Pour: Sugar, Sugar

The Archies: Sugar, Sugar
[purchase]

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how my love of music began in the summer of 1969. That summer saw the release of “Sugar, Sugar,” a classic “bubblegum” rock song credited to The Archies, a fictional band of cartoon characters from the comics, and specifically, from The Archie Show, a cartoon series that began airing in 1968 on CBS. As a 7 year old, I was directly in the target demographic, and remember watching the show, and its various later incarnations and spin offs. The Archies, of course, were an attempt to piggyback on the success of The Monkees, a fictional group of actual humans which remarkably turned into a real band, themselves created to piggyback on the success of The Beatles, an actual band of legendary humans.

“Sugar, Sugar” was written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, and features the lyrics ‘Oh, sugar, pour a little sugar on it honey/Pour a little sugar on it baby,” making it theme-appropriate. Because Archie, Betty, Veronica and the gang were fictional, the song featured a crew of studio musicians managed by Don Kirshner (who had originally supervised The Monkees’ music), including Chuck Rainey, who played with Quincy Jones and Steely Dan, on bass, and drummer Gary Chester, who appeared on tons of hit records. Lead vocals were performed by Ron Dante, accompanied by Toni Wine, who multitracked their voices to create the full Archies sound.

Ultimately, “Sugar, Sugar” was the number one song of 1969, and its influence cannot be underestimated. You find its DNA in the power pop that arose in the 70s and 80s, and even in punk bands like The Ramones. Not to mention Def Leppard. Since I love that music (other than Def Leppard), I have to believe that constant repetition of “Sugar, Sugar” during the summer of 1969 somehow imprinted in my brain a susceptibility to poppy, hooky music. Remarkably, the song became a hit again the next year in a cover by Wilson Pickett, a very different artist. It has been covered often, by artists as diverse as Alex Chilton, Bob Marley, The Germs, and Homer Simpson. There are also German, two Czech, and Spanish covers. Recently, it was featured on Riverdale, a noir live action version of the Archie comics, played not by some modern version of The Archies, but by Josie and the Pussycats. (All of a sudden, this is turning into a Cover Me "Five Good Covers" piece....)

Flash forward from the summer of 1969 to the summer of 1978. That was the summer that I graduated from high school, and as a graduation present, my parents sent me to Europe on a multi-week teen tour. It was an incredible experience. We flew to London, took a ferry to Holland, and then bussed south to Italy—I’ll never forget waking up in the middle of the Alps for the first time—then north to Paris before I somehow was trusted to lead a small group of my fellow teens back to New York while the rest of the group continued on without us. We had a good group of kids, mostly from the New York area, and I very quickly became closest with two other guys, Larry and Keith. We spent an enormous amount of time together that summer, riding buses, touring and just hanging out.

It turned out that Larry’s father was Don Kirshner’s partner, and he joked that The Monkees and Archies were going to put him through college. At the time, though, their big act was Kansas, and after we returned from the trip, we all saw the band play Madison Square Garden together. As things happened, we grew apart as our lives turned to college, careers and families.

Flash forward to 2011, about a year after I joined Facebook. I had reconnected with Keith and Larry, and another woman, Nancy, who had been on the trip. We met for dinner in New York, and had a great time, but although we promised to do it again, we haven’t. I’ve been in touch, on and off with Larry, on Facebook and off, have had a little contact with Keith on Facebook, and it appears that Nancy has unfriended me. That’s sort of the way life is, I guess. It is difficult to keep in contact with people when your social circles really don’t overlap, your relationship is based on a short, intense period decades in the past, with a long eventful gap and considering the amount of effort that it takes to rekindle a friendship.

The other day, I was lucky to attend a speech at Princeton Alumni Day by Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Alphabet (the holding company for Google). He talked about how his belief was that technological innovation would solve the world’s problems. In response to a question about the effect of social media on human interaction, he observed, essentially, that we may have more relationships, but that those relationships are not as deep. And that does seem to be the case in the Facebook era.

Personally, I’m not complaining. I’ve always been somewhat introverted with a small number of close friends at any given time. Through Facebook, I’ve been able to create a larger circle of friends, some who I haven’t spoken to in years and some of whom I’ve never even spoken to in person, and enjoy interacting with them comfortably in the ether.

