Thursday Night Cafe - April 2004 Vol.1 No.3

Inevitably, over the years, some artists have gotten lost in the shuffle. Some didn’t fit the commercial tastes of their time. Others were too weird—or too scary—for mainstream radio or record labels.A few simply shunned the spotlight and the trappings of fame. Whatever the reason, “Great Lost Albums” are all around us: buried in the bargain bins and back shelves of music shops everywhere. Each month this column brings a few GLAs to light so you can find them for yourself.

If ever a band’s name was a jinx on its success, Big Star is it. The seventies forerunner of what was later termed “power-pop” was the missing link between the melodic jangle of such sixties legends as the Byrds and the Kinks, and the revival of that style by Tom Petty, R.E.M., and the Jayhawks in the eighties and nineties.

The band was formed in Memphis in 1971 after Alex Chilton, who in his teens had led blue-eyed soul sensations The Box Tops to the top of the charts with “The Letter” (later covered by Joe Cocker), returned to Memphis to reconnect with his musical roots. There he teamed up with his former high school friends—singer-songwriter-guitarist Chris Bell, bassist Andy Hummel, and drummer Jody Stephens—to form a band called Ice Water.

The nascent band began working on its debut album at Memphis’ Ardent Studios. Every time they left the studio, they were confronted by the “Big Star Foodmarkets” sign on the supermarket across the street. Before long, Ice Water dropped its name and Big Star was born.

The album that resulted from those sessions, #1 Record, should have found an immediate audience—but didn’t. In 1972, the increasingly corporatized music industry wanted one of two things: arena rock giants like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple who could rattle the teeth of the post-Woodstock generation; or acoustic-tinged balladeers like the Eagles or Cat Stevens who could draw in pop’s diversifying audience. In terms of their commercial potential, Big Star were neither—and both—of these things.
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