Big Star - Keep An Eye On The Sky
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Big StarEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2009-09-15
Music Label: Rhino
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Psychedelic Stuff (Chris Bell)
- All I See Is You (Icewater)
- Every Day We Grow Closer (Original Mix)(Alex Chilton)
- Try Again (Early Version) (Rock City)
- The Preacher (Rock City)
- Feel
- The Ballad Of El Goodo (Alternate Mix)
- In The Street
- Thirteen (Alternate Mix)
- Don't Lie To Me
- The India Song
- When My Baby's Beside Me (Alternate Mix)
- My Life Is Right (Alternate Mix)
- Give Me Another Chance Alternate Mix)
- Try Again
- Gone With The Light (Chris Bell)
- Watch The Sunrise
- ST 100/6 (Alternate Mix)
- In The Street (Second Recorded Version)
- Feel (Early Mix)
- The Ballad Of El Goodo (Alternate Lyrics)
- The India Song (Alternate Version)
- Country Mom
- I Got Kinda Lost (Demo)
- Motel Blues (Demo)
- There Was A Light (Demo)
- Life is White (Demo)
- What's Going Ahn (Demo)
- O My Soul
- Life is White
- Way Out West (Alternate Mix)
- What's Going Ahn
- You Get What You Deserve (Alternate Mix)
- Mod Lang (Alternate Mix)
- Back Of A Car (Alternate Mix)
- Daisy Glaze
- She's A Mover
- September Gurls
- Morpha Too (Alternate Mix)
- I'm In Love With A Girl
- O My Soul (Alternate Version)
- Back Of A Car (Demo)
- Daisy Glaze (Alternate Take)
- She's A Mover (Alternate Version)
- I Am The Cosmos (Chris Bell)
- You And Your Sister (Chris Bell)
- Blue Moon (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Femme Fatale (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Thank You Friends (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- You Get What You Deserve (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Lovely Day (aka Stroke It Noel)(Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Downs (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Nighttime (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Jesus Christ (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Holocaust (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Take Care (Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Big Black Car (Alternate Demo)(Alex Chilton)
- Manana
- Jesus Christ
- Femme Fatale
- O, Dana
- Kizza Me
- You Can't Have Me
- Nighttime
- Dream Lover
- Blue Moon
- Take Care
- Stroke It Noel
- For You
- Downs
- Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
- Big Black Car
- Holocaust
- Kanga Roo
- Thank You Friends
- Till The End Of The Day
- Lovely Day
- Nature Boy
- When My Baby's Beside Me (live)
- My Life Is Right (live)
- She's A Mover (live)
- Way Out West (live)
- The Ballad Of El Goodo (live)
- In The Street (live)
- Back Of A Car (live)
- Thirteen (live)
- The India Song (live)
- Try Again (live)
- Watch The Sunrise (live)
- Don't Lie To Me (live)
- Hot Burrito #2 (live)
- I Got Kinda Lost (live)
- Baby Strange (live)
- Slut (live)
- There Was A Light (live)
- St 100/6 (live)
- Come On Now (live)
- O My Soul (live)
Free Music Notes for Keep An Eye On The Sky
Free Music Review: Bigger Star
Hit: 5 Stars
Finally, the long-awaited Big Star box, with four CDs containing 98 songs, 52 of them unreleased. The set is named after a lyric from "Stroke It Noel", a song from their their third studio release, and contains album tracks, demos, alternate mixes/lyrics/versions, as well as a full live concert from January 1973 (with the band performing as a three-piece soon after founding member Chris Bell had left the band out of frustration over their first album's poor distribution and lousy sales). The first three discs include the songs of and follow the three studio albums in sequence, including tracks from those albums, along with other material from the same timeframe; the fourth CD is the live concert in its entirety. In one form or another, the set includes all of the 43 songs from their three studio releases, so it's a good document to have just for that, not to mention the live set and the demos and alternate mixes of some of their most memorable songs ("Back Of A Car", "The Ballad Of El Goodo", "In The Street", "The India Song", "O My Soul", "She's A Mover" and "Try Again" each appear three times). The fourth disc includes a promotional video for the song "Thirteen", billed as the only existing video document of the band in action, which is a grainy home movie that looks like it was captured on a standard Super 8 home video recorder from the time. The video has a lot of cheezy establishing shots, like kids walking home from school, a jet taking off, and images of the guys in the studio. Of particular interest are the images of Chris Bell, who died in a car crash in 1978. The video, set to a different song ("Thank You Friends") can be seen here.
