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#1 Record/Radio City | 
 enlarge | Artist: Big Star
Label: Universal Music Group
Category: Music
List Price: CDN$ 20.99
Buy New: CDN$ 7.19
You Save: CDN$ 13.80 (66%)
New (15) Used (3) from CDN$ 6.47
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 8774
Format: Best Of
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 60025
UPC: 025218302524
EAN: 0025218302524
ASIN: B000000XHA
Release Date: August 17, 1992
Availability: Usually ships within 1 - 2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Item, factory Sealed. Buy direct from the U.S. and save! We only ship airmail to Canada (7-15 days).Caiman, les prix qu'on aime! Tous nos produits sont neufs. Envoi par avion des Etats-Unis
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| Tracks:
| • | Feel | | • | The Ballad Of El Goodo | | • | In the Street | | • | Thirteen | | • | Don't Lie To Me | | • | The India Song | | • | When My Baby's Beside Me | | • | My Life Is Right | | • | Give Me Another Chance | | • | Try Again | | • | Watch the Sunrise | | • | St 100/6 | | • | O My Soul | | • | Life Is White | | • | Way Out West | | • | What's Going Ahn | | • | You Get What You Deserve | | • | Mod Lang | | • | Back of a Car | | • | Daisy Glaze | | • | She's a Mover | | • | September Gurls | | • | Morpha Too | | • | I'm in Love With a Girl |
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| Editorial Reviews:
From Amazon.com
A two-for-one combo of the first two Big Star albums (they only recorded three). Heard side by side, #1 Record and Radio City only add further testament to Big Star's seminal greatness. On the first album, Chris Bell and Alex Chilton share songwriting credit, though each brings a remarkably different sensibility to the band: Bell creates pure pop nuggets ("Feel") while Chilton swaggers with reckless melancholy ("Ballad of El Goodo," "Thirteen."). After Bell's departure, Chilton took control of the helm for Radio City, and what a ride it is. While not abandoning Bell's penchant for pop, Radio City careens wildly through some of the most exhilarating music ever created, from the rave-up opener, "O My Soul," to the pure pop masterpiece "September Girls" to the whimsical ditty "I'm in Love with a Girl." It's too bad that Big Star didn't create more albums, but thank God they made the ones they did. --Tod Nelson
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 They'll Show You Somehow July 19, 2004
Brian Tepper (PA)
Anyone familiar with the mid-sixties pre-psychedlic Beatles is no doubt going to get a kick out of this stuff, especially given that one of its main singer-songwriters, Alex Chilton sings so much differently than he had in the Box Tops. Never the conformist, Chilton actually walked off the stage of a Box Tops gig saying he didn't want to be controlled as the sixties came to a close with so many creative artists making an impact. Later in the seventies, when questioned by a Long Island Radio jock about making "anachronistic music" and what his career had become, Alex summed it up with a curt "pretty scummy". Before this revelation, Big Star blessed the few with #1 Record, a culmination of the very best both he and a spaced out Memphis Anglophile named Chris Bell could muster in the way of perfectly crafted songs. While progressive rock became snottier, more lugubrious and about all that would play on FM radio, Big Star made a record of melodic sheen (In the Street, India Song, Ballad of El Goodo), gloriously juxtaposing sentiment in the lovliest of adolescent ballads, Thirteen, followed by the nuclear holocaustic Dont Lie to Me. It is there where #1 Record is fully realized. They perfected the experiments by earlier similar bands like the Nazz, Raspberries and Badfinger by making the acoustic guitars sound that much more earnest and crisp and making their rockers snarl that much louder. They even address their apparently deep spirituality in El Goodo, My Life Is Right, Try Again and Watch the Sunrise without the clockwork zealot righteousness found in most clergical music. They capture genuine and desperate human conflict of not being holier than thou. With Bell's tortured spirituality coming unglued as the second side of the record came to an end, chronicled on Try again and ST 100/6, Big Star ends their one perfect Pop rock masterpiece on a forboding note.
To make matters more interesting, they actually make there next record Radio City better by making it more haphazard and slightly deranged. Given that their next and last record Third/Sister lovers is basically down to Chilton falling to pieces, we have the 2nd record, in subsequent listens, sound like the last gasp for sanity with loads of sinister slop creeping its way in to their pop. While the Beatles melted into psychedlia, Big Star chose a more downward spiral in Radio City attributed in large part to booze and narcotics rather than hallucinogens. Chris Bell had minimal imput and was out of the group to cope with drugs, depression and suicide, while Alex continued to chronicle their personal mess. One gets an inebriated feel from the rollicking stop-start number O' My Soul and the crunchy She's a Mover, then descend into an almost completely bottomed out feel of the Third Album with Daisy Glaze, only to watch it explode as if the song was Stairway to Heaven with a Mandrax prescription. The best cuts on Radio City are the closest to #1 Record. Both Back of A Car and September Gurls have a candid sexual tension in the lyrics and some of the most perfect melodies and hooks committed to rock n'roll. The very moment when Chilton sings "OOOh when she makes love to me!", on September Gurls and launches into an orgasmic jangling guitar run is pop perfection. These two records combined for an affordable must buy for anyone with a rudimentary understanding of popular music. With virtually no distribution by their original label Ardent, many who own this treasure may have otherwise never heard it. Now it's your chance to do the right thing when you go to the record store to buy Hoobastank, the Calling or Ashlee Simpson; get this record instead and while you're at it, buy those other acts a copy. Chances are the ones responsible for grooming these acts may have been trying to replicate Big Star's craft ever since. Oh that's right, Big Star didn't have a stylist. But they had a need to paint their hearts on anyone's ear who heard them instead of their nails by someone making 6 figures to do it. They didn't really need it, they were Big Star!
