2009 Rhino Records [Catalog: R2 519760]
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Toxxy sez:
Not my rips, nor my scan job. Thx very much to the original ripper/uploader!
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Keep an Eye on the Sky is a 4-CD, 98-song career retrospective box set from American rock group Big Star, released in 2009. It features 52 unreleased tracks: demos, alternate takes and live performances. As well as material from founder member Chris Bell's earlier bands Rock City and Icewater, it includes all titles (in many cases as alternate mixes or demos) from Big Star's first three studio albums, #1 Record, Radio City, and Third/Sister Lovers, and a recording of a 1973 Big Star concert. Staged in January at Lafayette's Music Room, the Memphis venue used again in May for the Rock Writers' Convention, the concert took place after Bell's departure and before the remainder of the group began work on Radio City. -Wiki
***
KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY spans 1968 to 1975 and the collection uncovers a trove of unreleased demos, unused mixes, alternate versions of songs, and a 1973 concert recorded in Memphis. The lavish packaging includes extensive liner notes, rare and never-before-seen photos, and insightful essays about the cult of Big Star and the band's history. Spotlighting the band's roots, the box set opens with several songs recorded before Big Star formed, including 'Try Again,' one of the first songs Bell and Chilton wrote together. Big Star inspired a fevered allegiance among fans of power pop, giving rise to a cult of believers who spent decades spreading the gospel. Their enthusiasm turned this obscure Memphis pop band-one that got little airplay, sold few records, and only played a handful of times-into a remarkable rock and roll resurrection story. Big Star's trek from obscure Memphis band to standard bearers for an entire genre of music has never been fully mapped-until now. ---Amazon
Line-up/Musicians
Alex Chilton – guitars, vocals (1971–1974, 1993–present)
Jody Stephens – drums, vocals (1971–1974, 1993–present)
Chris Bell – guitars, vocals (1971–1972)
Andy Hummel – bass, vocals (1971–1973)
John Lightman – bass, backing vocals (1974)
Original Recordings produced by Big Star, Jim Dickinson
Box Set produced by John Fry, Cheryl Pawelski, Andrew Sandoval, Alex Palao
CD1
1. Psychedelic Stuff (original mix) - Chris Bell
2. All I See Is You - Icewater
3. Every Day as We Grow Closer (original mix) - Alex Chilton
4. Try Again (early version) - Rock City
5. Feel
6. The Ballad of El Goodo
7. In the Street (alternate mix)
8. Thirteen (alternate mix)
9. Don't Lie to Me
10. The India Song (alternate mix)
11. When My Baby's Beside Me (alternate mix)
12. My Life Is Right (alternate mix)
13. Give Me Another Chance (alternate mix)
14. Try Again
15. Gone with the Light
16. Watch the Sunrise (single version)
17. ST 100/6 (alternate mix)
18. The Preacher (Excerpt) - Rock City
19. In the Street (alternate single mix)
20. Feel (alternate mix)
21. The Ballad of El Goodo (alternate lyrics)
22. The India Song (alternate version)
23. Country Morn
24. I Got Kinda Lost (demo)
25. Back of a Car (demo)
26. Motel Blues (demo)
C2
1. There Was a Light (demo)
2. Life Is White (demo)
3. What's Going Ahn (demo)
4. O My Soul
5. Life Is White
6. Way Out West
7. What's Going Ahn
8. You Get What You Deserve
9. Mod Lang (alternate mix)
10. Back of a Car (alternate mix)
11. Daisy Glaze
12. She's a Mover
13. September Gurls
14. Morpha Too (alternate mix)
15. I'm in Love with a Girl
16. O My Soul (alternate version)
17. She's a Mover (alternate version)
18. Daisy Glaze (rehearsal version)
19. I Am the Cosmos - Chris Bell
20. You and Your Sister - Chris Bell
21. Blue Moon (demo)
22. Femme Fatale (demo)
23. Thank You Friends (demo)
24. Nightime (demo)
25. Take Care (demo)
26. You Get What You Deserve (demo)
CD3
1. Lovely Day (demo)
2. Downs (demo)
3. Jesus Christ (demo)
4. Holocaust (demo)
5. Big Black Car (alternate demo)
6. Manana
7. Jesus Christ
8. Femme Fatale
9. O, Dana
10. Kizza Me
11. You Can't Have Me
12. Nightime
13. Dream Lover
14. Big Black Car
15. Blue Moon
16. Holocaust
17. Stroke It Noel
18. For You
19. Downs
20. Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
21. Kanga Roo
22. Thank You Friends
23. Take Care
24. Lovely Day
25. Till the End of the Day (alternate mix)
26. Nature Boy (alternate mix)
CD4 - Live at Lafayette's Music Room, Memphis, TN, January 1973
1. When My Baby's Beside Me
2. My Life Is Right
3. She's a Mover
4. Way Out West
5. The Ballad of El Goodo
6. In the Street
7. Back of a Car
8. Thirteen
9. The India Song
10. Try Again
11. Watch the Sunrise
12. Don't Lie to Me
13. Hot Burrito
14. I Got Kinda Lost
15. Baby Strange
16. Slut
17. There Was a Light
18. ST 100/6
19. Come On Now
20. O My Soul
Enhanced CD Content (on disc 4): Thirteen (alternate mix video)
Audio Remasterers: Dan Hersch; Andrew Sandoval.
