ALEX CHILTON/PANTHER BURNS LP 1981 "Behind Magnolia Curtain" Tav Falco vinyl NM

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22

When Alex Chilton died in 2010, though I was a big fan of his, even I was surprised how widespread the reaction was. It was in the newspapers. All kinds of famous people tweeted about it; Christopher Hitchens said he was "gutted" when he heard the news. And when Alex was eulogized in Congress (!), that too was its own news story. 
I guess I was surprised because he had been under the radar for decades, seemingly getting along as a cult figure, a secret among those who knew--or at least we thought he was a secret. Clearly we were wrong.
His career was shaped so strangely because he reached the peak of his fame before he even knew what he was doing--at 16 he sang the lead vocals for a song called "The Letter" and it was a worldwide hit, even becoming part of the history of the Vietnam war as it was a soundtrack item for the soldiers yearning for home. Alex toured for a few years and lived an adult life as a teenager. When it ended, he knew a lot about performing, was already an encyclopedia of his favored delta musics, 
He made some solo recordings that weren't really released at the time, and then around 1973 hooked up with a Memphis band called Big Star. Their first two albums sank without notice; the third wasn't even released for a critical few years. Yet these three records today are absolute classics, the first blast of power pop, gorgeously played and recorded, supremely earnest and fun at the same time.
They became a critic's favorite, and those of us who read rock reviews went out and found the records as best we could. By 1977, when "Big Star Third" finally came out on a little label called PVC, it almost defined alternative music, since it was especially inward and spooky and unclassifiable...and, importantly, commercially a fail.
What we didn't understand at the time was how young Alex still was, and that he would actually be embarassed by the Big Star music, especially the great third album. Imagine if the poetry you wrote in college was somehow spread all across the world! Excruciating.
The thing is, Alex was more into punk rock at that point, and I think was seeking a way of his own to break out of traditional songwriting. His experiments involved shambolic performances (kind of punk-izing the delta, both in the studio and live) and a lot of irony and humor. He never again wanted to be anything that could be confused with Morressy.
Also he may have been suffering from child prodigy syndrome--when kids have to work like professionals, at some point they may go through a crisis where the work seems like something imposed from the outside. I think Alex dialed down his career so hard just because he only wanted to enjoy music, not make a career of it.
There are beautiful solo performances from him during these years, one of which I was lucky enough to see. One live album happened because one of his gigs in a small club suffered a power faulure, and so with the mike and amp off, he just sat for an hour entertaining the people on his acoustic guitar, and dug way back into his vast songbag, and was just playing for the love of it.
Anyway, let me get to the point, sorry. This album was a side project for Alex Chilton, where he could just be the guitarist in another person's band--he shows up here as "L X Chilton" on this first album of "Tav Falco's Panther Burns." Think maybe of Robert Gordon meets the Cramps. Somewhat rockabilly, definitely shambolic, recorded on the run with first takes only allowed. The songs themselves are just items the band loved, from Roy Orbison to Leadbelly to Junior Wells. My guess is, they were creating a 1958 night in a Tennessee roadhouse, quick and sloppy and fun. Another of Alex's invocations to the smallest, goofiest muses of music, letting the great gods of rock take the night off.
Of course it's on the smallest possible label, Frenzi, kindly distributed in this case by Rough Trade (which in 1981 was barely on the map itself). Mastered by whatever genius it was who signed all his matrix wax with "A Porky Prime Cut."
Condiiton is NM on the vinyl, gorgeous. The sleeve is a bit creased and has a sticker from where I got it, Saint Marks Sounds in the east village of New York, a long way from Memphis.