 white dwarf music July 12, 2004
fygmynt (macon, ga)
when i first heard this music, i was so excited. here, then, was the greatest rock 'n' roll band of them all. maybe not the best hard rock band, or the best pop rock band, but as far as rock 'n' roll went, who could top this? it was genuine, simple, catchy, anthemic, well-produced-but-not-overly-produced...but just a few years later, i never EVER listen to it anymore. i realize now that what impressed me so much was the purity of it. a purity that, let's face it, could also be called "middle-of-the-road". it's TOO simple, TOO catchy. there's just not enough here to keep me coming back. it's predictable, and that's a shame, because in a lot of ways, this was a great band. they just didn't have many great songs...
big star May 31, 2004
i have lived in memphis tn.for many years when i first heard of big star about 1985 they were all ready mythical band.i seeked out jody stephens who works for ardent records today i called him and my jounery with big star began,i attented thier first reunion in columbia mo.in 1993 with john hour and ken stringfellow along with jody and alex it's was some experience ill never for get it seek out the live lp on zoo recoreds might be avaiable on amazon.com?
there is rumor that the show was video taped along with 5 songs from that show that was never released sound board quality.
anyhow any one thinking of this lp should but it and enjoy one of the greatest bands ever.i have all the big star stuff in my car it is a fresh today as it was when it was written.the song watch the sunrise beautiful song most don't know that there is a alternative to that song called country morn.written by chris bell,all instro sound beautifull seek out back of a car magazine
the second issue has a felxy disc of that song worth seeking out.
so allll enjoy lay back listen t oa wonderfull band once you listen you will be hooked forever!!!
by the way big star is mixing a new lp right now first in 25 years should be great and rumor is that the orginal bass player(andy hummel)might be playing on a few tracks now if only chris were here.by the way chris has a lp on zoo records also solo stuff look for it amazon .com might still carry it
enjoy all
A favorite out of left field March 5, 2004
William J. Eichelberger (Ft. Thomas, KY)
Combining two very different albums, this disc definitely offers bang for your buck, but also leaves one wondering how some bands make it while others seem to eternally be watching from the outside. Through no fault of their own, Big Star was one of the outsiders, but I can't imagine that anyone who lives with this disc in the cd player for a while won't be left shaking their head as to why. For years Big Star was nothing more than a name that always seemed to pop up in books and articles written on the power pop subject. It wasn't until a friend found this cd in a used book store and got curious that he and I were both awakened to one of the true lost gems of the music industry. Much like Badfinger, another great "shouldabeen", in that the music was strong enough to stand on it's own, but the foundation that the band chose to build on wasn't up to snuff. Pick this up and add it to your road trip collection.
 Another Pantry Project January 29, 2004
Jeffrey Rubard (Beaverton, OR US)
"Boosters claim this is just what the AM has been waiting for, but the only pop coup I hear is a reminder of how spare, skew, and sprung the Beatles '65 were, which is a coup because they weren't."Robert Christgau, on *Radio City* Big Star is one of the most influential bands you've never heard of: these two records (along with the truly puzzling and questionable *Third/Sister Lovers*) defined a genre, "AM pop", which generated more-or-less unknown bands at a rapid clip during the 80s and 90s (the best-known of these being Teenage Fanclub and The Replacements, whose "Alex Chilton" has probably received more airplay than all of the Big Star bandleader's output). But even those familiar with Chilton's off-kilter takes on various genres may be unfamiliar with the exact cultural context of Big Star's genesis: namely, their being named after the Memphis, TN grocery chain, and the subgenre of promotional rock songs such as performed by California surf groups (and compensated as such) can rather reasonably be taken to be the source of the group's "engineering values". On all accounts, this was a group which was ready for prime time; and that their music became a standard of "underground" is something of an outstanding problem in American popular musicology. Additionally, as attested to by the none-too-revisionist use of "In The Street" as theme music for *That 70s Show*, this was really music of its era: that it did not become popular really paved the way in part for the US recording culture of the 70s -- Chilton's interface with which (via even-more-obscure garage-punk and R&B covers) is well-documented on *19 Years: An Alex Chilton Collection*. But it is also to be mentioned that *#1 Record* was influential in another way, being the recorded group contribution from Chris Bell (soon to die in a car accident) and the source of some legend concerning his decidedly Anglophilic aesthetic (preserved on the "rarity" *I Am The Cosmos*). The only thing that keeps this from being a total "snapshot" of American youthcult circa 197< is the lack of influence from the new soul sounds of the early 70s, and one criticism that could be lodged is that this is something like a bid by Ardent (now a Christian label) to reconstitute the Sun catalog along the lines of post-Atlantic Stax/Volt (whose #1 employee, Booker T. Jones, was once a Big Star clerk). But this record has given much pleasure to many people, and I do not see that it is not honestly come by.
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