Liner Note Authors: Bob Mehr; John Fry; Alec Palao; Robert Gordon.
Recording information: Air Studios, London, UK; Ardent Studios, Memphis, TN; Shoe Studios, Memphis, TN.
Photographers: Roni Hoffman; Maude Schuyler Clay; Maldwin Hamlin; Lisa Margolis; David Bell; Carole Manning; Michael O'Brien; Andy Hummel; William Eggleston.Entertainment Weekly (p.70) - "The spare demos, crystal-clear concert recordings, and handsomely produced liner notes are a fan's delight..."
Billboard (p.37) - "[A] treasure trove of rare gems, including material by pre-Big Star groups Rock City and Icewater..."
Q (Magazine) (p.122) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Exhibiting strong Anglophile leanings, and pick'n'mixing the usual '60s suspects, their brisk, guitar-encrusted power-pop was an unlikely product of a city better known as the home of Southern soul."
***
Big Star aren't just rock's greatest cult band; they were arguably rock's first cult band. Like Magellan, they discovered a new route to iconic status, but theirs was more circuitous and didn't involve such niceties as sales, audience, tours, or really anything resembling actual success. Instead, they maintained a slow, dim burn throughout the 1970s and 80s, their memory kept alive by critics, collectors, record store clerks, and younger generations of musicians such as R.E.M. and the Replacements. It's easy to read that history in the band name and album titles, which today play like ironic gestures toward out-of-reach celebrity. But Big Star were sincere about being big stars and having #1 records. They didn't set out to be cult: Striving for celebrity and confirmation, they wrote what they thought should be hit records, and they played to please. Their appeal should and could have been broad. By comparison, their loyal audience nearly forty years later is a fluke.
Despite their unprecedented longevity and surprising durability, Big Star have been under-anthologized, with a strange string of lackluster releases. Alex Chilton's pre-band solo debut, 1970, took more than 15 years to make its way to record store shelves, and the band's first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, have been joined at the hip now for decades, starting with the British combo release in 1978 throughout Fantasy/Concord's recent remaster. Big Star's final album, Third/Sisters Lovers, gathered dust for nearly five years before finally getting a small release, and even that tribute album was delayed for nearly a decade. During that time, The Best of Big Star and Big Star Story tried foolishly to whittle the band's short career down to one negligible disc.
Combining studio tracks, live cuts, demos, and unreleased recordings to reveal new sides of the band, Rhino' 4xCD Keep an Eye on the Sky sounds like the one reissue that finally gets Big Star right. It picks up right before the band formed, with solo tracks from both Chris Bell and Chilton as well as songs from previous bands Rock City and Icewater (the Box Tops are missing, and certainly not necessary to the story). Each iteration of the line-up is represented here, although there's nothing from 1993's comeback Columbia: Live at Missouri University or from 2005's already forgotten In Space. This set wisely keeps its eye on the 70s.
