Live At Lafayette's Music Room, Memphis, TN, January 1973.
It's available on disc 4 of the Big Star box set called "Keep an Eye On the Sky" (Rhino)
Lyrics
See that girl, watch her dance
If I knew her name I wouldn't have to sit on my hands If my mouth don't work I get some help And she don't mind if I don't keep my hands to myself
You're all right You put up such a good clean fight I'm afraid that you lose tonight S-L-U-T She may be a slut but she looks good to me You're so clean, so refined You don't care to get messy just to have a good time She's got saggy thighs and baggy eyes But she loves me in a way I can still recognize
Slut (Live at University of Missouri, Columbia, MO - April 1993)
When ornery Alex Chilton reunited Big Star
March 21, 2010| By Mark Caro | Tribune staff reporter
It wasn't quite Spinal Tap opening for Puppet Show, but the incongruity was striking:
A fabled band, seen by maybe hundreds in its original incarnation, was
performing its first show in almost 20 years, and it was listed way down
on the bill of a Missouri school's free SpringFest being held in a tent
in a basketball arena's parking lot.
Bryan Adams would be headlining inside the arena that night in April
1993, but mid-afternoon in the tent, Big Star would be thrilling and
occasionally mystifying a giddy cluster of fans who never thought they'd
see this day, myself included.
I'd discovered Big Star in the
mid-1980s, when punchy, jingly groups such as R.E.M., the Replacements,
the Bangles, Let's Active, Our Favorite Band, and the dB's were touting and
sometimes covering songs from the band's three barely distributed
albums.
Big Star hadn't performed since 1974; had never mounted a true
tour, and its leader, Alex Chilton, consistently dismissed the band's importance, while pursuing an erratic, highly idiosyncratic solo career.
So when I learned that Big Star would be playing a show at the University
of Missouri-Columbia — with Chilton and original drummer, Jody Stephens,
augmented by guitarist Jonathan Auer and bassist Kenneth Stringfellow
from the Seattle power-pop band the Posies — I knew I had to make a
pilgrimage.
Two Big Star fans working at the campus radio station
had tracked down Chilton's home number in New Orleans, and the singer
turned out to be, in student Mike Mulvihill's words, "really receptive"
to the suggestion that the band reunite on campus.
The undergrads were
stunned, as was Stephens, who said before the show that he had "no idea"
why Chilton finally had agreed to a long-discussed revival.
In
the parking lot before the show, people gave the floppy-haired Chilton,
then 42, a wide berth.
When I asked why he'd decided to do this concert, he drawled:
"No good reason."
The show bristled with the kind of tension between craft and anarchy
that had characterized Chilton over the years.
Some performances were
stirring ("The Ballad of El Goodo"), some ebullient ("In the Street,"
"Daisy Glaze"), and some just perverse, such as Chilton's lecherous
interjections of "Baby!" and "You know what I'm talking about!" during
the aching youth love ballad, "Thirteen."
That last one didn't make the
live CD that Zoo Records released later that year.
How did Chilton feel about the show afterward?
"I've felt worse."
Did he want to do more Big Star shows?
"No."
Fortunately for Big Star fans, the singer's orneriness wasn't
consistent.
The four-piece lineup continued to perform occasionally over
the ensuing years, including a 1994 set at Metro that was going
swimmingly until Chilton dedicated a cover of Todd Rundgren's "Slut" to
Stephens' wife, enraging the drummer.
There was even a new Big Star album, "In Space," in 2005.
Big Star was scheduled to play Saturday night at the South by Southwest
Music Festival in Austin, Texas, but Chilton, 59, died Wednesday of an
apparent heart attack in New Orleans.
I own albums that are
closer to flawless than Big Star's "No. 1 Record," "Radio City" and
"Third/Sister Lovers," but there are very few I play as often.
He (with
the late Chris Bell on the first album) combined perfect pop
craftsmanship and spontaneity, beauty and rawness in ways I've not
otherwise heard.
As the band stepped down from the tent's stage in April 1993, engineer
Jim Citronella asked Chilton whether the band could perform the rocker
"Don't Lie to Me" a second time to get a better take for the live CD.
Chilton dismissed the suggestion with a phrase that could serve as his epitaph:
