Chiltonism I


Hey everybody - let's all pretend we’re watching a real video in the box above, and this post will go real swell.

An item of “for madmen only” interest here possibly, but I found it pretty enlightening, so thought I’d post it.

Basically this is forty minutes of unedited footage of Alex Chilton, Jim Dickinson and collaborators, goofing around in Ardent studios back in, ooh, I dunno, the late ‘70s or something (timeframe scarcely matters with this shit), recording tracks that ended up on “Lost Decade”, “Like Flies On Sherbert”, or, in some cases, nowhere.

Since the great man passed on earlier this year, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by Chilton’s recordings from this period, and the mysterious, unknowable context they seem to emerge from – all the clanging, shamble-ass mistakes, supremely weird sonic decisions and seemingly random instrumentation, with a leering, wicked humour and calculated, elegant half-assedness underlying the whole thing. It’s total genius – classic rock n’ roll, as unnervingly wrong-yet-right as the most twisted, out of nowhere ‘50s rockabilly recordings, but with a more modern sense of sardonic, self-aware cynicism visible at all times too - the cracked grin of a guy who's experienced both the best and worst of the music industry and eventually just told it to fuck off.

As such, watching this sorta makes me feel like a moody London psychogeographer who’s just been handed an authentic video of Jack The Ripper running around. Yep, that’s our man right there, doing his thing. That would seem to answer my questions.

In particular, I’ve long been obsessed by the recording of the song “My Rival” from “..Sherbert”, ever since I heard it for the first time on the peerless Rough Trade Shops: Rock n’ Roll compilation all those years ago.

How is it possible that a bunch of competent, experienced musicians could get together to play a tune, and emerge with something so… so brilliantly fucked up?

That’s what I’ve asked myself each of the hundreds of times I’ve listened to this song, so you’d best believe my jaw hit the floor at about the 25 min mark here, when we see the band casually laying down that very take from start to finish.

Circumstances seem pretty chilled, and all the musicians seem to be in command of what they’re doing, which in a sense makes the resulting cathartic fucked-ness even more of a cosmic mystery.

I never before pictured that seated, bearded man crouching over that weird mini-synthesizer, or the profound strangeness of Chilton’s spidery junkie guitar-playing on some cheapo ‘60s garage band lookin’ guitar, but now I will see them every time.

Things take on a certain ‘Blue Velvet’ atmosphere towards the end, as a rather scary lady appears, first heard adding orgasmic moans to an unreleased(?) take of “Bangkok”, and then seen dancing lewdly on a piano as one of the bearded guys plays it, head down. Who is she anyway? Alex’s main squeeze at that particular moment? Some random wildcard they met in a bar? The mystery deepens, and I bet there’ll be nothing but a sad story, a slurred song and an ominous cackle at the end of it.

Labels: Alex Chilton, No Videos, videos