Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 21:47:22 EST
From: Popdude@aol.com
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: Raspberries Reunion/Twilley Concerts
Message-ID: <e5.799f719.2edfdc3a@aol.com>

D. Mandefeld:

<<They were definitely disappointed in the small crowd and small the 
paycheck. I'm sure looking out into a small club 1/3 full was disheartening
to see for 
this Power Pop hero.>>

Perhaps he'd be better off playing Ribfests like Sly Stone.  :-)


I've commented on this before on Audities, but when Twilley came to Chicago
on that same tour and played his first Windy City show since '84, he drew a
pitifully small crowd at a medium-sized room, the Abbey Pub. He actually
apologized onstage for not having made an appearance in the city in so long,
and alluded to the fact that the sparse attendance that night might've had
something to do with his own negligence in that regard.

Both times that the reconstituted Big Star has played here in Chicago
they've sold out Metro, the city's flagship music venue. Big Star's a little
different than the Raspberries, though; every hipster still in his
club-going prime is well aware of Chilton & Co. and their seminal
importance. While power pop specialists rank the Raspberries at the topmost
level of their collective pantheon (and rightly so), I'm not sure that that
band is held in similar esteem by, say, the 30-year-old who snaps up every
release by a Pavement offshoot, or the grad student who worships Nellie
McKay, or the sort of record-store clerks that *The Onion* infamously
spoofed as having died en masse when the roof collapsed at a Yo La Tenga
show. But I know for a fact that you'd find all of those types standing
elbow-to-elbow in Metro if Big Star comes back, cheering and wondering when
they're going to play "September Gurls".


Gregory Sager