These four discs ultimately do what any good box set should do: In tracing the band's trajectory from power-pop progenitors to post-pop tinkerers, Keep an Eye on the Sky presents a history of the band that could not be gleaned from the albums themselves, using finished studio tracks along with demos and rarities to give a fuller picture of the musicians, their dynamic, and their songs. This type of repetition can be fatal in some reissues, either offering distinctions only a true diehard could love or valiantly covering up a deficit of unreleased material. But here, the approach goes a long way toward humanizing a band that has been largely mythologized even into the Internet age. You can listen in on band practice or late-night jam sessions at Ardent, or just wander across happenstance pairings, such as Chilton singing "Nature Boy" while William Eggleston-- yes, that William Eggleston-- plays piano. That these new versions of familiar songs feed the cult rather than expunge the mystery is perhaps due to Ardent founder and engineer John Fry, whose studio work brings out the subtle flourishes in these different takes: the handclaps on the sped-up version of "O My Soul", the rich strums that underline the chorus of "The Ballad of El Goodo", the crisp guitar sound that gives "You Get What You Deserve" its bite. He's the fifth Big Star, as crucial to these early recordings as George Martin was to the Beatles or Martin Hannett was to Joy Division.
Big Star developed its particular sound in a very short time. The first notes of "Feel", the #1 Record opener, still sound like a clarion call, a signal that something exciting is about to go down. They live up to that promise through their first two albums, but on their third, with Bell and bass player Andy Hummel gone, Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens gradually disassemble that power-pop sound, seemingly indulging every oddball impulse: jive-talking through "You Can't Have Me" and "Kizza Me", adding French-language backing vocals to the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale", writing a paean to Jesus Christ. Third and its outtakes show Big Star in its death throes, giving up on the idea of power pop to the people and just making strange, sad, beautiful songs for themselves. "Holocaust" in particular, especially the haunting piano demo here, is devastating in its damaged beauty.
Keep an Eye on the Sky ends with a cuts from three concerts recorded at a small Memphis club in 1973, featuring the original line-up minus Bell. They run through songs from the first two albums, including jammy performances of "She's a Mover" and "Don't Lie to Me" as well as covers of T. Rex, the Kinks, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Todd Rundgren. It's a strong show, a better glimpse at Big Star the live band than any of their actual live albums, but what stands out is the relative lack of audience response. Big Star were opening for Archie Bell & the Drells, and it's clear that the crowd was already impatient with the first act. As a result, it sounds like Big Star are playing to an empty room, which feels thematically appropriate. People wouldn't start clapping until many years later.
— Stephen M. Deusner, September 18, 2009. [score: 9.3/10]
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13444-keep-an-eye-on-the-sky/
***
By the age of 58, most rock stars have formulated a tidy way of cashing in on their past. Characteristi-cally, though, Alex Chilton continues to manage the business of Big Star in a messier fashion. Not for him the lucrative glory of fleeting, high-profile comebacks. Rather, the Big Star reunion has now dribbled on haphazardly for 16 years – about 13 years longer, it’s worth noting, than the original lifespan of the band.
Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens’ most recent London show was not a triumphant reiteration of their status as the classic cult band; neglected in their heyday, hallelujahed in their afterlife. Instead, it was a kind of showcase for ongoing underachievement – a support slot beneath a mildly respected indie band, the Tindersticks.
Chilton’s cussed reluctance to optimise his gifts is, of course, integral to his myth. A record company executive, considering Chilton’s pubescent success with the Box Tops in 1967, might well characterise the ensuing 42 years of his career as akin to the singer shooting himself slowly and methodically in both feet, one toe at a time. But that tension, between innate pop genius and a ragged, capricious way of delivering it, remains a critical part of Chilton’s charm, as Keep An Eye On The Sky reminds us again and again.
A four-CD box set assembled with typical diligence by Rhino, Keep An Eye On The Sky plots Big Star’s trajectory, from Chilton and Chris Bell’s first manoeuvres, through to the utterly wrecked terrain of 'Third'/'Sister Lovers'.
Along the way, it reconstructs the first three Big Star albums with a patchwork of definitive versions, demos, alternate takes and mixes, throws in various ephemera (though it seems churlish to label, say, the agonising majesty of Bell’s “I Am The Cosmos” quite so casually), ignores 2005’s half-decent Big Star In Space, and ends with a live disc bolted together from three feisty Memphis shows supporting Archie Bell & The Drells in January 1973.
In common with another of 2009’s long-anticipated boxsets, Neil Young’s Archives, there’s little in the way of previously undiscovered songs – Big Star, it seems, just weren’t around for long enough to accumulate a reject pile of tunes. Instead, Keep An Eye On The Sky works like Archives, as a sort of unravelling historical document.