Big Star is revered by dozens of bands, including The Replacements (who wrote a song called "Alex Chilton" for the band's main singer/songwriter/guitarist), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Petty's nasal vocal delivery clearly apes Chilton's), the Bangles, and many others. Alex Chilton came to the group with some experience, having been the singer for the Box Tops (check out a great video of the band irreverently playing for the cameras to a recording of their #1 hit "The Letter" - Chilton, in those days, had more of a bluesy, raspy John Fogerty/Rod Stewart/Eric Burden delivery). I have the first two Big Star albums already, so a lot of the material is familiar to me, but I had never heard the third album, which turns out to be very different from the jangly power pop of the first two records as it is a combination of acoustic guitars and strings(!), as well as other odd sounds. The set also includes several ex-Big Star contributions from the various members, including three solo songs by Chris Bell (one pre-band inclusion called "Psychedelic Stuff" from 1969) as well as his "I am the Cosmos" single from 1975 and its b-side; there is also one song from his Icewater project, and two from his Rock City project. The set also includes an Alex Chilton solo song from 1969. The collection has 17 demos of 16 songs ("Big Black Car" gets two demos), which are often just Alex Chilton solo on the guitar; these versions are almost always superior to the produced songs, as the voice is clearer in the mix - in fact, a CD release of just these songs would be a treasure on its own, as it is probably the best "solo" work that Alex Chilton has ever done. The live album is also interesting, perhaps more interesting than any other live material I've heard - partly because of its rarity, but also because of how tight the band were. The recording quality is great, and the murmur of voices in the bar as the audience waits for headlining act Archie Bell & the Drells (who?) to hit the stage; Chilton's dejected announcement that the Drells will be up next is in itself heartbreaking.
The box is about the size of a 45-inch single slip cover, and comes with a folding box to hold the four CDs, as well as a superb booklet that is full of pictures of the band and comes with a warm foreword from John Fry, who owns Ardent Records where the band recorded and was one of their biggest supporters - the fifth Big Star, if you will. At 100 pages, this is probably one of the more generous box set booklets around, and it contains three well-written essays by rock critics Robert Gordon, Bob Mehr and Alex Palao. Interesting to see these handsome young men, somewhat dandified and tidily-dressed with their jackets and shirts buttoned at the cuffs and leather shoes, and big mops of shoulder-length hair. Not very rock `n' roll, not very hippy, but very Big Star. One minor complaint - there are no lyric sheets, making it harder to make sense of what changes there are "The Ballad of El Goodo", which comes in the original version and one with alternate lyrics, but considering that there are over 80 songs on this set it would have made the package much thicker and expensive (and I'm not really one to pore over lyric sheets anyway; actually, if you really need them they are readily available online).
The opening song of the set is "Psychedelic Stuff", a mish-mash of Beatles-esque motifs (including back-tracked stuff) with some vocals, showing off Chris Bell's studio craftsmanship, as well as the superb capabilities of Ardent Records. "All I See Is You" by Bell's IceWater, could be a Beatles song, especially "Dig A Pony" with its "All I want is you" lyric (he repeats this theme endlessly, by the way). Chilton's "Every Day As We Grow Closer" sounds more like a Big Star song, with the addition of some cheezy keyboards. Ditto for "Try Again" by Bell's Rock City, with its country guitar sounds; Big Star did the song on their first album and in their live set, making this is the only proto-Big Star song to appear on a Big Star album. The early Chris Bell version is a bit different, but not overly so.
In addition to the proto-Big Star songs, disc one has all of the original songs of the first release, the optimistically-titled "#1 Record" (although in some cases the original song is left off in deference to the "alternate mix"). The album is one of the best debuts ever, full of fantastic songwriting, great guitar work and wonderful vocal harmonies - some critics call it "power pop" - with frantic rockers like "Feel", wailing, Petty-esque thumpers like "In The Street", trippy, experimental songs like the wonderful "The India Song" (one of only two that bassist Andy Hummel composed; the other is the similarly-themed, but inferior, "Way Out West"), as well as gorgeous, aching songs like "Thirteen" (which has been covered by artists such as Elliott Smith, Evan Dando, Garbage, Mary Lou Lord, Wilco and others) or "Watch The Sunrise." It also has several demos for songs that would appear on the second album, "Radio City." But there are also several other previously-unissued nuggets. Chris Bell's Beatles-esque "The Preacher" is briefly excerpted here, as are two other songs that were intended for the first album, namely "Gone With The Light" and "Motel Blues", a Loudon Wainright III cover (there is also a demo for this song). The former, played solo by Alex Chilton, is an acoustic ballad, sad, folksy somewhat Celtic-sounding acoustic ballad with a multi-tracked harmony voices that very much sounds like an extension of "Try Again", while the latter starts off with some engineer PA voice and gets into a sad story about being a rock `n' roll star on the road. The disc also has "I Got Kinda Lost," a Chris Bell demo that didn't appear on any Big Star studio album, but makes a re-appearance here when it is performed live on disc four. It's a punchy, simple spooky song with very repetitive verses. Disc one has the most varied songwriting credits (as with the live tracks of disc four, of course, which on its 20 tracks sources 10 from the first album, which only had 12 songs to begin with), while two and three are largely represented by Alex Chilton; it has only one cover tune. Four of the album's songs are drumless, as is the unused song "Gone With The Light." With the alternate versions, it's hard to tell the difference, but "In The Street" definitely has a different pre-intro, and "The India Song" is a bit faster (it is therefore also 14 seconds shorter). One of the oddities of disc one is "Country Morn", which is an alternate version of "Watch The Sunrise", with Chris Bell's lyrics and vocals. The first disc also has a demo for "Back Of A Car", which was a track on "Radio City," the second release which is the focus of the second CD.
