Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

Continuing our focus on the late Alex Chilton’s obscure and rare solo recordings, we now turn our attention to the 1985 EP Feudalist Tarts and the 1986 EP No Sex . Both of these EPs marked a welcome return to work, and return to relevance, for this talented musician. In the early ‘80’s, Chilton moved from Memphis to New Orleans, and took an interest in that city’s jazz-oriented music scene. After a six-year absence from studio recording, Chilton reappeared revitalized on the six-song EP Feudalist Tarts in 1985. Gone were the sloppy devil-may-care tendencies of Bach’s Bottom and Like Flies On Sherbert . The older and wiser Alex Chilton showed remarkable restraint on these six jazz-influenced numbers, crooning confidently and playing rockabilly-style guitar amid tasteful horn arrangements. Although it was clear that Chilton had mellowed out considerably, the song “Lost My Job” showed just enough attitude to prove that he hadn’t lost his edge. In fact, that edge manifested itself with ...

Continuing our focus on the late Alex Chilton’s obscure and rare solo albums, we now turn our attention to Like Flies on Sherbert , which turned out to be Chilton’s first full-length solo release in 1979. Chilton had a hard time getting his early solo work distributed, and this album turned out to be no exception. Like Flies On Sherbert was first released on a Memphis label called Peabody in 1979. Reportedly, only 500 copies of this first edition were printed. The following year, the album was re-released on the British label Aura, with one different track and different track sequencing. This edition supposedly used the wrong master tapes and had inferior sound quality. Still, “sound quality” only makes so much difference in this case, because Like Flies On Sherbert is a colossal mess in any form. Everything about the album is technically inept: the singing, instrumentation, production (by Jim Dickinson), recording – everything! At the beginnings of many tracks, it sounds like a sta...

I was saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Alex Chilton last week. The former lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star died on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 from an apparent heart attack at the age of 59. Chilton was scheduled to perform at the SXSW Festival with the revamped Big Star lineup. That evening turned into a tribute by various artists to Chilton and Big Star. There probably isn’t much for me to say about the band Big Star that hasn’t already been said during the past seven days. However, I can refer you to my earlier posts about Big Star’s history , their 2005 studio album , and my web page about Chilton’s solo album 1970 . I want to use this blog to talk about Chilton’s obscure and mostly rare solo albums. With this post, I’ll start with Chilton’s 1975 recording which eventually came to be released under the title Bach’s Bottom . In 1975, shortly after the demise of Big Star, Chilton attempted to record a solo album with producer Jon Tiven, whose main claim to fame at tha...

I knew this day would come, and it has. I have moved my website Rarebird's Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews to a new location. The new address is: http://rarebird9.net This new address should be easier to remember, and easier to Tweet. I hope you don't mind the GoDaddy ads which appear at the top of each page. It helps to make the site easier to afford. I hope to see you there!

There is now an official website for the Distractions, a late-‘70’s, early-‘80’s quintet from Manchester who sadly disappeared after recording only one overlooked album in 1980. That album was Nobody’s Perfect , one of rock’s lost treasures. (My review of the album is here ). The official site is still under construction as of this writing, but it already contains a welcome wealth of information about this little-known band. The site is located at this address: http://www.thedistractions.co.uk The most amazing feature of the site is the inclusion of sound clips of five demo recordings from 1995. According to the site, original Distractions singer Mike Finney and guitarist Steve Perrin formed a new quintet with the same name at that time, and “played half a dozen gigs in and around Manchester and Liverpool”. They also recorded studio demos, and five of them can be heard on this page: http://www.thedistractions.co.uk/Media/Audio/1995demos.html Surprisingly, these songs sound very much l...

I recently viewed the debut feature by the late, great film director Stanley Kubrick. That film is Fear and Desire from 1953, which is little-seen because Kubrick pulled it from circulation shortly after it was first released and often prevented public screenings many years later. To this day, it has never been (legitimately) available on home video. The longest known print runs 72 minutes, and can be viewed at Google Video . The film is also viewable on YouTube in eight parts, but that version runs approximately 61 minutes. The grainy low-budget movie is about four soldiers fighting in a fictional war in an unnamed country, who find themselves trapped six miles behind enemy lines after their plane crashes. One of the soldiers is played by Paul Mazursky, who has also become a renowned film director. Another is played by Frank Silvera, who also starred in Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss . Kubrick was in his mid-20’s when he made this film, which he directed, produced, photographed, a...

Sometimes terrible movies have good soundtrack albums. One of the most obvious examples I can think of is Porky’s Revenge . You’re reading that right. The third and worst movie of the ‘80’s Porky’s teen-sex trilogy actually had a respectable soundtrack album. It was masterminded by Dave Edmunds, who was able to enlist the aid of many big-name friends. The soundtrack generally consisted of pseudo-1950’s music, mixing covers and originals. Edmunds’ tracks, however, owed more to the early-‘60’s Beach Boys. One of them, in fact, is a rendition of “Do You Want To Dance” that is faithful to the Beach Boys version. “Queen of the Hop” and “High School Nights” are equally fine examples of pre-Beatles-style party rock. On the other hand, Edmunds’ title instrumental “Porky’s Revenge” sounds totally 1985 to me. The amazing thing about the soundtrack is the number of big names who participated. George Harrison contributed a tender song called “I Don’t Want To Do It”, a Bob Dylan composition that D...

If anyone thought that no more deluxe editions of the Cure's albums were forthcoming: a 3-CD edition of the 1989 album Disintegration is being released on June 8th. ( Amazon.com calls it the "20th Anniversary Edition", although the album is 21 years old this year). The first disc will consist of the 12 proper tracks. The second disc will consist of 20 previously unreleased rarities recorded in 1988 and 1989. The third disc will contain all twelve songs in sequence from the concert utilized for the live Entreat album from 1990, which originally contained only eight of the songs. A remastered version of the original 8-song Entreat is intended to be made available online. A full track listing for this edition can be found at the Cure's official site . And that's not all the Cure reissue news that the site reports. Robert Smith also promises "a lot more remastered Cure stuff in 2010". This would include DVD reissues of the long-deleted concert videos In ...