Jun 18, 2025
Big Star and the Legend of Ardent Studios | TIDAL Magazine
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Big Star and the Legend of Ardent Studios | TIDAL Magazine
Big Star “3rd” 1978
In other news I listened to five albums of music from the troubled Big Star “3rd” sessions. “Complete Third: Vol 1: Demos To Sessions To Roughs” and “Complete Third: Vol. 2: Roughs To Mixes” are mostly excellent double albums. There’s some beautiful demos, excellent work mixes, and quite frankly not so great rehearsals included. Overall they’re both great packages.
Here’s where it gets dicey for me… I never got around to getting volume 3 with the completed masters. And which one is the only one out of print? You guessed it: Volume 3! Fortunately I have a reissue of the 1978 issue that can stand in (I do have a recent reissue of the first test pressing edition) on the way. It’s been a long time since I’ve pulled this one out to play (that goes for any Big Star truth be told) so it was a joy to reacquaint myself with these beautiful (mostly) songs. The demos show how this record could’ve sounded very different if Alex Chilton hadn’t been hell bent on self sabotage… he was in a “Oh, you like that bit? Here, I’m going to fuck it up.” mood. The word is that they never actually finished the record and that it wasn’t going to be a Big Star record but the studio/label said stepped in and said “Enough!” And with that they released a new Big Star album after the band was no more. Adding to a short but already legendary career arc.
My copy of “3rd” is a reissue by the dreaded 4 Men With Beards label. This one they did a good job with but they were very hit or miss with many of their titles.
Lux Interior, Bryan Gregory, Nick Knox & Poison Ivy during The Cramps sessions with Alex Chilton in Ardent studios in Memphis, as captured by Pat Rainer in 1977.
Their acquaintance led them down to Memphis and Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio, the mythical place where Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis had made rock ‘n’ roll history, and to the production of their legendary debut releases, the Gravest Hits EP & the Songs the Lord Taught Us LP.
(pastemagazine.com): “…The Cramps shared Chilton’s musical taste, reveling in underappreciated rockabilly obscurities it takes a musical connoisseur to discover… By the end of the year, Chilton would call the Cramps “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world…In October, he brought them down to Memphis to produce their first singles (…) As music engineer Richard Rosebrough recalls: “I’ve seen the strangest people walk in and out of the front door of Phillips. When [the Cramps] walked in, I was just sitting in the lobby, and Bryan [Gregory] comes in, dressed in black from head to toe, bleach blond hair over half his face, and he’s wearing this holster strapped to his leg with a real long pistol in it. He walked in the front door, walked right past the desk, on back into the studio. The holster was just, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak. He had bought this brand new leather holster to put this gun in. Brand new leather squeaks. You’ve got to oil it, work with it, settle it in. I thought, ‘What a scene, what a display…’
According to photographer Pat Rainer:
“I was hanging out, shooting photos. I enjoyed watching Alex being the producer. The Cramps being in Memphis, in the South at that time… I’ve heard people say the way they looked they stopped traffic. But Memphis in the 70s…it was already a weird, wild place, so I think they actually fit in pretty good. They seemed normal. But live and in performance the Cramps were anything but normal. They were really fun.”
(via & via)
Chris Bell and Alex Chilton of Big Star outside the Ardent Recording Studios in Memphis.
A new box set delves into the beauty and the madness of the second Replacements album on Sire Records
Replacements, 1987 - by Tom Sheehan
Check out my thoughts on the latest shmancy Replacements box set from Rhino Records.
So this was in an eBay sale of demo/unreleased cassettes, mostly from Memphis or Ardent Studios and Mastering such as this one.
The reason I’m posting this is because the opening motif pops up a fair bit and oh my GOD does it sound like Dogsong. I genuinely flipped hearing it the first time!
As it’s September, here’s a nice little story about September Gurls from Jody Stephens.
Big Star. 3rd. PVC Records. 1978.