So I turn up at Robin’s house: late, with a scrap of paper and a pen that doesn’t work. We’re due to play these songs in about half an hour, so we’d ‘better do some preparation'. Fine chance of that now. Sadly there’s a reason to play them: Alex Chilton died this week, and (why does this happen, but it always does) the genius of an artist’s oeuvre is reminded; the songs flag up in our collective memory. As do the hairs on the back of my neck when Robin blasts Radio City out of the stereo. I feel as though I’m coming face to face with a long lost child: I’ve known these songs deep in my heart, but it’s the features and the detail I need to connect with, to re-discover.
I shut my eyes and luxuriate in the sounds: it’s coming back; the colours, the melodies and the harmonic suspensions reactivate cells in my body that kept the echo from years ago. I’m lost, swaying to the thumping pulse of ‘Back of a Car’, letting the fills roll over me before they collide with ever-new chords that explode with fresh summer air. I’m on the sofa again, though; I haven’t written anything down but a triplet, and we’re playing in twenty minutes! It is a bit like being speechless, or being granted an audience with God… how could I write something like this down? It is utter brilliance! A few more token musical scribbles but really I just want to sit here and remember, and there will be time for that yet, but right now the gear has been loaded out, and time is up. We tumble out of the house laughing, stunned at how musically impeccable the members of the band were, each of us privately nervous about our undertaking.
For a first gig with no rehearsal we do ok; the songs themselves rise up as groggy spectres in the room, witnessed by a few bemused locals and foreign students. But they will awake fully again; and it’s their time to be reborn. Summer, with all its promise is just around the corner; Alex Chilton may be dead, but long live Big Star. This music is important- let it in.
