Lorde "Swinging Party"

I'm not a grumpy old man.

But clearly, I am an old man.

My friend Lori TB gave me the heads up that Lorde does a cover of The Replacements' "Swinging Party."  (She wrote "I 100% always think of you when I hear anything at all to do with the 'mats.")

My first thought was "How does Lorde even know this song?"

My second thought was the realization that this song came out in 1985.  Lorde wasn't born until 1994!

I'm not complaining that a young artist covered The Replacements.  I just find it shocking.  In the same way I'll find it shocking when they move Wheel Of Fortune's time-slot on the TeeVee.


Hear the song on Youtube.

The Replacements "Cruella De Vil"

This week, I'm on vacation with the family at Disneyworld.  So I thought I'd write some posts about Disney songs.

With a 6 year old in the house, I'm starting to see the change . . .

She has a younger brother, and every once and a while there will be some thing that she used to love, but she suddenly rejects, because "That's for little kids."

There is a lot of this in life.  At a certain point, you age out of particular toys, games, music, activities, etc.

But an unexpected delight of adulthood, is that sometimes you age back in.

By high school, I had aged out of Disney movies.  In the 80s, there was no way you were going to catch me in the theaters for "The Great Mouse Detective" or "The Black Cauldron."

Then a funny thing happened in college.

The Replacements covered "Cruella De Ville" for a compilation of Disney songs called "Stay Awake."  And while I think their delivery was somewhat ironic, I think it also holds an appreciation for the classic song-craft that went into tunes like this one.

And suddenly it was okay to like Disney songs.  Even find them fun, enjoyable and cool.

Which is why it's not unheard of for me to be the one in our house who is most enjoying Sesame Street or the Sit-N-Spin . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

The Replacements "Everything's Coming Up Roses"

"Yeah, your late 20s can be pretty dramatic."

I was saying this to a friend of mine, who is in her late 20s.  She'd been telling me tales of drama and awkwardness and other silliness that comes with being single and having roommates and lots of independence and no money and such.

Her stories, and the emotional ups and downs within, made me think back on that same period in my life.  I've had it in my head that this was a pretty dramatic, eventful period in my life too.

But I decided to find out.

For most of my late 20s, I kept a pretty comprehensive journal.  Every month or so I'd fill up an entire yellow legal pad with the comings and goings of my life, the loves and hookups and drama, and the vomiting of feelings onto the page, as I tried to make sense of it all.

I remember it feeling dramatic.  But was it really as dramatic as it felt at the time?

At random, I grabbed a legal pad, of the dozens in a box in the basement and read through it.

In short, either I picked the most loaded journal of the bunch, or yes, life was dramatically dramatic when I was in my late 20s.

Within the month that I read through, I'd found out my Aunt had cancer, and old friend stopped speaking to me, another friend's husband committed suicide, my ex-girlfriend's cat died in the middle of the night and she made me come over to her house to deal with the cat-corpse, and, as the capper, my friends and I all lost our jobs.

Despite all this, the journal ends on an up-note, sort of.

"Well, what can you say about a month like this?  Emotionally exhausting and I'm glad it's over.  It'll certainly be interesting reading at some distant date, but right now it's pretty painful.  

Friday night we did the Relay For Life (American Cancer Society fundraiser).  Somewhere near 6am, an annoying 10 year old who'd been hanging around near me, for reasons unknown, the kid took a tennis ball and threw it as hard as he could intentionally hitting me in the nuts.  

The good news is that I think my luck might be changing."

It's nice to know that despite the drama, I kept my sense of humor and a bit of light in the darkness and pain.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Joan Jett & Paul Westerberg "Let's Do It"

Here's another Weekend Post:

Had Paul Westerberg on the mind, due to The Replacements reunion show.  Hadn't thought of this cover tune in a long long time.  From the "Tank Girl" movie soundtrack . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are fun to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.

Bash & Pop "Friday Night Is Killing Me"

Here's another Weekend Post:

Keeping Fridays' focus on the "Songs For Slim" project, let me share one more solo-Replacements project.

Tommy Stinson has spent a lot of the last 15 or so years being in the mostly-inactive Guns And Roses, but he put out some solid post-Replacements work.  "Friday Night Is Killing Me" is not unlike a good Keith Richards solo project, full of fun, loose rock n roll, a less that perfect voice that wins you over with charm, and plenty of call-and-response barroom rock.  Another 90s fave . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.

Chris Mars "Popular Creeps"

Here's another Weekend Post:

Keeping yesterday's focus on the "Songs For Slim" project, I want to point you to one of my favorite albums of the 90s.  This is another one of those records that makes me feel like a lone voice in the darkness---I love it, and no one I know has ever heard of it, never mind succumbed to its rock n roll charms.

Mars spent years behind the drum kit of an iconic alt-rock band, and emerged, surprisingly, to be a very able and talented multi-instrumentalist and front-man.

Why yes, I am calling Dave Grohl a total copycat.  (Just kidding!)



Hear the song on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.

Slim Dunlap "Ballad Of The Opening Band"

Here's another "I Looked At The Internet Today So You Don't Have To" feature.

Guitarist Slim Dunlap has found himself in a position that too many Americans, and particularly, too many musicians, find themselves in.

He had a debilitating stroke last year and his insurance doesn't cover enough of what he will need going forward just to survive.  So not only is the medical condition delibitating, so is the financial condition.

Fortunately, he has friends.

In February, a limited edition new recording by his old band mates, The Replacements, went at auction for $10,000.  The songs will be available digitally later in March, but Pitchfork as a previous of the Gordon Lightfoot cover.

And there are more songs to come.  If you are, or you know, a fan of Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Jacob Dylan or a long list of others, check out the Songs For Slim site.  There you'll find out more about Slim and his needs, and more about the songs to come.

If nothing else, check out the song below.  It's Slim's funny, somewhat heartbreaking and very accurate "Ballad Of An Opening Band."


Hear the song on Youtube.

The Replacements "Answering Machine"

If you could boil down the essence of this daily blog to just one post, this would be it.  This is a post about one song that appeared in my life at one point, and changed the course of who I was and who I'd become.

Fall 1987.  I had just entered college.  It was a moment I'd been waiting for, for years.

There is a wonderful kind of stability in growing up and staying in the same town from kindergarten through High School.

There is also a horrible kind of rigidity that comes from that same thing.  You are who they say you are, and once they say who you are, it's pretty hard to change it.

College promises a fresh start.  Nobody knows who you were, so there is nothing projected onto the template of who people think you should be.

I can't say that I was looking to create a whole new persona or shed some adolescent horribleness.  I just wanted the freedom to explore, and to have that be (socially) okay.

So when I was invited to a Punk Rock show at the Student Union Ballroom, I said yes.

Shockingly, at age 18, I had never been to a concert before.  I was a music fan, for sure, but had never been to a show.

Similarly, growing up in suburban outliers territory, my music tastes were pretty pedestrian.  The environment offered little in the way of accessible musical adventure.

I was curious to see what it would be like to go beyond Led Zeppelin and U2 and AC/DC, to see if I would like it.


Skipping ahead, let me tell you a little about the show.

The UMass Student Union Ballroom was dark, loud and rocking.  I guess I'd seen "slam dancing" on TV (this was years before they called it "moshing"), but it was a thrilling experience to see it just a few feet in front of me.

The band was either drunk or crazy or both, and I was surprised and bemused that they seemed to want to taunt the audience throughout the show.  Between songs they'd ask "Any requests?" and hardcore fans would shout out their favorite song, only to have the band say, "Never heard of it," and crank into something else.

It was a great experience, and I'm always proud to say that the first concert I ever went to was The Replacements.

But the concert isn't what this post is about.  This post is about the night before.


Keith was a guy I knew from home.  He went to High School in the next town over so we had some mutual friends.  Even though I was ready to say goodbye to the past and embrace a new tomorrow, it was nice to be with with a familiar face.

We were hanging out in his room, the night before the show.

I didn't know a thing about The Replacements, this band that I'd never heard of, that'd we'd be seeing the following night, so I asked for some details.  He pulled out a stack of vinyl.

As he put on a record, I flipped through his LPs.  There were some names that I'd read in Rolling Stone, but mostly, the pile was this world of unfamiliar bands.

We were listening to a record called "Let It Be" which was louder and looser and more ragged than anything I had in my collection.  I wasn't sure if it was good---I had no point of reference for what made a Punk Rock band "good."  But I was getting into the spirit of it.

Every few minutes, someone would walk by Keith's open dorm-room door, poke their head in and say, "Listening to The Replacments, huh?  Are you going to the show tomorrow?  Cool, see you there."

Girls.  Good looking girls.  Slightly offbeat, interesting-looking, good looking girls were sticking their heads in the door and saying "Replacements?  See you at the show tomorrow."

Girls like that, like bands like this?

I felt like I had just been given a password to a club that I had previously not known existed.

We'd flipped the album to the second side, which was winding down.  I heard a strange mechanical voice.

"Is that in the song?"

Keith heard it too.

We turned up the volume.  There was a voice mixed into the song.

"Play it again."  Keith moved the needle back and started the song over.

We each put an ear up to a speaker.

"If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.  If you need help, if you need help, if you need help . . . "


And that's it.   That's the moment.  That's the image.

I don't think I radically changed that second or anything.  Change (growth, really) was incremental, evolutionary, over many years.

But I feel like that is the moment I became a music fan, a music listener, and a person who lived his life through music.

How many days and nights have I put my ears closer to the speakers, because I wanted to know what a song was really saying?  How many joyful moments have I had in the act of discovery, with other friends who love music?  How many records have I bought, played, loved and woven directly into the very fabric of my emotional being?  How many artists have I been turned on to, and quickly turned around and shared?

I used to joke that I wanted a career where I could be paid to simply be me.  I kind of got there.  Playing songs in darkened rooms as a DJ on the radio today, is a direct descendant of that moment in a UMass dorm room.

Without that moment, I can easily imagine I wouldn't have the musical tastes I have, the job I have, or for that matter, the life I have.

I'm thankful that I said Yes to that show, that I was open to opening my world up, and that 25 years later I'm still putting my ears to the speaker, every day.


Hear the song on Youtube.

For an interesting in experiment, you can read this issue of The Skyway from 1996, which is an online Replacements Fan Club.  I wrote to them 15 years ago.  So you can hear this same story, told in the voice of a 27 year old, instead of a 43 year old.

The Wallflowers "Reboot The Mission"

People seem surprised by the new Wallflowers single, "Reboot The Mission."

Pretty much since their inception, the band has been compared to, comfortably, artists like Tom Petty, The Band, The Counting Crows and Bruce Springsteen.

Straight ahead rootsy rock.

But if you've ever read anything about Jakob Dylan, you know that his formative influences go beyond those earthy antecedants.

He's professed a fascination with The Replacements.

He's covered David Bowie.

He wrote a section of the liner notes for "Beyond And Back," a Best Of collection, for the band X.

So is it a surprise that "Reboot The Mission" features Mick Jones of The Clash?  That it seems to contain programmed beats/samples and such?

It is, only if you've been listening to The Wallflowers, and not Jakob, I guess . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

The Replacements "Left Of The Dial"

I went to Fenway Park for last night's Red Sox game (they won; 4 in a row!).

Even at a major sporting event, it's hard to stop being a DJ.

"Bon Jovi?  Really?  This song is older than he is."

Did you know that each Sox player gets to pick his own song that will play for 10 to 15 seconds on the Park P.A. as he steps to bat?

There are a surprising (or perhaps unsurprising) number of rap songs in the lineup.

But the only really familiar, popular song I heard was when Cody Ross stepped to the plate to the tune of Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer."

"Terrible," I said, each time he came to bat.

"They're baseball players, not DJs," said my sensible sister.

And in my mind, I briefly entertained the idea of a new career as a professional Professional Athlete Theme Song Consultant, where Major League ballplayers would pay me handsomely to work with them to find the ideal song to both motivate themselves and get the crowd going.

I quickly moved off that pipe dream, to ask myself what song I would use, if I were, say, a Minor League utility player suddenly called up from Pawtucket and inserted into the big game at a crucial moment.

I settled on The Replacements "Left Of The Dial."

Its first 15 second are ringing, anthemic and powerful, and would set the tone for my history making at bat.

Yeah, not going to happen, either.

Not coincidentally, "Left Of The Dial" is the song I'll put on the air for myself, if I am ever fired from my radio job, as they drag me kicking and screaming, my nails dug into the door frame, out of the station.

Hopefully, that won't happen either.

And, of course, I would want this one to be the track playing, as my casket exits the church, and I (metaphorically) let the static rise and say to my friends "see you on the other side."

That, I suppose, is the most likely opportunity I'll get to use this as a theme song . . .


Hear The Replacements on Youtube.


Hear Bon Jovie on Youtube.

The Replacements "Lovelines"

So I'm writing this post at the end of February, my vacation just hours away, and I don't have my blog covered during my time away.

What to do. Think, man, think.

And the word "improvise" comes to mind.

You don't have a solution? Improvise.

And that simple thought reminds me that I wanted to do a series of posts on songs with improvised lyrics.

So that's what I'll do! Here we go . . .

What a joy, after years of listening to this song, to discover this newspaper article, explaining the origin of "Lovelines."

From The Replacements sloppy masterpiece "Hootenanny," the song "Lovelines" is the band in a simple rock groove, with singer Paul Westerberg reading lines from the personals as his lyrics.

Hilarious!

The Replacements "Valentine"

I spent a long stretch of the post-college, pre-Martha’s Vineyard part of my life, living in Abingdon, Virginia.

People always ask me where that is and I say that it’s in the western part of the state.

“You mean, like Charlottesville?” No, more West.

“West like Lexington?” Wester.

“Is it near Roanoke?”

I tell them it’s near the Virginia/Tennessee border.

There is usually a blank expression, which tells me that they didn’t know that Virginia and Tennessee bordered each other.

I wasn’t near any major American city, so if I wanted to see a Name band in concert, it meant a minimum of a 2 hour road trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, or Asheville, North Carolina, or someplace further.

And if the closest that Paul Westerberg was going to come to Abingdon was Athens, Georgia, then dammit, I was driving to Athens, Georgia.

The girl I was dating at the time wasn’t familiar with Westerberg or The Replacements, but agreed to go with me, if we made a full day of it. Meaning, if we left early in the morning, spent some time visiting North Carolina art museums, and had plenty of time to check out the college town of Athens.

Being the somewhat obsessive paranoid freak that I am, when we rolled into Athens at about 3 in the afternoon, I wanted to find the venue, so I would know where it was, and that it actually existed, even if the show wasn't for 6 more hours.

Georgia Theatre was a beautiful old style movie house where cool bands that passed through town came to play. We wandered up to the box office to see if we could grab our Will Call tickets in the early afternoon, to avoid waiting in line that night.

No one was at the Box Office, or at the door, but there was an unmistakable sound coming from inside.

And with no one at the box office or the door, there was nothing to stop us from just walking inside, to stand at the back of the room and listen to Westerberg’s sound check.

It’s hard to put into words, my feelings about Paul Westerberg’s music.

Sometime soon, I promise to write about going to see my first concert ever, The Replacements, which is probably the most important Every Day I Write The Blog entry, in that, it is probably the most influential song/memory of my life in music.

So I’ll just say this about my feelings . . . this was the music I listened to when I was the happiest, when I was the saddest, when I was the most angry, when I was the most confused---when I was the most emotional. My attachment to these songs is most emotional.

To be in this large, empty theatre, listening to my favorite songwriter . . . well, it was about as Fan-Geeked-Out as I could possibly ever get.

Of course, it couldn’t last forever. We got to hear about 3 songs before someone on the Theatre staff politely told us we couldn’t hang out, and we were ushered outside.

I stood outside the theatre, knowing that later I’d be inside for a full Rock N Roll show experience. But I wanted one last taste of my private Sound Check.

See the Box Office in the picture? That’s an old photograph, but Georgia Theatre still looked just like that in the late 90s. The box office window had its shade pulled.

But look closely, and you can
see that little box office slot where you’d slide your dollar through, to pay for your movie. If I got on my knees, I could see through it, into the box office. And the back door to the box office was open, which meant I could see through that door, and all the way to the stage. It was like looking through a spy-glass, with the center stage microphone on the other end of the lens.

Paul led the band through “Valentine” as I watched through my little key-hole vantage point.

And it was there that I reached Fan-Geeked-Out nirvana.





Bonus entry!!!

I love it when you discover something about a tune, years after you first heard it.

I've been listening to this tune for over 20 years, and heard something for the first time today, as I wrote this entry.

Twenty-something me was not musically educated enough to catch this, but after years at mvyradio, I finally realized that Westerberg does what seems to be a hat tip to Joni Mitchell in the lyrics.

"Valentine" -- If you were a pill, I'd take a handful at my will, And I'd knock you back with something sweet as wine.

"A Case Of You" --- Oh you're in my blood like holy wine, You taste so bitter and so sweet, Oh I could drink a case of you darling

The Replacements "Kiss Me On The Bus"

The last thing I said to my wife before leaving the house yesterday morning was, “If you have a chance, read my post blog today . . .”

The morning has been the usual level of brain-scrambling chaos, getting the kids dressed and fed and ready for the day, shoveling the heavy wet snow from the driveway, attempting to empty the dishwasher, wrangle the scattered dirty laundry, scoop up errant Legos, and get out of the house and off to work on time. Or at least, not late.

We’re a long way away from those carefree days when we first met, and first started dating. Life has moved fast in 7 years.

In 2004, we met.

In 2005, we got married.

In 2006, we bought a house.

In 2007, we had our first child.

And life has only accelerated from there.

So to honor our 7 years, and recall how it all started, I thought I’d write the story of how we met, leading up to our first kiss.

When I sat down to write, I titled the post “The Replacements ‘Kiss Me On The Bus.’”

I got about halfway through, and remembered, Hey, it wasn’t “Kiss Me On The Bus” that she sang to win my heart. It was “Waitress In The Sky.”

I guess, because I was thinking about our first kiss, and because time and chaos have fuzzed out some of the details, I’d gotten confused.

After the post was published, I wondered if she’d have the chance to read it. The day can be quite full with two little kids running around. Finding 10 minutes to read a blog post doesn’t always happen. In fact, I wondered if she even realized the date, and that it was the Anniversary of our meeting. We don’t usually celebrate it. We’re more likely to acknowledge our wedding Anniversary, which is in August.

I got home at 6:30, and everyone was on the verge.

The kids had had a fun, active day. An afternoon play-date turned into dinner at our house, as my wife prepared pasta for 5 kids ages 4 and under.

The guests had left, and our worn out, strung out kids were ready for a quick wind down, and bed. And my wife was ready to sit on the Lazyboy and watch American Idol.

Everyone was corralled into the kids’ room. Tabitha got the baby into pajamas, as I rolled a ball back and forth across the floor with my daughter.

Having a moment of toddler inspiration, she grabbed her Little People toy bus, and started knocking the ball to me, with it. I suggested that she put the ball in the bus, and roll the bus to me.

Tabitha started singing, “Kiss Me, On The Bus.”

“What made you sing that song?” I asked, a bemused smile on my face.

“Uh, because you were playing with the bus?” she responded, looking at me like I was weird for asking an obvious question. Clearly, she hadn't read the post yet, or realized the date.

We did our synchronized-swimming-parenting routine, trading the kids back and forth as teeth were brushed, bottles were warmed, pajamas buttoned up, toys cleared from the floor, books picked out, and babies tucked in.

It’s a beautiful thing, to parent together.

When they were finally asleep, we moved to the living room.

“Will you make me an egg and toast?” she asked.

There are many, many things that my wife does well. But she says I make a fried egg better than she does. It’s a small point of pride for me, and I love that I can serve her a perfect little breakfast for dinner on the Lazyboy.

“While I’m doing that, read my post.”

“Oh yeah! Okay.”

I made a perfect plate of food and brought it to the living room, just as she was finishing. I hoped that she was enjoying the read, and not feeling bad that she hadn’t remembered our Anniversary.

“That was awesome. It was beautiful. Thank you.”

We kissed.

“Is it really today?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“The 27th? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, isn’t it?”

“Well, our wedding Anniversary was on the 27th. August 27th. But we met on the 24th.”

“Uh, we did, didn’t we . . .”

Time and chaos have fuzzed out some of the details, I’d gotten confused.

That being said, be it the 24th or the 27th, "Kiss Me On The Bus" or "Waitress In The Sky," the heart was there.

Even if the brain is not.

The Replacements "Waitress In The Sky"

How I Met My Wife, Part 1:

"You definitely don't know that song. No way. You're B.S.ing me."

"I do. You want me to sing it?"

There was no way she knew that song. No way. Then again, it had been a pretty remarkable afternoon already.

Rewind 4 hours:

I was standing at the mvyradio T-shirt table. It was the safest place to be, as the crowd poured in to the mvyradio Big Chili Contest.

The station holds this event every year. Ostensibly, it is an event to taste different Chili recipes. But in reality, it's just a good excuse to get rip-roaring drunk on a Saturday morning/afternoon in the middle of winter.

People come from off-Island in droves, to blow off some steam, dance up a storm and maybe, if the mood strikes them, vote for their favorite chili.

I was standing at the mvyradio T-shirt table when the crowd parted and a small whirlwind of girls popped forth.

"I'm here to see my T-shirt."

As a side contest to the Best Chili categories, we also have a T-shirt design contest. Artists near and far would send us their interpretations of the event, and a few days beforehand, we'd get the winning design printed up on a handful of shirts.

Standing in front of me, wearing sunglasses in her hair (on a cold cloudy winter day), was this year's winning designer, a woman with the improbable name of Tabitha Agneta.

She and her friends chatted with me for a few minutes, and then disappeared into the crowd.

An hour or so later, I found myself on the far, far side of the venue, tasting some chili, when I bumped into her again.

We talked more, about family and hometowns and jobs. Nothing earth-shattering, but there was a spark. We parted again.

An hour or so later, there she was at the bar. This time we talked baseball. The Red Sox. Nomar (this was the winter before he was traded).

I disappeared one last time, to get on stage and to participate in the Chili Award ceremonies.

And that's really the last time I ever left her.

When I found her (after the Horses Ass-shaped Chili Trophies were handed out), we talked about music, and she mentioned Jeff Buckley, who's album "Grace" is practically like going to church for me.

She asked me about my favorite band, and I said that she'd probably never heard of them.

"I know The Replacements," she claimed. Which seemed like B.S.

The only people I knew who liked The Replacements were guys who'd grown from awkward teen boys, to now be awkward young men. Good looking girls never knew who The Replacements were.

"No you don't," I said. "Name one of their songs."

"'Waitress In The Sky.' Do you want me to sing it?"

Hell yeah I did.

She sang it. She knew it. And I know on paper that sounds like a pretty tenuous thread to hang a relationship on. But if you were there, you would have known, too.

We left the mvyradio Big Chili Contest together, and even though she physically left the Island at the end of the weekend, from that point on, we've always been together, forever---spiritually, emotionally, psychically.

Starting 7 years ago today.

Happy Anniversary, my lovely wife!

Alex Chilton “Il Ribelle (The Rebel)"

When an artist dies, it’s pretty easy for music writers/critics/fanboys to slip into hyperbole about that person’s influence.

And maybe you’ve heard that Alex Chilton died this week, and have balked at some of the reverential coverage.

You may have never heard of Alex Chilton, though, at the very least, you recognized his biggest hit, “The Letter” from when he was the 16 year old lead singer of The Box Tops.

But it’s a testament to his enormous influence, to check out the music sampler below, to hear who counted Chilton as an inspiration.

And his obscurity, is probably a testament to his attitude and obstinance. After feeling that he and his music, were poorly handled at the end of the Box Tops and with his next group Big Star, Chilton was willfully rebellious against being boxed in by styles, trends, and simple marketability. “You can’t have me, not for free,” he once sang.

Big Star was set to perform this weekend at South By Southwest, with the 3 original surviving members playing together for the first time in 35 years. No doubt, it would have introduce Chilton to a whole new world of music lovers.

For today, we just have to celebrate is influence.

Check out just a few of Alex Chilton's fans, singing songs he wrote or co-wrote:

(when you get to the "Various Artists" cuts, click through to the album to see the various bands involved)

"You want me to do some audience-pleasing old style rock n roll? Sure, let me sing in Italian."


For better or worse, this is Chilton's most famous songwriting credit:

The Replacements “Customer”

All Time Top Five Songs Under 90 Seconds . . .

From time to time on Every Day I Write The Blog, I do a week’s worth of my five favorite songs on theme. For the All Time Top Five rules, see this previous post.

Oh, the horror of awkward adolescence.

I was looking at the lyrics to this song, and I had to just stop. I closed the browser. Because my mind kept going back to those painful teenage crush years, where you would literally do what Paul Westerberg is singing about---go into a store and ask random, unnecessary questions to the cute girl behind the counter, not realizing how much you stank of desperate infatuation.

Why did you think that asking “What's on sale?” was somehow going to lead to a date?

Thank heavens your teenage years only last a couple of decades . . .



See some classic Replacements footage here.

Buy the album, here