The Number Nine/September: Big Star, September Gurls

Purchase:
Big Star, September Gurls

In terms of musical discovery, I find myself often turning to the influences of those who influence me. Reading about an artist’s musical education often effects my own explorations into past genres and movements. In a beautiful, somewhat karmic turn, the influences of my influences become my own influences.

I find musical biographies the most interesting way to discover new, or otherwise unheard, music.  Digging deep into the history of music is as interesting and digging into actual, archeological history: what you find from the past informs the future. That’s why Magic Sam is almost daily listening for me. That’s how I discovered the Red Dirt Music movement, Jimmy LaFave, Stoney LaRue, and Jason Boland. 

In the same vein, I love a good name drop in songs. A few songs come to mind: Adam Duritz lamented Richard Manuel’s  (The Band) suicide along side the metaphorical impermanence of his own life in If I Could Give All My Love. John Mellancamp is pretty big name dropper (R.O.C.K in the U.S.A). The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon has made a brilliant career out of not only name-dropping, but wholesale lyrical montage, or is it collage, by taking lines from famous rock songs and seamlessly weaving the lyrics into his own. And, as we shall explore further later on, Paul Westerberg famously paid reverential homage to Alex Chilton and declared we could all use a ‘little Big Star” in the class ‘Mats track, Alex Chilton. 

I’m spanning across some divergent ideas here, but the point is: I feel listening to an artist who really moved you necessitates digging into their musical heritage. The same holds true for contemporary artists who run in the same packs. But, this is September, and history class is in session, so let’s dwell there, back there, not in the back of the classroom, but in the stacks. Dust off your vinyl, pull out your vintage t-shirts that you bought when brand new and let’s talk about a band I have always loved, to a degree, but have a complicated relationship with: I'm talking about the aforementioned Alex Chilton's Big Star.

I came to Big Star, and Alex Chilton, because of Paul Westerberg and The Replacements. Big Star, I know a little about; The 'Mats? I worship at their altar, so it was almost a necessity that I dig into someone they wrote a song about.

But, as often happens, one man's treasure doesn't always turn out to be the same or the next. The reason I say my affinity for Big Star is complicated is simple: like a lot of short lived bands, their catalog runs the entire spectrum of absolute greatness to songs that, while I might not call them bad, do probably speak to why they never hit it bigger than they did. They wrote great songs, and they put of some junkers. I feel a band like The Who exists on the same level: some of the greatest rock songs ever written and some of the worst. Literary minded folks could say the same for say, Charles Dickens. Big Star has that appeal and occupies that strange place between greatness and…mehhhh. The great stuff is just that; a lot of the rest of it is filler, at best.

I think that inconsistency has kept me from making a total embrace. But this is also me being utterly, assholishly subjective...I've had this discussion about the Grievous Angel, Gram Parsons. I think his short lived career was marked with nothing but brilliant, but I know a lot of folks thinks Return of the Grievous Angle is the starting and stopping point when it comes to evaluating his output. 

Add to the fact that the hipsters have gotten ahold of Big Star  (at least their t-shirt) which makes any relationship to a band, movie, book or whatever a heck of lot more complicated. 

Big Star's Alex Chilton is an eponymously blistering tribute to one of Westerberg’s heroes. The lead singer of Big Star, Chilton never hit it huge, or as huge as he probably should have, but he was a critics darling, and many a rocker’s legendary founding father of power pop. You’ve heard Big Star, for sure, but a lot of you (not you, SMM readers), might not know it. Their most well known track owes its celebrity to serving as the theme song to That 70’s Show. In the Street. Google “Big Star Hanging Out”—you’ll know exactly what I’m talking out.

While Big Star had many great songs, my favorite remains, and believe me, this doesn’t put me in unique company—a lot of people love this song—September Gurls. It’s a brilliant, chiming, churning pop gem, as great a radio song as I’ve ever heard. It makes its way onto almost all of the mixes I make, and I can't think of a song I more want to hear when I’m sipping drinks on a summer day.  Or that goes better with any beautiful girl you fall in love with, even if it's from across the room or jsut walking down the street.  September Gurls is two minutes and 56 seconds of a pop jewel in the crown of love songs. And will always be the soundtrack for a heart that breaks way too often at meeting, and losing, one of many girls from one of many dreams.

