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| From | "Josh Chasin" <jchasin@nyc.rr.com> |
| Subject | On Not Getting Big Star |
| Date | Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:11:57 -0400 |
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There are touchstone Audities bands that I don't get, but I very much love Big Star. For me, I think the thing that resonates so much is that I really like the Beatles, Who, Byrds, Beach Boys etc, and I really like (and liked at the time I fell onto Big Star) the dBs, Teenage Fanclub, the Posies, the Bangles, Mathew Sweet, and others in that vein. When I heard Big Star, it was literally like discovering the missing link. They were a band I hadn't heard, but who ended up sounding inevitable given everything I knew about what came before and after. And I'd long been a Todd Rundgren freak, and was to varying degrees aware of and fond of Raspberries, Cheap Trick, and Badfinger, so I knew there was some of this stuff around. But even then, Big Star was like a solution to an equation for me; like a Rosetta Stone for decoding the whole of Power Pop. There HAD to be something I was missing, somewhere in between the British Invasion and the dBs, REM, and 80s and beyond pop. It was a thrill to find them.
I really do like Big Star, and hearing that a band is evocative of them is generally a good thing for me (and its something I can say about some of you out there). I will never tire of, say, "Thirteen," "I'm in Love With a Girl," "Ballad of El Goodo," "In the Street," "Back of a Car," "Thank You Friends," "Watch the Sunrise," or "September Gurls." That's a legacy right there. And I do hear their influence in a lot of the power pop I have loved since 1980. Profoundly.
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