"I never travel far without a little Big Star"

I’ve been listening to Big Star. In fact I’ve been learning to play some Big Star tunes – they can have that effect on you. And Big Star are one of those early 1970s bands that time forgot (for a while). You know there are heaps and heaps of neglected bands – releasing songs of beauty and warmth – songs that bring you to your knees. Yet no one at the time had the time – do you get me? I mean the Velvet Underground hardly sold a record back in the 60s heyday – too New Yoooorrrrkkk man.  But Big Star – signed to Stax – having No.1 hit maker Box Tops Alex Chilton in the fold – really never sold any records.

No one wanted to listen to them. 

They couldn’t give them away.  Oh they had the reviews. Those who write about pop liked them. But not the regular (hey) Joe. It’s probably safe to say that Manson or Heavy Stereo sold more of their tunes in their day then Alex, Jody, Chris and Andy sold in theirs. Which is criminal – there is no other way to put it. This is a band formed in Memphis and in love with the simplicity of The Beatles and the power of pop that released three beautiful long players of honesty, integrity and invention. If you don’t own ‘em – then you should do.

And you will do when you’ve had a listen.

So where does it start. Once again with pale saints and late nights in Leeds.  Graeme Naysmith taped Dinosaur’s first album on one side of a cassette and ‘Third/Sister Lovers’ on side b and sent it winging it's way from Harold Avenue. This hallucinatory and untidy masterpiece of Chilton and Stephens  recorded at Ardent Studies – was just tucked away on tape. This must have been 1988. Before Teenage Fanclub had begun to mine that beautiful swamp rock and chime of Chilton’s gang and bring Big Star to the masses – to all us lads and lasses. Well I’m sure Teenage Fanclub were regular listeners up in the concrete jungle of Glasgow. But I’d never heard such fragility and beauty in Scunthorpe – it was all furnaces and smoke – heavy. Do you get me? It was the utter desolation in Chilton’s voice – notes stretched and broken – enquiring and imploring over guitars that break and howl and collapse in on themselves. Yet there’s a brooding rock n roll inherent throughout.

A menace in the misery.

I mean they had a rock n roll number called ‘Holocaust’. It wasn’t for the faint hearted – yet theres wonderful baroque like chiming guitars on songs like Kizza Me or Stroke it Noel and ‘Thank your friends’ sitting next to the desolation of Kangaroo. You know this a story blighted by mistrust, wrong moves, failing friendships, paranoia and drug abuse. It was always going to be.  

Actually – now I’m beginning to write about this discovery – this chance encounter with Big Star  - it starts earlier. A seven inch single – bought from Record Village – This Mortal Coil – 4AD super group singing super songs – Kangaroo. Possible heard on John Peel but bought by Paul and played in back bedrooms on Scunthorpe streets. Tapping into adolescent hopefulness and that feeling of falling in love. I first saw you , You had on blue jeans , Your eyes couldn't hide anything , I saw you breathing, oh. What seems just a surface emotion running ever deeper. Alex Chilton is the master of all that. He captures love as it emerges and flourishes and ends and breaks – in car parks and diners. Or if you were growing up in a steeltown in bus shelters and school corridors.

Big Star always manage to find a way into the car. I don’t mean they’ve got a spare set of keys – or I find them on the back seat – but they feature on many compilations – CDs to drive away to. From On the street and the high glam of No1 Record, to I’m in love with a girl, September Gurls and currently Thirteen.

Thirteen is simply beautiful.

A guitar and harmonies. There’s a post out there beyond these walls that Thirteen refers to when Alex first saw The Beatles. It captures that innocence and defiance of the time with his reference to Paint it Black and parents on his back, it’s both free and tense at the same time – like a child just shooting off their mouth. This pretty tune and it is pretty - is imbued with tension and beneath lurks the energy of a young man. There’s something doomed lurking in the spaces on the track.

There was something doomed about Big Star. They reformed for a while – but it didn’t last. Their music will though. I’m just passing it on. Like Graeme did on that tape.

Thank you friends. 

"I never travel far without a little Big Star"

I’ve been listening to Big Star. In fact I’ve been learning to play some Big Star tunes – they can have that effect on you. And Big Star are one of those early 1970s bands that time forgot (for a while). You know there are heaps and heaps of neglected bands – releasing songs of beauty and warmth – songs that bring you to your knees. Yet no one at the time had the time – do you get me? I mean the Velvet Underground hardly sold a record back in the 60s heyday – too New Yoooorrrrkkk man.  But Big Star – signed to Stax – having No.1 hit maker Box Tops Alex Chilton in the fold – really never sold any records.

