a pimply-faced college puke.\u00a0Big Star had everything I needed as a budding music nerd, in overwhelming abundance:\u00a0Impeccable song craft!\u00a0Soaring harmonies!\u00a0Clanging guitars!\u00a0Doomed-to-fail braininess!\u00a0I-know-more-than-you-do exclusivity!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I rhapsodized over the pop perfection of their first two albums, and made excuses for the shambolic weirdness of the third.\u00a0I agonized over the band\u2019s collapse, and cursed the world for not appreciating their greatness, even as I enjoyed being one of the select few who actually owned a copy of \u201cRadio City\u201d on the original Ardent label. I decided Alex Chilton was a genius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, I wasn\u2019t the only music nerd in the 1980s to discover Chilton and Big Star, so a few indie labels decided it would make good business sense to green-light various Chilton \u201ccomeback\u201d projects, which were targeted fairly specifically at people like me.\u00a0And here is where I started to go very, very wrong \u2014 because, like almost everybody else at the time, I thought these albums and EPs sucked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Alex Chilton - Let Me Get Close To You\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KZg-zXQIzBc?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The critical take on Chilton\u2019s first \u201ccomeback\u201d album, \u201cHigh Priest,\u201d was basically:\u00a0 \u201chuh?\u201d\u00a0Everybody, including (probably especially) me, just could not understand why the man we perceived as the creative genius behind the dense, powerful, proto-power pop of Big Star would debase himself with such a lazy throwaway album of obscure &#8217;60s AM\/soul radio material.\u00a0The arrangements were sloppy \u2014 not insane, or non-existent, as on \u201cLike Flies On Sherbert,\u201d but stripped down, basic, elemental\u2026 yeah, \u201clazy.\u201d\u00a0Basically, if Alex had wanted to piss off all the people looking for a return to Big Star\u2019s style and substance, he couldn\u2019t have done a better job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But \u2014 even as some critics twisted themselves into pretzels trying to convince us this was all part of a Chilton master plan to fool the world by deliberately making music that was beneath him \u2014 the truth is that this album, and most of the other stuff he released as an indie elder statesman, was great. Not Great with a capital \u201cG,\u201d but impeccably curated, played with honesty, clarity, and nuance, and generally pleasing to the earbulbs. I\u2019ve grown into a place where I absolutely adore these records, and I listen to them far more often than the Big Star material (which I still marvel at, but find to be very much \u201cof an era.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Alex Chilton - Hook Me Up\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O7vcJ-Ukj7M?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I should point out that I also love the original artists\u2019 versions of the covers within this catalog.\u00a0But Chilton\u2019s soulful interpretations are unique, and meaningful.\u00a0Like a bop jazz trio doing a set of Broadway show tunes, they\u2019re measurably different from the originals, but respectful of the source material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All this to say:\u00a0go check out \u201cHigh Priest,\u201d or \u201cSet,\u201d and listen with an open mind.\u00a0I think you\u2019ll like what you hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>HVB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It takes a big man to admit when he\u2019s wrong \u2014 but it takes a much, much smaller man to take nearly 40 years to \u2018fess up to his mistakes.\u00a0And that\u2019s just the kind of man I am.\u00a0So here I am, stripped naked of shame and regret, chained to the Orockle doors, megaphone in hand, <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/turns-out-everybody-especially-me-was-wrong-about-alex-chilton\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}