Singer Not The Song
Ork Records, 1977
What's more fun than seven-inch records? For some reason they go hand in hand with the concept of Friday...hence, Forty-Five Friday! Of course, some of y'all will give me grief for kicking off Forty-Five Friday with a seven-inch that plays at 33rpm. Pobody's nerfect.
I stumbled on this gem a few weeks ago, after a ball game at a used record store for six bucks...it's an original pressing, complete with the hard cardboard sleeve, and is probably worth more like $25-$45 in this condition, though I doubt I'll ever sell it. It's the first officially released Alex Chilton solo project, post-Box Tops and post-Big Star, although he'd recorded solo sessions in between the dissolution of the Tops and the formation of Big Star. Those sessions wouldn't see the light of day until a 1996 CD called 1970.
By all accounts, the mid-seventies were shaky times for Chilton. The unfair neglect of Big Star's work by the general public, combined with Chilton's alcoholism, seemed to cast a dark, dark shadow around everything. When he was allowed free reign in the studio to follow his own muse, he produced the brilliantly ramshackle 1978 single "Bangcock." The sessions that created this EP, however, were supervised by John Tiven.
Tiven is an interesting figure. I met him once, and he seemed like an earnest enough dude...kind of a hustler, but that's what you do when you are a freelance producer. In the '70s he contributed a bit to Memphis power-pop lore by producing this disk and as one half of the band Prix with Tommy Hoehn. In '78 he released a solo album under the name of The Yankees, which was a minor success and an engagingly rough-edged new wave pop album. Since then, Tiven has emerged as something of an R&B svengali, taking veteran artists who still have some stuff to strut and co-writing songs with them and producing the resulting recordings. Unfortunately, he's not that interesting of a songwriter or producer, and the results tend to be relatively tame and dull.
Still, on a record like this, Tiven must have felt like he was herding cats. Even in the William Eggleston cover photos, Chilton looks wrecked. Alex is a great guitarist, yet all the guitars on the record are played by Tiven -- was Chilton just too zonked? What emerges on Singer Not The Song is a weird, uncomfortable collision of styles: Chilton's freewheeling spontaneity (which he'd explore further on the brilliant Like Flies On Sherbert) and Tiven's more controlled roots-pop.
The resulting disk is charming, mostly because of Chilton's spacey singing and the quality of the songs...opener "Free Again" was originally cut by Chilton in '70, and is a wide-eyed country stomp well matched on side one with a version of the Rolling Stones' title track. Side two features a version of Chilton's much-recorded "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" that is a little smothered, but amusing -- especially when compared to Tiven's mannered, self-consciously lewd version on the Yankees' record. For me, the record's highlight is "All The Time," a pop gem co-written by Chilton and his girlfriend Lesa Aldridge, where Tiven's devices (what's with the weird flanged guitar?) are undone by Chilton's brilliantly casual vocal.
This material was compiled eventually as a CD, now deleted, called Bach's Bottom, along with the 1978 single ("Bangcock") and some other stuff. Tiven couldn't resist tinkering with it, though, and remixed a bunch of the tracks re-inserted some guitar left off the original released mixes. It's nice to have the original mixes, though.
An interesting corollary to this disk is that Chilton wrote liner notes to the Bach's Bottom reissue that were not used, illuminating the tension of the sessions. Surely alcohol and drugs played a role in keeping things off the rails, but more than that was a difference of intent and process between Tiven and Chilton. Chilton writes..."The young producer was appalled and failed to see the beauty of letting the music happen in a manner so obviously out of control. Some of these have undergone some major audio surgery at the hands of the producer who, after seventeen years, still does not seem to know the chords."
Yikes...
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