The tale begins here, not with the Box Tops, but with Chris Bell’s juvenilia – solo and fronting Icewater and Rock City – most of which reveals a young man pathologically keen on earning a contract with Apple. In the midst of this, Alex Chilton’s “Every Day As We Grow Closer” (from the solo sessions belatedly released on the 1970 album) shows how he arrived in Big Star fully formed as a songwriter.
And, perhaps, fully jaded as a pop star. It’s easy to stereotype '#1 Record' and 'Radio City' as positive and exuberant, when measured against the black hole of 'Third/Sister Lovers'. But the luxuriantly weary progressions of “The Ballad Of El Goodo” comes in two studio versions, one unreleased and with different lyrics which make explicit Chilton’s contempt for authority. “It’s judges and landlords, presidents and draft boards,” he sighs in the third verse. “They’ll get theirs and we’ll get ours – if we can.” Even something as sweet as “September Gurls” feels loaded with neurotic lust, detectable beneath the veneer of innocence.
Keep An Eye On The Sky is particularly good at showing up the darker aspects of Chilton’s personality, among them an enduring bitter fatalism, and something approaching sleaziness. His choice of covers – The Velvets’ “Femme Fatale”/, Todd Rundgren’s ever-gruesome “Slut” – speak volumes, while a brilliant demo of Loudon Wainwright’s “Motel Blues” provides a suitably bleak counterpoint to “Thirteen”.
And while Bell’s Beatlesy instincts might have been fortuitously tainted by Chilton’s tougher aesthetic (check the jolting transition from 'Rock City'’s Badfingerish “The Preacher” to Big Star’s “Feel” on Disc 1), a certain Anglophilia remains long after he leaves the band (see covers of The Kinks’ “Till The End Of The Day” and “Come On Now”, plus T.Rex’s “Baby Strange”).
But among many other things, Keep An Eye On The Sky illustrates that it was not just professional bad luck that stymied Big Star’s prospects of success. By privileging so many demos – the intimately fraught prototypes of 'Third', most strikingly (“Lovely Day”, a Byrdsy first draft of “Stroke It Noel”, is glorious, mind) – the box highlights Chilton’s fundamentally wayward character.
It’s a well-rehearsed critical ploy to suggest that Big Star should have been acclaimed as the American Beatles, but that idea seems preposterous when Keep An Eye On The Sky is considered next to one of its rivals in this month’s marketplace, the remastered Beatles motherlode.
Big Star songs are slouchy, unkempt, plaintive, contrary, and far from the meticulous Lennon/McCartney confections which might have originally inspired their makers. These commercial frailties have come to be seen, quite rightly, as cultish strengths. But it all goes to make Keep An Eye On The Sky much more than a repository of extraordinary music; it acts as the most thorough and articulate explanation of why Big Star never became superstars.
JOHN MULVEY, Uncut.co.uk
***
Thrilled to have this, but with some disappointment.
First off, I can't believe I would ever see a box of Big Star, let alone see it given the usual high standards one has come to expect from Rhino. The packaging is fantastic, combining layout, fonts and design into a seemless, immersive experience. The book that comes with the set is the best I have read so far about the band, surpassing even the 33 1/3 book on "Radio City" by a hair. There are a ton of photographs (which was startling, since the same four or five photos of them have been endlessly recycled over the years) and the text is broken down into appropriate sections, including one regarding how they acquired a cult following.
Then there's the music, four discs crammed to capacity with remastered original album tracks, alternate mixes and demos. There's even a whole disc devoted to live tracks. The sound is as pristine as one would expect. No complaints so far.
But then there's the matter of those original albums, as presented here. In lieu of simply having the remastered albums, many of the tracks are alternate mixes or versions, and inserted into the original running order. While I am grateful for these alternates, it seems odd to have them mixed in with original tracks, and in the order they were on the albums.
Even stranger, some of these alternate tracks are then presented in additional alternate versions outside of the running order. And some of the alternate tracks are almost indistinguishable from the original versions. Even worse, some of these tracks only appear in fairly radically different versions--the most notable of which is "Mod Lang" which is here only in a version fouled-up by annoying overdubbed ad libs.
And some of the previously unreleased tracks are a bit misleading. "Manana" is an extended version of the opening of "Jesus Christ". It is nice to have this track, but to label it as something other than the intro to the song seems a bit dishonest.
The live material is good to have, though not crucial The most startling discovery here is "ST 100/6", expanding it from its original one-minute length to almost four, through the interweaving of the song with Rock City's equally brief "The Preacher". That is, indeed, a fascinating new find.
