When Jody Stephens and Chris Stamey put together a new version of Big Star two years ago, the quintet was a new group. And yet the band, which also includes Pat Sansone (Wilco), Jon Auer (Posies), and Mike Mills (R.E.M.), was hardly a bunch of rookies. Indeed, they all were unapologetic fans of that ’70s band that never quite made it, even as it lived on in their hearts and creative minds. And so, when they played WYXR’s Raised By Sound Festival in 2022, it was a revelation and a delight, but no great surprise that they pulled off the tribute to the band’s debut album, #1 Record, with aplomb.
And yet, being a “new” band, they had some rough patches at the time. Mills, battling a cold, was just shy of bringing his A game. The group as a whole still had to work out some details, as evidenced by their grinding to a halt during the bridge of “O My Soul,” only to begin the song again with brilliant results.
Now, two years later, it’s the 50th anniversary of Big Star’s second album, Radio City, and the same quintet is back in the saddle this fall for a series of 10 select dates in the U.S. and Europe. The kickoff show for the tour was at Crosstown Theater this Tuesday, and in the two years since this more stripped-down group formed (compared to the more sprawling bands assembled for the Big Star’s Third concerts a decade ago), they have become even more of a living, breathing unit. While the 2022 show was excellent, Tuesday’s show was jaw-dropping.
It isn’t that the group has grown more precise; rather, they’ve now internalized the material to such a degree that they can loosen up with it. And that is entirely appropriate, given the nature of the album they’re saluting in this round of shows. When it was recorded, Radio City marked the reconfiguration of the band as a trio led by Alex Chilton. Chris Bell, who founded the group, had left in frustration to pursue a solo career. And the album, while intricately crafted and performed, thus reflected Chilton’s greater embrace of the raucous, the chaotic, and the wild. It was nothing like the shambolic masterpieces he would later create as a solo artist, but a bit unhinged nonetheless, and therein lies its charm.
There were still plenty of echoes of Bell’s sensibility in Tuesday’s concert. Indeed, the group kicked off the show with “Feel” and several other chestnuts from #1 Record, the album’s cover projected behind them. A few songs in, the background changed to Radio City, and Stamey quipped, “Something is trying to tell us to move on to the next album.”
And move they did, as they brought some of Big Star’s rowdiest material to life. “That’s just fun to play!” quipped Sansone after they’d ripped through “O My Soul,” this time with no confusion, full steam ahead. After an especially stomping version of “She’s a Mover,” where Stamey seemed to capture a bit of Chilton’s old cutting delivery as he sang, “She name was Marcia, Marcia the name, she look like a dove, now,” the singer exclaimed to the audience, “Can it get any better than that?”
Stamey lit up even more before they launched into “When My Baby’s Beside Me.” As he explained, “This was the first Big Star song I ever heard, and I had to pull my car to the side of the road to hear it. In the Winston-Salem area back then, we thought these songs were hits! They were playing on local radio!” Indeed, each player’s inner fan boy seemed to emerge before our eyes as they conjured up the sounds that had first captivated them as teens.
The players’ enthusiasm for the material was contagious. And yet it wasn’t all raucous abandon. Several quieter numbers stole the show, including “Way Out West,” “India Song,” and “Thirteen,” where Stephens stepped out from behind the drums to sing. And, from the tender to the tumultuous, the voices of all five players created vocal harmonies of a richness and beauty rarely heard these days.
Not to be outdone, Sansone shone in a solo rendition of “I’m in Love with a Girl” that was so heartfelt, you might have thought he wrote it himself. Auer, too, sang with moving, vulnerable soul on the quiet sections of “Daisy Glaze.” Never did the lyrics “nullify my life” seem so desolate.
Mills, for his part, also shone, especially on a crisp, propulsive “September Gurls.” Before singing it, he thanked Jody for letting him take on the vocal duties, promising him that “the check is in the mail.”
Mills also sang as the band closed their encore with what Mills said was “a rare moment of earnestness from Alex,” the lovingly ambivalent “Thank You Friends.” The group, who made many comments about their admiration for each other, and the joy of working together, may have been singing it to the audience who shared their love for the city’s best loved “unsuccessful” group — or they may have been singing it to one another, now a tight-knit ensemble of El Goodos hell-bent on keeping their favorite music alive.