Alex Chilton RIP

Tfk: Of his era maybe, but only because of something that's always struck me as kind of ironic, since Chilton did gain a degree of early fame as singer of the Box Tops' big hits, before doing the more obscure work with Big Star that wound up having a much greater lasting influence. And to this day those Box Tops numbers still don't even sound like him singing -- he sounded more a like teenager in his later career than he did on the deep-voiced material with which he made his name as a 17 year old phenom. His path was kind of reversed in those aspects.

I'd also like to mention Alex's credit as producer of The Cramps debut EP and LP in the late 70's, which not only remain that seminal underground group's most enduring body of work, but were -- never mind the revisionists and deniers who probably all love Big Star and claim to love punk -- equally infuential as anything else Alex did. Lux and Ivy implicitly championed him on the nascent IRS label before REM, the Bangles and the Replacements later came along.

LJ -- Agree about Chris Bell, and I do dig some of AC's solo stuff including "Like Flies On Sherbet" and "Bach's Bottom". Not for everybody I suppose, but if you can get with inspired shambling then there's nothing quite like it (most who shamble aren't nearly as inspired, or inspiring). As for the list of acts AC is oft said to have influenced, and that whole 80's "college rock" thing in general (Replacements excepted, who were "only" rock'n'roll in the best Stonsian sense of the word), I'll take the real deal way above the lot of 'em.

Back on topic, I'll still take Alex, even solo (in fact, especially solo!) over all that later egghead non-rock he's alleged to be somehow responsible for...and that goes for the Posies too. (Sorry AC but it had to be said. By me at least.) Nice guys? Who cares -- let's see how long of a thread we get when any of them joins the heavenly choir...(Wait, better not go there -- none of my fellow audiophiles posted to my recent Dale Hawkins RIP thread, much to absolutely nobody's surprise...but you can't tell me Alex didn't dig Dale.) Sorry, I must be in a foul mood. Rock'n'roll is dead, long live rock'n'roll! Carry on...

"Power poop", as a certain embittered musician friend with an axe to grind calls it...(not speaking of the Posies in particular, just the concept generally, but I never did like the term either)...Listen, I'm sure all the hearts are in the all the right places, and my bro' (who also tried to sell me on Game Theory and the Loud Family) happened to know and jammed with Ken Stringfellow when he lived in Seattle, but I've endured the Posies live and was left chilly, even though like any of these bands they're not without talent. After AC died I began going through some of my latter-day PP disks and putting a lot of them into the 'get rid of' pile...Bill Lloyd, Baby Lemonade, dB's, Wondermints, Sloan, Paul Collins' Beat, Grip Weeds, Greenberry Woods, Jason Falkner, etc...some of the stuff is really good, at least on paper, but I'd probably never listen to it again...Posies, Fountains of Wayne, Smithereens etc. I never fell for in the first place although I've seen the majority of these bands live...Just had my fill of third-hand white-boy ingeniousness I suppose...Life is short and I prefer real genius and soul (and/or real fun) over clever but conservative craftsmanship. Or more to the point here, AC was simply a much better and more inspired singer and songwriter than all of the above -- that is to say, an actual, inevitable, uncontrollable *artist*

I grew up seeing Tommy Keene back in the day here in DC when he was on Limp, and knew him a bit though he was older than me. (We briefly crossed paths at UMD, where I "majored" in radio station by default. We also both played Gretsch 6120 thin double-cuts. Too bad for me I can't sing or write a song like him.)

LJ, there's no question about EVERYONE being influenced and taking inspiration from someone else. There is no other way, no one's reinventing the wheel even if you're James Brown or John Lennon. (Or Kurt Cobain, whose talent I admire but whose songs I only want to hear occasionally on the radio.) Or, very self-evidently to my mind, Alex Chilton, who really didn't come up with anything so terribly original as to be retrospectively credited with inventing a genre -- never quite understood that one. More like he was just really, really damn good, and got across that humanity with guts intact.

But what I think separates AC (and KC too) from most of the parade is that, 25 years hence, I don't think anyone's gonna be covering and taking their inspiration from most of the acts we've named. Real genius is a rare thing, that's why we crave hearing it.