I hate to split hairs over this set, since it is amazing to have this at all, and the packaging and sound are impeccable. Alas, I would have been happiest if the set left the original albums alone, and put all of the bonus material on the offsides. [Amazon user review]
***
Finally!
The best rock'n'roll is created on the margins. It doesn't matter if you sell a dozen or a million records, it's all about heart and soul and guts. The Kingsmen, The Seeds, Television, The Castaways, The Velvets are just as important as any trillion seller you can think of because they felt what they did and they did it very well indeed.
That's a long lead in to say that there is another very imortant box set out this month and it's made by a truly American band. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, Big Stars "Keep An Eye On The Sky" is much more cause for joy than the Beatles boxes. And I daresay that anyone who has been touched by this truly magnificent band would agree with me.
Now, going into the history of this band is not something I want to do. Suffice to say it's the stuff of movies and legend. But no matter what tragedy or sadness befell these guys (and the story of Chris Bell, guitarist and songwriter is indeed very sad), the music will always stand. Heart wrenching, exhilarating pop music from the heart and soul of 4 (then 3) guys from Memphis in the early seventies. These discs are filled with classics, even if you never heard them. "Way Out West", "September Girls", "Ballad Of El Goodo" I can't think of a bad one in the bunch. All 3 albums ("#1 Record", "Radio City" and "3rd") are represented in full with the occasional alternate take, all sound the best I've ever heard(and I'm including the original vinyl in this assesment) with "3rd" trouncing the Ryko release. There are amazing Chilton demos here, and you have not lived until you've heard him alone on an acoustic singing "Femme Fatale". And the live disc will knock you out. Excellent fidelity, recorded in '73 with the remaining 3 original members (Chilton, Hummel, Stephens) it proves that they could bring it live just as well as they could in studio.
I've gone on too long here, and instead of going song by song, I've tried to convey they joy that this band has brought me for the past 35 or so years. You can listen to the samples, and, like the best pop songs, 30 seconds is all you need to see how great these tunes are. A friend of mine had some Big Star t shirts made around 1975, just because of band love. It was a cool shirt and I wore mine until it was in tatters. When you're feeling alone, sad, stressed, ready to cry, this music will wrench you, touch you and make you feel more than alive, it will make you feel free. A thousand stars for a band that is finally getting the treatment they deserve after all these many years. [Amazon user review]
***
As the object of intense devotion for so many fans, it's fitting that Big Star receive a box set designed for the intensely devoted: four discs containing every song the band cut in the '70s, often present in slightly alternate mixes or versions in addition to the originals, a clutch of solo songs from both Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, as well as a handful of pre-Big Star cuts by Icewater and Rock City, all topped off with a live disc culled from a three-set stint at Memphis' Lafayette's Music Room in January of 1973, not long after Bell left the band. Excepting subsequent reunions in the '90s and 2000s, no corner of the band's career remains untouched on KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY and rarities are abundant, with 55 of its 98 tracks previously unreleased. This is a staggering statistic but it's also misleading, for 20 of those cuts are from the live disc and the rest are either alternate mixes, alternate versions, or demos -- there are no unheard songs, aside from an excerpt of Rock City's "The Preacher." Of these, only a handful are markedly different either in their lyrics or attack, with all finding the songs and even arrangements essentially intact, even in their demo form. Consequently, KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY contains fewer revelations than it initially appears, which isn't to say it lacks any: the earliest demos for BIG STAR 3rd are by and large lighter in tone than the album (although there's no way "Holocaust" ever could seem cheery), a testament to how much a song can change during the recording process.