No one wanted to listen to them. 

They couldn’t give them away.  Oh they had the reviews. Those who write about pop liked them. But not the regular (hey) Joe. It’s probably safe to say that Manson or Heavy Stereo sold more of their tunes in their day then Alex, Jody, Chris and Andy sold in theirs. Which is criminal – there is no other way to put it. This is a band formed in Memphis and in love with the simplicity of The Beatles and the power of pop that released three beautiful long players of honesty, integrity and invention. If you don’t own ‘em – then you should do.

And you will do when you’ve had a listen.

So where does it start. Once again with pale saints and late nights in Leeds.  Graeme Naysmith taped Dinosaur’s first album on one side of a cassette and ‘Third/Sister Lovers’ on side b and sent it winging it's way from Harold Avenue. This hallucinatory and untidy masterpiece of Chilton and Stephens  recorded at Ardent Studies – was just tucked away on tape. This must have been 1988. Before Teenage Fanclub had begun to mine that beautiful swamp rock and chime of Chilton’s gang and bring Big Star to the masses – to all us lads and lasses. Well I’m sure Teenage Fanclub were regular listeners up in the concrete jungle of Glasgow. But I’d never heard such fragility and beauty in Scunthorpe – it was all furnaces and smoke – heavy. Do you get me? It was the utter desolation in Chilton’s voice – notes stretched and broken – enquiring and imploring over guitars that break and howl and collapse in on themselves. Yet there’s a brooding rock n roll inherent throughout.

A menace in the misery.

I mean they had a rock n roll number called ‘Holocaust’. It wasn’t for the faint hearted – yet theres wonderful baroque like chiming guitars on songs like Kizza Me or Stroke it Noel and ‘Thank your friends’ sitting next to the desolation of Kangaroo. You know this a story blighted by mistrust, wrong moves, failing friendships, paranoia and drug abuse. It was always going to be.  

Actually – now I’m beginning to write about this discovery – this chance encounter with Big Star  - it starts earlier. A seven inch single – bought from Record Village – This Mortal Coil – 4AD super group singing super songs – Kangaroo. Possible heard on John Peel but bought by Paul and played in back bedrooms on Scunthorpe streets. Tapping into adolescent hopefulness and that feeling of falling in love. I first saw you , You had on blue jeans , Your eyes couldn't hide anything , I saw you breathing, oh. What seems just a surface emotion running ever deeper. Alex Chilton is the master of all that. He captures love as it emerges and flourishes and ends and breaks – in car parks and diners. Or if you were growing up in a steeltown in bus shelters and school corridors.

Big Star always manage to find a way into the car. I don’t mean they’ve got a spare set of keys – or I find them on the back seat – but they feature on many compilations – CDs to drive away to. From On the street and the high glam of No1 Record, to I’m in love with a girl, September Gurls and currently Thirteen.

Thirteen is simply beautiful.

A guitar and harmonies. There’s a post out there beyond these walls that Thirteen refers to when Alex first saw The Beatles. It captures that innocence and defiance of the time with his reference to Paint it Black and parents on his back, it’s both free and tense at the same time – like a child just shooting off their mouth. This pretty tune and it is pretty - is imbued with tension and beneath lurks the energy of a young man. There’s something doomed lurking in the spaces on the track.

There was something doomed about Big Star. They reformed for a while – but it didn’t last. Their music will though. I’m just passing it on. Like Graeme did on that tape.

Thank you friends. 

Rock n Roll and wearing a bootlace tie in Doncaster

In my line of work you often come across the emerging tribes, the cults and fashions of the young and ridiculous. And I cannot fail to acknowledge the obvious fact that that once was me – all dressed up with nowhere to go – but putting on a show anyway. It transpires that the mid-eighties in Scunthorpe was part of a large scale sociological experiment where by all sub cultures were allowed free reign in schools and on the streets.

I mean I used to go to school in a tweed jacket topped with a quiff – we had a uniform – but it didn’t seem to matter as Patrick jackets collided with Donkey ones and doc marten boots. It was a free for all in the playground. It was a freedom we don’t always get under Gove and his return to the headmaster ritual of the 1950s.

