From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V9 #135 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Wednesday, July 21 2010 Volume 09 : Number 135 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] fables? [Jenny Grover ] [loud-fans] A bad year to be from Big Star... [Andrew Hamlin ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:14:59 -0400 From: Jenny Grover Subject: [loud-fans] fables? Anyone here got the 25th Anniv. Fables of the Reconstruction? How's the remix job? How about the bonus tracks? Jen ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:14:42 -0700 From: Andrew Hamlin Subject: [loud-fans] A bad year to be from Big Star... http://pitchfork.com/news/39493-rip-big-star-bassist-andy-hummel/ r.i.p., Andy PSF: What kind of bond did you find with Chris Bell? How would you describe his personality? As I said, we went to high school and college together. We were basically a couple of neurotics little rich kids and went to private schools and all. In our senior year in high school we became best friends because we were kind of bad guys - we had that in common. We smoked cigarettes and pot and drank and all. Then we went off to college together at U.T. in Knoxville. While there we got heavily in to the anti-war political scene and acid and all and developed our common interest in Rock and Roll - primarily the British invasion type stuff which was getting its second wind at about that time; late Beatles, Led Zeppelin, etc. Then when we came back to Memphis that continued and we started being in bands together and stuff. Chris actually was a very bright, seemingly happy, guy with a total dedication to his music and musicianship when I first met him. In fact his compulsiveness about it is one thing that ultimately drove us apart. He became so intolerant and demanding that I just couldn't handle him any more. Of course I was to far the other way. I just wanted to raise hell and party. Then of course because he was so intense about it, the failure of Ardent and Stax Records to get the first record, which we felt was good and saleable, into the stores and it's resulting failure totally freaked him out. That along with the emotional turmoil going on in his love life at the time just broke him down and he became what we would now call clinically depressed. PSF: How did things change when Alex originally entered the picture? Alex just made everything better of course. He was just what we needed. He had the name, the voice, and best of all you could get studio time easily if he was with you. Plus the combined talent of the two of them just seemed unstoppable. But even early on you could see that dark side to him which has been so well documented in the media subsequently. PSF: How would you describe the atmosphere for the recording of #1 Record? How much was Alex or Chris in charge? Where did you fit in? Well, Chris WAS in charge. I would pretty well credit him with recording and producing that LP. Of course, he had a lot of artistic help from Alex but Chris was the technical brains behind it. He was the only one of us at that time who new how to record. Early on, I was just trying to play bass and keep up with the rest. But later on, after I had taken the audio engineering course and become more comfortable with the bass, I began to play the guitar and piano and write music a lot more and to just generally expand musically. After we moved to Madison Ave., I began to go into the studio alone at night and record my own music which is where "India Song" came from. I engineered a little of the later No. 1 stuff, but Chris was the main force. I don't think I really began contributing heavily until Radio City. PSF: How would you describe Chris' songwriting technique (from what you saw)? On the first LP, Alex and Chris pretty well just brought completed songs into the studio to record with a guitar part and lyrics. Then we played them together to learn them and developed the bass, drum, and other parts. The songs may have been tweaked a bit here and there during this process but for the most part they were a done deal when they were brought into the studio. So I don't know a whole lot about Chris's writing technique at this point other than to point out that he was a guitarist first and foremost and I think most of his songs began life as guitar riffs of one sort or another. His producing was agonizing, very meticulous, and quite frankly a bit overdone in my opinion. He spent hours and hours in the studio alone, with Alex, or with the whole band overdubbing, adding special effects, and just generally looking for every conceivable way to jazz up the tunes. He got MUCH worse about this after he went solo too. PSF: What kind of fond memories do you have of the recording of the first record? Not too many actually, at least in the early days. It was a very trying time in my life. Chris and I were both still living at home and going to college while trying to do the Big Star thing, there were a lot of drugs floating around, and I was just kind of trying to figure out where I fit into everything that was going on. Later on, as I began to learn how to record, and got my musical chops back on other instruments and stuff I began to really enjoy. I would spend hours and hours in the middle of the night in the B studio on Madison recording just anything and everything I could think of - sometimes with friends, sometimes with Alex and/or Richard, and sometimes just by myself. PSF: What did the group think of the first album when it was completed? I don't know about the others but I was sick and tired of most of it by then other than some of the acoustic tunes which I've always really liked. - --Andy Hummel, from an interview conducted by Jason Gross at http://www.furious.com/perfect/andyhummel.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:33:01 -0700 From: Andrew Hamlin Subject: Re: [loud-fans] fables? Curious, this silence--especially regarding the act I think we all understand this list *really* revolves around. Critics (nine of 'em, anyway) rave, though: http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/rem/fablesofthereconstruction25?q=fables%20of%20the%20reconstruction That puts them fourth on the site's 2010 music hi-scores (behind the Stones, Janelle Monae, and Big Boi), Andy "I write like H.P. Lovecraft." - --The verdict of http://iwl.me/ on the first three paragraphs of http://drownedinsound.com/releases/15515/reviews/4140469 ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V9 #135 *******************************