Big Star News

Where was Alex Chilton on Wednesday night? At the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, he was onstage, more or less, standing at the far right, sometimes even near his microphone .

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, "Live Anthology'' Some bands are studio titans while others are kings of the road.

Anyone who picked up this past week's dead-tree edition knows that it was our annual holiday guide --our all-encompassing reference book for what to get those omnipresent jerks in your life known as friends and family.

This show seems half-assed in a way that everyone is frankly really pleased with, most of all Alex Chilton, of course, a blithely nonchalant power-pop deity loping amiably through a clutch of '70s hits with the aid of a couple '90s alt-rockish power-pop dudes who deified him at a late 2009 show at a Masonic Temple in Brooklyn, ostensibly to promote ...

The mighty Big Star in their original early 1970s incarnation. L-R: Jody Stephens, Chris Bell, Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel.

Chilton, to the letter "A song like 'Soul Deep' is obvious enough, a patented commercial sound, yet within these strictures it communicates with a depth and sincerity of feeling that holds the attention and brings you back often." That's the late, great rock critic Lester Bangs, waxing enthusiastic - and surprisingly lucid - regarding the ...

Hovering on the verge of their 20th anniversary, The Mother Hips have just released their seventh studio effort, Pacific Dust , and, to the surprise of no one who's spent a little time with their work, it's another end-to-end pop-rock jewel.

We all know how daunting - nay, obnoxious - it can be to find holiday gifts for the listener who has nearly everything.

In Space , these Memphis power-pop legends' overdue studio follow-up to 1978's revered Third/Sister Lovers , didn't exactly convince anyone that the Big Star magic was still alive.

The term, "Memphis Curse," was bantered around quite a bit amongst musician friends when I resided there for three years in the 1990s.

You've heard the Big Star commotion. The boys are at it again, this time with a honky-tonk taqueria in the old Pontiac space opening Monday.

Memphis' Ardent Records has resurfaced with a little buzz lately after releasing a Big Star box set and reissuing Chris Bell 's I Am the Cosmos .

To sample an individual track, click the [>] button located beside your desired song.

How a local writer and music aficionado uncovered the story of rock's foremost cult band and their masterpiece album It's as if all of the music coming out of all the little transistor radio speakers - Beatles, Stones, Byrds, Beach Boys, Sam and Dave, Fifth Dimension, Lovin' Spoonful, Question Mark and the Mysterians, Supremes, Young Rascals, Sonny ...

The brainchild of Shangri-La Projects' Sherman Willmott, the Memphis Pops Festival also will be free this year as part of the downtown Alley Jams series.

After years of dealing with celebrity patients, Observer Music Monthly's Record Doctor has extended his working hours and opened his clinic to all-comers. Here are his latest responses to your queries The Record Doctor is in.

While being interviewed some time in the mid a 60s, Pete Townsend of the Who coined the term a oepower pop.a He was trying to describe his banda s sound: a shotgun marriage of raucous guitar clang and sweet flowing melody .

As you listen to Keep an Eye on the Sky , the excellent new Big Star box set from Ardent/Rhino, you can hear Alex Chilton giving up.

Bruce Eatona s book length essay about Big Stara s second album Radio City for the 33 1/3 series seems to have placed accuracy above all in the story of this recording.

Approximately 212 miles lie between two very different worlds within the State of Tennessee.