Disc two starts off with three demos, the 12 songs of the band's second studio album, "Radio City", as well as alternative mixes, alternate versions, a rehearsal version, Chris Bell's "I Am The Cosmos" single with its b-side "You And Your Sister", and is rounded out by six more demos for one song that appears on "Radio City" as well as five songs that appear on "3rd", including one for The Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale." "There Is A Life" is the only previously-unheard song on this disc, it is by Chris Bell but sung by Alex Chilton in this demo form and it sounds very much like a Gram Parsons song. Since Bell left the band after the first release (where he had made songwriting contributions to every song except "The India Song"), this is only one of three ex-"#1 Record" Bell contributions to the box (if you include "Country Morn", which is a bizarre alternate version of "Watch The Sunrise"). But despite Chris Bell's absence, "Radio City" is a fantastic follow-up, with great rockers like "O My Soul" and "Mod Lang," mid-level moody pieces like "Back Of A Car" and "Daisy Glaze", as well as the band's most famous song "September Gurls." It also has my favourite Big Star song, the achingly beautiful "What's Going Ahn." Sure, there are a few shambling, experimental clunkers like "You Get What You Deserve", "She's A Mover" and "Life Is White"; The alternate version of "Mod Lang" has a pretty funky intro with studio chat, it's a nutty rocker already and this makes it even nuttier. The alternate version for "O My Soul", however, is a much longer number, and has a very different - longer and less sophisticated - intro (1:29, compared with 0:47 for the album version). Chris Bell's "I Am The Cosmos" is a short song, starting out with the broad chords you'd expect from a Big Star song, but the whiny vocals are extra-squeezed and multi-tracked, the "yeah, yeah, yeah"s extra-languid. Great George Harrison solo right in the middle of it. Despite the whininess - not to mention the grandiose title - it is still some how tight and appealing. The b-side "You And Your Sister" is a simple, plaintive ditty with guitar, voice and bass, that appeals to the listener "All I want to do is to spend some time with you/So I can hold you, hold you" (to match the a-side's pleading "I'd really like to see you again"), that later also develops its touches of orchestration and studio freakout. And that, besides a handful of Big Star songs, was Chris Bell.
Disc three, which contains the band's third release, entitled "3rd", has the 19 songs that were on "3rd" (15 originals and four covers - The Velvet Underground, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Kinks, and eden ahmez), three unused songs, as well as five demos. Again, the beautiful and tenderly voiced Alex Chilton demos are usually more interesting than the songs, in particular "Thank You Friends", which includes jazzy background singers on the studio version that clutter up the production. "Take Care", which is practically a lullaby, opens with violins that smother Alex Chilton and his beautiful melodies. "Nighttime", the studio track, starts off very much like the acoustic demo, but adds in tambourine, slide guitar, and eventually those inescapable strings. The better album cuts are the ones that have the least orchestration; these include the rockin' "Kizza Me", the sorrowful "Big Black Car", and the four covers. Disc three has the most cover versions of any of the studio discs: Big Star's take on "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" (rockin!), The Kinks' "`Till The End Of The Day" (also rockin!!), The Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale" (Alex Chilton does a good job stepping into the Nico role here, its a lovely version), and a very nice "Nature Boy". Among the unused songs, "Manana" is a mere snippet that sounds like it was meant to be played at a turn-of-the-20th-century puppet show (I can understand why it was unused - it doesn't sound one bit like Big Star, and is quite annoying to boot), while "Lovely Day" is just that - lovely. "Woke up in the middle of the day/Sun streaming in/No one there to take my time away." The demo is great, the "finished" version is still okay although the guitar and the voice are further back in the mix, and there is harmonizing and drums - and then the string section comes in, sawing away. Yuck. Many of the other songs on "3rd" tend to be shamboling, experimental, and acoustic ballads that are textured with strings. But it also has some of the best tracks, in particular demos for "Blue Moon" and "What's Going Ahn."
The final disc contains the 20 tracks of Big Star's January 1973 Lafayette's Music Room live concert opening up for Archie Dell and the Drells in the band's hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. On the set list are 10 of the songs from "#1 Record", which had just been released (left off are the rockin' opening number "Feel" and the ballad "Give Me Another Chance"), four from the not-yet-released "Radio City", four covers (Gram Parsons' "Hot Burrito #2', T. Rex's "Baby Strange", Todd Rundgren's "Slut" and the Kinks' "Come On Now"), as well as two songs that have never appeared on a studo album, "I Got Kinda Lost" and "There Was A Light." The songs are tight and rockin', if a bit shamboling, especially the Gram Parson's track. Near the end of the set, the band plays a version of "ST 100/6' that is nearly four minutes long - the album and alternate mix are about one minute long - playing stripped-down guitar parts marching languidly through the four lines of the song's only verse and adding a vocal bridge (or a second verse, depending how you look at it), before starting an impromptu guitar jam, and another two verses of four lines (in true pop song tradition, the fourth is, of course, a repeat of the first), and some sort of a crazy Motown drum shakeout and then another solo. So this is what the whole song was supposed to sound like! "Thank you, Archie Dell and the Drells are next. Good night" are the last sounds you hear on the project. Finis.
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