I still look at clothes. I can’t fit in them but I still look at them. I’m no hipster – do you get me? I may have to start dressing like Tad to make up for my inability to sustain a healthy diet. These flirting with fashions fit snugly alongside our falling in love with sounds. I’m not sure whether it’s the clothes that lead to the finds or the songs which dictate the style – which takes me back to those pre-adolescent moments of developing a look to match the eclectic tastes being shaped through radio, film, television, friends and records, an older brother, record shops and market stalls.

I wore a bootlace tie. It was purchased in Scunthorpe Market. It may well have had a skull on it – or something rockabillyesque. I bought it because I liked Showaddywaddy and Matchbox. There was a rock n roll revival taking place – the late seventies a throwback to the fifties. All crepe soles and blue suede. A friend even had a drape made.

He was ten.

He would wear it at our first year disco in Secondary school – I wore pleated trousers and a grey mesh vest. By then the bootlace tie had been discarded and Visage and the new romantics were taking hold – the beginnings of my love affair with the synthesizer carved out in tributes to Bowie and Berlin. I have vivid memories of venturing to Doncaster. A city. It didn’t make Scunthorpe seem quaint or backward. This was not cosmopolitan.

It was larger and just as violent.

We never seemed to turn out the bands like the North West did. There is no equivalent of The Beatles this side of the country. Our ports brought in fish not rock n roll. Doncaster. Like any good city had a shopping precinct. All concrete and glass with punks and that, sat around smelling of glue and cider. I had come with my mum and brother – I am not certain why. I would wear my jacket – it had a Shakin’ Stevens patch and a Stray Cats one on the back. I would wear my bootlace tie too.

I was scared of the punks.

I thought they wouldn’t like the rockabilly clothes that I wore with pride. These names pinned to my back to mark me out as a fan. If I am honest they didn’t even notice me walk by. Those moments of dwelling that blow up but don’t go pop in your (inner) mind (y’all.) As I have said before rock n roll music – which any old way you might choose it – has always been coursing around the fringes throughout my life. And dressing to demonstrate your idols on t-shirts and badges and patches and bags is all part of that allegiance and defiance of youth. I would always buy a t-shirt at gig. Sell the fanzines in my bag and give the loose change to the t-shirt sellers or invariably the members of the band at the beginnings or ends of set filled with shimmers and jangles – feedback and attitude. And my t-shirt said ‘I understand – I get all of this’.

Whilst wearing the patches of rock n roll across the concrete streets of Doncaster and Scunthorpe – I thankfully had not gravitated towards the wearing of my idols on fabric so close to my skin. I did not own a Showaddywaddy t- shirt – although I would wear one now – postmodern maaaan. I think the first t-shirt I bought to ‘rep’ the band was The Smiths. A black Hatful of Hollow one from the Meat is Murder tour – Sheffield City Hall – five pounds well spent.

I wore it till it frayed.

And then came countless other t-shirts – at first mainly Smiths ones – The Queen is Dead, Shelia Take a bow, Shoplifters – the list goes on. And The Primitives ‘Stop Killing me’ black and white number, The Groove Farm, The Cure and and and. I still wear them today – in a nod to the allegiance and cultural belonging that liking pop affords. I have an Edsel Auctioneer one, various Brian Wilson ones, My bloody Valentine ‘Feed me with your Kiss’, a Primal Scream ‘Ivy Ivy Ivy’ one, Public Enemy, the Pistols and the most recent purchase a grey one with Metroplex records emblazoned across the chest. These emblems of safety and tribal belonging have shaped the fan world since they cottoned on you could get the kids to part with more cash if you but a name and face on it. Okay so the The Sidddleys never had a pencil case made but I swear my brother and I contemplated the Brian Wilson dressing gown that was available on the ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ tour. It would have gone nicely with our Smile bags – mine is currently gathering dust in a cupboard.

It is unlikely that I will ever seize the zeitgeist again and rock up a look with patches and badges – not that my rock n roll tributes were ever of the moment. I may occasionally venture out to Sainsbury’s proclaiming my love for the valentines as the young folk busily stay hip to music’s ever changing moods.

They’re wearing the crepe soled shoes again. They are as yet not modelling The Edsel Auctioneer gear.

This is The Edsel Auctioneer – they were/ are from Leeds – I will write about them at some point in the future. I did like them so much that I bought a t-shirt – so they’re worth a listen. Kind of like a northern Buffalo Tom – but much better.