It was never a big hit, but September Gurls makes multiple lists of greatest pop songs ever. The Bangles covered it on their 1986 LP Different Light, and much in keeping with the theme of this post, it was their version that led me down a long path to Big Star (influences of influences, remember?). Though I should state that since I was listening to The Bangles, in 6th grade,my musical tastes hadn’t quite refined yet to the point where I would not listen to The Bangles. The Replacements followed within a few years, after I’d grown a little more discerning. Yet, now that I’m even older, I can kind of get down with The Bangles, and see they had some great songs—their cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade of Winter has a fiery snarl that the original folk duo could never have achieved…not that they needed to, but again, I love seeing how the influence of a precedent setting artist informs the later one, and how different the sound becomes.

All that being said, influential or not, popular or not, Big Star deserved more. And not this enlightening bit of trivia from MTV.

Thanks, Katy Perry.

All That Jazz: Like Someone in Love

Medium Cool featuring Alex Chilton: Like Someone In Love

[purchase]

When I think of Alex Chilton, I think of at least half a dozen different voices. There's the horny teenaged, weary beyond its years, husky voice of the Box Tops' “The Letter.” In the famous Big Star years there was the vulnerable, love-struck voice of “I'm In Love With A Girl,” the joyous, giddy voice of “September Gurls,” and the burned out, utterly despairing voice of “Holocaust.” In his early solo years there was the sleazoid, sex tour guide voice of “Bangkok.” Later there was the winsome but not entirely to be trusted dive bar voice singing old R&B and vintage rock numbers on a slew of releases. But Alex Chilton, smooth jazz crooner? Well maybe not quite smooth, but jazz it is, as the three songs Chilton sings on the obscure early 1990s release by Medium Cool, Imagination, attest.

Imagination, a tribute album to Chet Baker, seems to be Medium Cool's only album. The group consisted of Ron Miller on bass, Robert Arron on piano and tenor sax, Richard Dworkin on drums, and A.J. Mantas on vibes and piano. Chilton, Adele Bertei, Angel Torsen, and James White each contribute vocals on a couple numbers. I can't say Chilton's songs here are anywhere near the top of my list of his best performances, but there is definitely something appealing about hearing that vulnerable voice, wiser with age maybe, but still aching, some twenty years after “Thirteen.”

Guest post by Dan

In Memoriam: Alex Chilton

The Box Tops: The Letter

[purchase]

Big Star: I'm In Love With A Girl

[purchase]

Alex Chilton: Baron of Love Pt. 2

[purchase]

Chameleonesque singer-songwriter Alex Chilton, a legend of the Memphis music scene, died in March on the cusp of a comeback, perhaps the fifth or sixth such comeback in his long career - more if we include such personal notes as his escape from Hurricane Katrina, and his scheduled high-buzz set with a resurrected group performing under the name of the grungy proto-altrockers Big Star at SXSW in 2010, which went on as a tribute without him just days after his passing [and which included was also originally intended to include Big Star cofounder Andy Hummel, who in a curious synchronicity of events, would pass a few months later].

But though his post-seventies turn to post-modern jazz tinged with Memphis soul never brought him the same recognition as his earlier work, Chilton, who at sixteen had made a splash with The Box Tops - the first recording artists to have a Memphis recorded, nationwide, number one hit - and then in his early twenties resurged at the helm of Big Star, is still recognized widely for his role in the evolution of modern Rock music; both bands featured prominently in the annals and archives of both the Stax museum and the Smithsonian museum of Rock and Blues, which I just came back from visiting down in Memphis, and their song On The Street found fitting placement as the theme song for That 70's Show. I shared my own tribute over at Cover Lay Down in the days after his death, but fittingly, today's post also marks the sixth time we've visited him here at Star Maker Machine since our inception. Surely, it won't be the last, either.

Postage Paid: The Letter

The Box Tops: The Letter

[purchase]

"Lonely days are gone, I´m a-going home, my baby just wrote me a letter..." The Letter (´67) by The Box Tops is one of those perfect pop songs. Under the 2-minute mark and deceptively simple, yet complete with majestic horns, strings, and even the sound of an airplane taking off. Memphis soulful, with the heartfelt urgency of a very young Alex Chilton as the cream on the cake. The lad´s just turned sweet sixteen and he scores a number one hit single in U.S.A. e in tutto il mondo!

Impossible under modern circumstances. My baby just sent me an email? My baby just texted my iPhone? My baby just twittered my facebook? No way.