In a way, all of Big Star's career is a testament to the recording process. They were a creature of the studio, not stage, having free rein at Ardent Studios, where they stayed up into the next morning tinkering at the same set of songs. This resulted in the crisp, sterling sound of #1 RECORD and the deliberately looser RADIO CITY, as well as the sliding, sprawling mess of 3rd, but it didn't result in outtakes -- it resulted in alternate mixes and instrumental scraps, the stuff that enthralls fetishists, sometimes justifiably so. Those are the listeners who will find KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY most rewarding, but anybody who has loved the band will find something to cherish here, whether it's the crackerjack live show -- which provides roaring covers of the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Hot Burrito #2," T. Rex's "Baby Strange," and Todd Rundgren's "Slut" (revived 20 years later on their reunion concert), as well as a startlingly effective take on "The India Song" -- or merely the context of the set, which tells the story of America's greatest cult band this side of the Velvet Underground in a complete and affecting fashion. ---Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG
2009 Rhino Records [Catalog: R2 519760]
Alex Chilton – guitars, vocals (1971–1974, 1993–present)
Jody Stephens – drums, vocals (1971–1974, 1993–present)
Chris Bell – guitars, vocals (1971–1972)
Andy Hummel – bass, vocals (1971–1973)
John Lightman – bass, backing vocals (1974)
Original Recordings produced by Big Star, Jim Dickinson
Box Set produced by John Fry, Cheryl Pawelski, Andrew Sandoval, Alex Palao
CD4 - Live at Lafayette's Music Room, Memphis, TN, January 1973
Enhanced CD Content (on disc 4): Thirteen (alternate mix video)
Recording information: Air Studios, London, UK; Ardent Studios, Memphis, TN; Shoe Studios, Memphis, TN.
Entertainment Weekly (p.70) - "The spare demos, crystal-clear concert recordings, and handsomely produced liner notes are a fan's delight..."
Billboard (p.37) - "[A] treasure trove of rare gems, including material by pre-Big Star groups Rock City and Icewater..."
Q (Magazine) (p.122) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Exhibiting strong Anglophile leanings, and pick'n'mixing the usual '60s suspects, their brisk, guitar-encrusted power-pop was an unlikely product of a city better known as the home of Southern soul."
Big Star aren't just rock's greatest cult band; they were arguably rock's first cult band. Like Magellan, they discovered a new route to iconic status, but theirs was more circuitous and didn't involve such niceties as sales, audience, tours, or really anything resembling actual success. Instead, they maintained a slow, dim burn throughout the 1970s and 80s, their memory kept alive by critics, collectors, record store clerks, and younger generations of musicians such as R.E.M. and the Replacements. It's easy to read that history in the band name and album titles, which today play like ironic gestures toward out-of-reach celebrity. But Big Star were sincere about being big stars and having #1 records. They didn't set out to be cult: Striving for celebrity and confirmation, they wrote what they thought should be hit records, and they played to please. Their appeal should and could have been broad. By comparison, their loyal audience nearly forty years later is a fluke.
Despite their unprecedented longevity and surprising durability, Big Star have been under-anthologized, with a strange string of lackluster releases. Alex Chilton's pre-band solo debut, 1970, took more than 15 years to make its way to record store shelves, and the band's first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, have been joined at the hip now for decades, starting with the British combo release in 1978 throughout Fantasy/Concord's recent remaster. Big Star's final album, Third/Sisters Lovers, gathered dust for nearly five years before finally getting a small release, and even that tribute album was delayed for nearly a decade. During that time, The Best of Big Star and Big Star Story tried foolishly to whittle the band's short career down to one negligible disc.
Combining studio tracks, live cuts, demos, and unreleased recordings to reveal new sides of the band, Rhino' 4xCD Keep an Eye on the Sky sounds like the one reissue that finally gets Big Star right. It picks up right before the band formed, with solo tracks from both Chris Bell and Chilton as well as songs from previous bands Rock City and Icewater (the Box Tops are missing, and certainly not necessary to the story). Each iteration of the line-up is represented here, although there's nothing from 1993's comeback Columbia: Live at Missouri University or from 2005's already forgotten In Space. This set wisely keeps its eye on the 70s.
These four discs ultimately do what any good box set should do: In tracing the band's trajectory from power-pop progenitors to post-pop tinkerers, Keep an Eye on the Sky presents a history of the band that could not be gleaned from the albums themselves, using finished studio tracks along with demos and rarities to give a fuller picture of the musicians, their dynamic, and their songs. This type of repetition can be fatal in some reissues, either offering distinctions only a true diehard could love or valiantly covering up a deficit of unreleased material. But here, the approach goes a long way toward humanizing a band that has been largely mythologized even into the Internet age. You can listen in on band practice or late-night jam sessions at Ardent, or just wander across happenstance pairings, such as Chilton singing "Nature Boy" while William Eggleston-- yes, that William Eggleston-- plays piano. That these new versions of familiar songs feed the cult rather than expunge the mystery is perhaps due to Ardent founder and engineer John Fry, whose studio work brings out the subtle flourishes in these different takes: the handclaps on the sped-up version of "O My Soul", the rich strums that underline the chorus of "The Ballad of El Goodo", the crisp guitar sound that gives "You Get What You Deserve" its bite. He's the fifth Big Star, as crucial to these early recordings as George Martin was to the Beatles or Martin Hannett was to Joy Division.
