I came in pretty late on Big Star. Naturally I never heard them in the 1970s, but I also didn’t hear them in the 80s, either, when I would have or should have been primed to do so. My guess is, given my obsessions during my college years (Lazy Cowgirls, Pussy Galore, Scratch Acid, Laughing Hyenas and what have you), they wouldn’t have taken anyway. It wasn’t until a six-week van trip across North America in 1993 when one of my traveling companions repeatedly blasted a homemade tape of Radio City did I even hear the band, and by then I was ready. All-in. I anointed it one of the ten greatest albums of all time, which is something I’ll still stand behind without question. I’ve written about this before, but when I told a good friend about my new favorite band Big Star, he let the air out of my tires with a withering “dude, that’s so high school”. Not my fucking high school.
Anyway, I get the mythos around the band, fully. The aborted/botched/unheard third album; the record company disasters that kept the first two albums from being revered until much later; the louche Memphis party scene captured in Stranded in Canton; Alex Chilton’s difficult personality – all that. Love it. Makes a ton of sense why a fanzine like Back of Car #1 might come out in 1994, right as the band had started doing those “reunion” shows with two original members and two fellas from The Posies. The interest was there; the stories were mostly untold; and like the Velvet Underground, Big Star were a band who readily inspired something well beyond simple devotion.
Judith Beeman of Vancouver BC was the woman behind this, and she ended up doing four of them. This is the only one I have. She talks up the nascent “internet” and electronic mail in her introduction, already finding that it has been a highly effective means of sourcing contributors and connecting with them at shows and otherwise. She provides a layperson’s intro to Big Star up front, setting the stage that this thing would be far less of a fan club type of fanzine than one merely centered around Big Star, with outflowing concentric circles into Chiltoniana, similar-sounding bands (DBs, Chris Stamey, Posies), and into Judith’s own comics obsession, which had nothing to do with Big Star in the slightest.
This is further reinforced with the very first piece in the mag, Wilson Smith’s review of the 6/5/94 Big Star quote-unquote reunion show at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I didn’t go – I had an uppity personal policy against attending any reunion shows, one that I kept in place until Mission of Burma came to the same venue eight years later. Anyway, Smith – in what I thought was a fan club magazine when I bought it – didn’t really like it all that much, and says so (!). Bravo. Apparently some secret Springsteen cover band with “Adam Durwitz” of “Counting Crows” opened, which absolutely helps to validate my decision, even though it meant I never saw Alex Chilton in the flesh while he walked amongst us.
After that, it’s a grab bag of the aforementioned. Ken Stringfellow of The Posies and the reanimated Big Star shares his tour diary from this reunion thing. Lyrics from songs are reprinted; old reviews are dusted off and reprinted; there’s even an article on This Mortal Coil, who did “Holocaust” and “Kanga Roo” on their album that I had as a store-bought cassette in high school, It’ll End in Tears. That would have to have been the first time I ever heard any Alex Chilton compositions, just not performed by him. Judith Beeman breaks apart the Alex Chilton tribute album, which came along at a time when tribute albums were actively poisoning used bins in stores across the globe. And then, after that, it’s not really a Big Star fanzine any longer – it’s those concentric circles and a bunch of comics.
Oh, and I learned something, too. All these years I thought “Motel Blues” was a Chilton song. Turns out it was by Loudon Wainwright III, and it took Back of a Car #1 for me to finally discover this important fact.
Good read! You can check out all four of the issues Beeman and her team of pop-loving psychotics put together right here.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 
The Big Star story would make a good biopic. So much drama, bad decisions and then there’s the music!
LikeLike
The movie in your mind is better than any indie actor in a rollneck jumper could possibly be. I’ve never listened to any of the reunion Big Star stuff, which only occurred to me while reading the fine article above. I remember someone proffering the In Space CD and I regarded it with a paralysing anxiety … it’s complex. I don’t feel one should be too precious about ‘the golden days’, though inevitably the music connoisseur must stand by judgements regarding particular vintages. I think Big Star was a shooting star, one and done deal. Romanticising, yes, but that’s the point, isn’t it? On the other hand, I don’t begrudge bands earning a crust or ‘continuing the legacy’ – the good stuff is fenced off and even supper-club routines, road-band manglings and becoming their own tribute act have their place in my Pop dreams … the mighty falling is the stuff of great drama. We’re all not what we were. And much as I truly want peace and love, scathing reviews just read better, don’t they? If it’s honest it’s legit. The Tribute Album glut of ’94 … some ol’ timers could tell a tale or two about those days, I’ll bet. Strangely, I remember them fondly – symptomatic of a hugely music-literate time, a peak-point for hip cachet, and dripping passion. Budget label Kleopatra industrialised the trend (which as you point out, was almost instantaneously at landfill proportions), but there were some goodies – like The Germs tribute, A Small Circle Of Friends, whose booklet alone was an eye opening prelude to B. Mullen’s Lexicon Devil. Tribute critical mass achieved round turn of the century. Recognising a cultural accessory when we saw one, me and some pals in a too-lame-to-be-called-loser combo messed around with a cover of our revered Gene Pitney’s ‘Where Did The Magic Go?’ in anticipation of things never to come, and fantasised of how cool it would make us look, being so unlike our other material – which, of course, didn’t exist, outside of our puerile fabulations. The common thread here, (if there is one), I think, is that life is beautiful, and must be cherished, slings, arrows etc be damned. You don’t miss your water – etc.
LikeLike