What's That Song?

Alex Chilton passed away last week. You may have seen/heard the many tributes on various news outlets. Most of those reports focused on his work with Big Star, and The Box Tops. I encountered him in the 90's when we opened a handful of shows for him. He seemed like a reluctant legend, sort of a cool, curmudgeony English professor. We all worshiped the ground he walked on. His status was cemented for me during a show we played together in Denver. The audience brought him back for several encores, the last couple of which he performed entirely in Italian. No one could understand a word he was singing, but we loved him all the more for it.

This song isn't his best, or most famous, but I always loved it because it' shows his wicked humor and power with double sided words. And, check out the guitar solo. Straight out of the Tax Man handbook, this is what a solo should be in a pop song. Never in my worst nightmare would I have dreamed we would lose both Bobby Charles and Alex Chilton in the same year, and with so much music left in them. Bummer.