Big Star developed its particular sound in a very short time. The first notes of "Feel", the #1 Record opener, still sound like a clarion call, a signal that something exciting is about to go down. They live up to that promise through their first two albums, but on their third, with Bell and bass player Andy Hummel gone, Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens gradually disassemble that power-pop sound, seemingly indulging every oddball impulse: jive-talking through "You Can't Have Me" and "Kizza Me", adding French-language backing vocals to the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale", writing a paean to Jesus Christ. Third and its outtakes show Big Star in its death throes, giving up on the idea of power pop to the people and just making strange, sad, beautiful songs for themselves. "Holocaust" in particular, especially the haunting piano demo here, is devastating in its damaged beauty.
Keep an Eye on the Sky ends with a cuts from three concerts recorded at a small Memphis club in 1973, featuring the original line-up minus Bell. They run through songs from the first two albums, including jammy performances of "She's a Mover" and "Don't Lie to Me" as well as covers of T. Rex, the Kinks, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Todd Rundgren. It's a strong show, a better glimpse at Big Star the live band than any of their actual live albums, but what stands out is the relative lack of audience response. Big Star were opening for Archie Bell & the Drells, and it's clear that the crowd was already impatient with the first act. As a result, it sounds like Big Star are playing to an empty room, which feels thematically appropriate. People wouldn't start clapping until many years later.
— Stephen M. Deusner, September 18, 2009. [score: 9.3/10]
By the age of 58, most rock stars have formulated a tidy way of cashing in on their past. Characteristi-cally, though, Alex Chilton continues to manage the business of Big Star in a messier fashion. Not for him the lucrative glory of fleeting, high-profile comebacks. Rather, the Big Star reunion has now dribbled on haphazardly for 16 years – about 13 years longer, it’s worth noting, than the original lifespan of the band.
Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens’ most recent London show was not a triumphant reiteration of their status as the classic cult band; neglected in their heyday, hallelujahed in their afterlife. Instead, it was a kind of showcase for ongoing underachievement – a support slot beneath a mildly respected indie band, the Tindersticks.
Chilton’s cussed reluctance to optimise his gifts is, of course, integral to his myth. A record company executive, considering Chilton’s pubescent success with the Box Tops in 1967, might well characterise the ensuing 42 years of his career as akin to the singer shooting himself slowly and methodically in both feet, one toe at a time. But that tension, between innate pop genius and a ragged, capricious way of delivering it, remains a critical part of Chilton’s charm, as Keep An Eye On The Sky reminds us again and again.
A four-CD box set assembled with typical diligence by Rhino, Keep An Eye On The Sky plots Big Star’s trajectory, from Chilton and Chris Bell’s first manoeuvres, through to the utterly wrecked terrain of 'Third'/'Sister Lovers'.
Along the way, it reconstructs the first three Big Star albums with a patchwork of definitive versions, demos, alternate takes and mixes, throws in various ephemera (though it seems churlish to label, say, the agonising majesty of Bell’s “I Am The Cosmos” quite so casually), ignores 2005’s half-decent Big Star In Space, and ends with a live disc bolted together from three feisty Memphis shows supporting Archie Bell & The Drells in January 1973.
In common with another of 2009’s long-anticipated boxsets, Neil Young’s Archives, there’s little in the way of previously undiscovered songs – Big Star, it seems, just weren’t around for long enough to accumulate a reject pile of tunes. Instead, Keep An Eye On The Sky works like Archives, as a sort of unravelling historical document.
The tale begins here, not with the Box Tops, but with Chris Bell’s juvenilia – solo and fronting Icewater and Rock City – most of which reveals a young man pathologically keen on earning a contract with Apple. In the midst of this, Alex Chilton’s “Every Day As We Grow Closer” (from the solo sessions belatedly released on the 1970 album) shows how he arrived in Big Star fully formed as a songwriter.
