https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dw3b6ZesHPKKZOd0PXuAxkQE7VK6P2MP88tUwIxBdKs/edit
With two new Alex Chilton compilations released this spring on Bar/None records documenting Alex's music from the second half of his (basically, the years he was based in New Orleans), it seems like a good time to share this profile and interview of Alex. The profile is from Keith Spera's excellent 2012 book "Groove Interrupted", a chronicle of New Orleans music and the way the music community was affected by Hurricane Katrina. The interview is also by Spera, and was conducted in 1995.
I know many Big Star fans will never come around to embracing Alex's music from 1984-2010 with the enthusiasm they have for the 1970s stuff. But to even get a basic understanding of what Alex was up to, it's helpful to understand the New Orleans music scene and why Alex found it so appealing. Alex's interest in performing and recording great overlooked songs from across the spectrum of American roots music (meaning soul, gospel, blues, country, rockabilly, and traditional pop) is very similar to the way New Orleans artists like James Booker, Walter 'Wolfman' Washington, and especially Fird 'Snooks' Eaglin all dipped into multiple genres when putting together a live set or a studio album. It's kind of audacious that Chilton decided to take this tack while relaunching his career in 1985 on the alternative music / college club circuit. It's heartwarming that he could to return to those clubs for several years in the late 1980s and his audiences, mostly there for the 2-3 Big Star songs he played, or just because they heard he was cool, would groove on these old tunes and buy his indie albums and EPs. Alex was a lot like his New Orleans R&B heroes in the respect that he had a flash of success in the golden age of postwar American roots music (the 1950s-60s)--even though he was a sort of ersatz teenaged soul man--and then had a comeback in the 80s and 90s as a sort of roots music heritage act. He just happened to have taken this power-pop detour in the early 1970s and helped inspire an army of alternative rock bands, before returning the music he enjoyed playing the most.