Stop Sleeping: Big Star

Having grown up in the 70s watching hours of sitcoms about teenagers and young adults in the 1950s, I was quite excited in 1998 to read about a ‘Happy Days’ for a new generation – “That 70s Show” - which would use the shag carpeted vans and lava lamps of my elementary school years as the backdrop for some inch-deep televised comedic entertainment. While I enjoyed the show well enough, and am still amazed at the number of break out stars it produced (Kutcher, Kunis and Grace), nothing impressed me as much as the theme song. Upon hearing “In the Street” for the first time, I discovered it was recorded by Cheap Trick and wondered why it hadn’t been a bigger hit? Digging deeper, I found that Cheap Trick had specifically cut that track to be the theme song for the show, and that the original writers and performers were a band called Big Star – one of the most influential and least known bands to flame across the sky of the early 70s never to be heard from again.

Big Star formed in their hometown of Memphis when guitarist Chris Bell got together with drummer Jody Stephens, and bassist Andy Hummel. Alex Chilton, who is, rightly or wrongly, identified as the leader and creative force of the band, completed the line-up around 1971. Chilton had already made a name for himself as the front man of the Box Tops which most people know as the group that originally wrote and recorded, “The Letter”, made more famous later when Joe Cocker laid it down. Bell and Chilton have been compared to Lennon and McCartney in that both were singer songwriters who were stylistically different but hugely influenced their band’s sound, and also because both came of age in the 60s idolizing Beatles music. The fact that they also grew up in the Stax-dominated Memphis-music scene had an undeniable influence on their sound.

The core line-up of Bell, Chilton, Stephens and Hummel put out one album, 1972’s “#1 Record” and it was a commercial flop. Bell left the band, essentially jealous over the attention that Chilton was receiving, but not before he had written and contributed a collection of songs that would wind up on the second Big Star record, 1974’s “Radio City,” which also, basically, flopped. The two records are currently sold as a single package – “#1 Record/Radio City” – and it is an essential record if you consider yourself a music fan.

These two records are considered by many to be key events in the birth of modern Power Pop. If you have ever attempted to play music, early is the realization that a lot of the greatest songs aren’t that complicated, but creating an original combination of melody, harmony and an infectious rhythm is as elusive as alchemy. Nearly every one of the 25 tracks on this record is a little pop classic, and they’ll sound instantly familiar to you and you’ll grasp at where you’ve heard it before, but the truth is you probably never have heard most of these songs.

What you’re hearing are the bands that influenced them – namely the Beatles – and the dozens of bands who claim that Big Star was a primary influence over their sound – groups like R.E.M, Wilco and the Replacements. What is that sound – chiming and jangly guitars laying down infectious melodies, vocal harmonies floating on top and a soulful, Stax-influenced rhythm section holding the bottom down. Nothing fancy, but the most brilliant designs often have a sense of simplicity and inevitability.

I am constantly curating a mega-playlist on my iPod that holds 500-600 songs at any one time. When I am trying out a new record, I dump it into the list to decide which songs should stay and which should go. All 25 tracks from these two albums are in the playlist, and it never fails that when one comes on that I don’t instantly recognize, the thought process goes something like this…”Wow cool song…who is this....it is something new?...why isn’t this a hit?....ohhhhh, Big Star!”

One of the irrelevancies that I occasionally stress over is that by the time I get out and see the rest of the world, globalization will have reduced even the most exotic locales into endless strip malls stocked with Starbucks and McDonalds. As the internet has expanded our ability to discover the far reaches of the globe without ever leaving home, it has also, somewhat, removed some of the mystery. As a result, the discovery of a treasure like Big Star’s “#1 Record/Radio City” is indeed one of the great joys of life.

Hatched 40 years ago, I can’t quite understand why its songs aren’t as instantly recognizable as those off of “Sgt Peppers”, “Thriller” or “Jagged Little Pill”. Bell died in a car crash in 1978 and Chilton and Hummel passed away within months of each other last year…so Big Star ain't coming back. But, for the uninitiated, they’re waiting for you, a bucket of earworms ready to electrify.