And, perhaps, fully jaded as a pop star. It’s easy to stereotype '#1 Record' and 'Radio City' as positive and exuberant, when measured against the black hole of 'Third/Sister Lovers'. But the luxuriantly weary progressions of “The Ballad Of El Goodo” comes in two studio versions, one unreleased and with different lyrics which make explicit Chilton’s contempt for authority. “It’s judges and landlords, presidents and draft boards,” he sighs in the third verse. “They’ll get theirs and we’ll get ours – if we can.” Even something as sweet as “September Gurls” feels loaded with neurotic lust, detectable beneath the veneer of innocence.
Keep An Eye On The Sky is particularly good at showing up the darker aspects of Chilton’s personality, among them an enduring bitter fatalism, and something approaching sleaziness. His choice of covers – The Velvets’ “Femme Fatale”/, Todd Rundgren’s ever-gruesome “Slut” – speak volumes, while a brilliant demo of Loudon Wainwright’s “Motel Blues” provides a suitably bleak counterpoint to “Thirteen”.
And while Bell’s Beatlesy instincts might have been fortuitously tainted by Chilton’s tougher aesthetic (check the jolting transition from 'Rock City'’s Badfingerish “The Preacher” to Big Star’s “Feel” on Disc 1), a certain Anglophilia remains long after he leaves the band (see covers of The Kinks’ “Till The End Of The Day” and “Come On Now”, plus T.Rex’s “Baby Strange”).
But among many other things, Keep An Eye On The Sky illustrates that it was not just professional bad luck that stymied Big Star’s prospects of success. By privileging so many demos – the intimately fraught prototypes of 'Third', most strikingly (“Lovely Day”, a Byrdsy first draft of “Stroke It Noel”, is glorious, mind) – the box highlights Chilton’s fundamentally wayward character.
It’s a well-rehearsed critical ploy to suggest that Big Star should have been acclaimed as the American Beatles, but that idea seems preposterous when Keep An Eye On The Sky is considered next to one of its rivals in this month’s marketplace, the remastered Beatles motherlode.
Big Star songs are slouchy, unkempt, plaintive, contrary, and far from the meticulous Lennon/McCartney confections which might have originally inspired their makers. These commercial frailties have come to be seen, quite rightly, as cultish strengths. But it all goes to make Keep An Eye On The Sky much more than a repository of extraordinary music; it acts as the most thorough and articulate explanation of why Big Star never became superstars.
JOHN MULVEY, Uncut.co.uk
As the object of intense devotion for so many fans, it's fitting that Big Star receive a box set designed for the intensely devoted: four discs containing every song the band cut in the '70s, often present in slightly alternate mixes or versions in addition to the originals, a clutch of solo songs from both Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, as well as a handful of pre-Big Star cuts by Icewater and Rock City, all topped off with a live disc culled from a three-set stint at Memphis' Lafayette's Music Room in January of 1973, not long after Bell left the band. Excepting subsequent reunions in the '90s and 2000s, no corner of the band's career remains untouched on KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY and rarities are abundant, with 55 of its 98 tracks previously unreleased. This is a staggering statistic but it's also misleading, for 20 of those cuts are from the live disc and the rest are either alternate mixes, alternate versions, or demos -- there are no unheard songs, aside from an excerpt of Rock City's "The Preacher." Of these, only a handful are markedly different either in their lyrics or attack, with all finding the songs and even arrangements essentially intact, even in their demo form. Consequently, KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY contains fewer revelations than it initially appears, which isn't to say it lacks any: the earliest demos for BIG STAR 3rd are by and large lighter in tone than the album (although there's no way "Holocaust" ever could seem cheery), a testament to how much a song can change during the recording process.
In a way, all of Big Star's career is a testament to the recording process. They were a creature of the studio, not stage, having free rein at Ardent Studios, where they stayed up into the next morning tinkering at the same set of songs. This resulted in the crisp, sterling sound of #1 RECORD and the deliberately looser RADIO CITY, as well as the sliding, sprawling mess of 3rd, but it didn't result in outtakes -- it resulted in alternate mixes and instrumental scraps, the stuff that enthralls fetishists, sometimes justifiably so. Those are the listeners who will find KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY most rewarding, but anybody who has loved the band will find something to cherish here, whether it's the crackerjack live show -- which provides roaring covers of the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Hot Burrito #2," T. Rex's "Baby Strange," and Todd Rundgren's "Slut" (revived 20 years later on their reunion concert), as well as a startlingly effective take on "The India Song" -- or merely the context of the set, which tells the story of America's greatest cult band this side of the Velvet Underground in a complete and affecting fashion. ---Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG