Story [CD]

Still the three stars is more to note the flaws in this compilation, than to comment on the content- 15 of the 18 tracks are close to perfect. From #1 Record, the only true Bell/Chilton album there is In the Street (used as a theme to That 70s Show-which wasn't great but had that sassy redhead in it), the Kinksian Don't Lie to Me, & the sublime Ballad of El Goodo (only rivalled by Gene Clark in that era). Even better is Thirteen, which pretty much defines the meaning of rock music to a teen: "Won't you let me walk you home from school?...Maybe get tickets for the dance & I'll take you...Won't you tell yr dad get off my back?/Tell him what we said bout 'Paint it Black'/Rock & Roll is here to stay/Come inside now it's ok..." It captures that melancholic relationship between teenage love and rock & roll, how records become a soundtrack to our lives...& is probably more potent a reminder of this than say The Virgin Suicides or Donnie Darko. It tells you everything you need to know about the potency of music- & Bell/Chilton's "Rock & Roll is here to stay" beat Steve Stills & Neil Young by several years (see Manassas, Rust Never Sleeps)A song like Thirteen continues what Van Morrison was singing about on TB Sheets; the acoustic plucking can be seen to influence everyone from REM to The Smiths (other bands influenced by BS: Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub, Posies, Replacements, Wilco, Sebadoh, This Mortal Coil, The dbs)This set is worth owning for Thirteen- which is like the utopic notion of rock & roll-where perhaps something by Rocket from the Tombs is its nihilistic pole...Sad that Try Again and Feel are passed over from the first album-

post-Bell, BS released Radio City, from which stem the great Mod Lang, the bitter pop of You Get What You Deserve & the perfection that is Back of the Car. Even better than that is the most perfect guitar pop song ever written, September Gurls, a song I never tire of hearing (how could you???) It's a song like this that has lead to such tributes as Alex Chilton (The Replacements) & Big Star (The Jayhawks)So, Thirteen and September Gurls: two of the greatest songs ever written! Still, no O My Soul, no Daisy Glaze, no Way Out West...

The final BS album, Third/Sister Lovers remains one of the bleakest albums ever released (though I think Music for a New Society, Berlin & Closer beat it!)- curious choices. O Dana is pleasant, but hardly as mindblowing as Kangaroo ("first I saw you,you had on blue jeans...it was at a party")- a song covered by This Mortal Coil, Jeff Buckley & Beck. An amazing Big Star song equal (& different to) Sepetember Gurls & 13. Kangaroo was always the melancholic balm to the horror that is Holocaust- easily one of the darkest songs ever recorded ("Your mother's dead")- the sound of despair. Jesus Christ is an upbeat Xmas song & the acoustic Nighttime is sublime...but where is Take Care, Blue Moon, the Beatlesesque For You, Big Black Car???? (There is the Stonesy Thank You Friends, great grinding soul-rock equal to Manassas' What to Do & Tim Buckley's Move with Me) & what about Sister-era extra tracks like Downs, Dream Lover, or the manic take on Whole Lotta Shakin Goin' On? (where Chilton tries to go back to the roots of rock & roll when it was utopia...but the only shaking comes from drink&drugs...)
You and Your Sister is sublime acoustic music at its finest, Bell & Chilton's harmonies sublime...I am the Cosmos is another slice of perfection, especially the intoned lyric "I never want to see you again/I really want to see you again".

Story is a not bad primer in all things Big Star, though I'd plump for the official albums and Bell's sole solo release. Big Star are one of the major guitar bands of the period following The Beatles. Easily up there with The Byrds, Gene Clark, Buffalo Springfield, peak Stones, Flying Burittos, Todd Rundgren, Neil Young, The Kinks...whoever. Without their cult presence, so many bands would not be there, or quite the same. They are the ultimate cult band of the 70s, as important as The Velvets were in the previous decade. Perhaps some day, someone will give them the definitive compilation they deserve?