#1 Record/Radio City

Big Star | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 10, 1992)
• 2-Album Edition edition
• Original Release Date: 1972
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Fantasy
• ASIN: B000000XHA
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (128 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,467 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

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

Product Description

There's a lot of truth to the statement that the art lives on, long after the artist has gone or changed directions. This is certainly the case with Big Star, a Memphis band forged out of a willful vision, whose brief existence profoundly affected scores of artists spearheading the post-punk/alternative power pop schools of music throughout the eighties and nineties. R.E.M., The Replacements, The Posies, Teenage Fan Club, Wilco, and The Bangles, are just a few of the artists who have acknowledged a huge debt to Big Star. This newly remastered version of #1 Record / Radio City features enhanced packaging and two unreleased bonus tracks! --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Here's The Truth About Their Commercial Failure, August 30, 2000

By 

Eric M. Van (Watertown, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: #1 Record/Radio City (Audio CD)

No group in the history of rock 'n' roll ever put out three albums in a row as brilliant as Big Star. And it's hard to find any group that changed so radically as Big Star did in the span of three records. I've found that Big Star fans tend to fall into three camps:

1) Regards #1 RECORD as an all-time masterpiece, loves or likes RADIO CITY a lot, has a problem with SISTER LOVERS -- it's too acid-casualty incoherent.

2) Regards SISTER LOVERS as an all-time masterpiece, loves or likes RADIO CITY a lot, has a problem with #1 RECORD -- it's too slick and commercial.

3) Regards RADIO CITY as an all-time masterpiece and loves both the other two in their own very different ways.

And, of course, some of us are "3+" -- they're all masterpieces in my book, but RADIO CITY is the creme de la creme.

Other reviewers have done a wonderful job of describing this music and its enormous influence on indy rock. However, some have repeated the rather pernicious myth about the commercial failure of the listener-friendly #1 RECORD: that radio programmers didn't like it, that the record's sound was somehow wrong for its time.

There are folks at BILLBOARD and CASHBOX magazines who were paid well to listen to new releases and report on their commercial potential. Here's what BILLBOARD said on 9/9/72: "Each and every cut on this album has the inherent potential to become a blockbuster single. The ramifications are positively awesome." Boy, hedging their bet, huh? Here's CASHBOX a week later: "An important album that should go to the top with proper handling."

But just after the record was released, Ardent Records and its parent label, Stax, got into a distribution mess. Not only was there no promo activity at radio stations, there were no records in stores for people to buy. No radio station was going to go out on its own to play a record that wasn't in stores, no matter what the trade mags were saying. End of story. And it's impossible to understand why Alex Chilton and Chris Bell fell apart psychologically (and why Chilton has gone out of his way to be anti-commercial ever since) without knowing this part of the story.

In the spring of 1975 I was a college radio DJ. I happened to be playing "When My Baby's Beside Me" while a group of high school kids were being given a tour of the station. A bunch of them knocked on the control room door and wide-eyed and breathlessly demanded to know what the song was and who did it. So, yeah, 16 year old kids hearing #1 RECORD for the first time, back more or less when it was made, had the same jaw-dropping reaction to it that people do now. Genius is timeless. And had Big Star been signed to a major label, rock 'n' roll history would be enormously different.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incalculable influence - great songs and performances, December 1, 2003

By 

Perry M. Koons "theeighthbeatle" (Crownsville, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: #1 Record/Radio City (Audio CD)

The merits of Big Star can hardly be overstated due to the band's lasting influence on soooo many artists - an ABRIDGED list might include Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, Replacements, R.E.M., Game Theory, Bangles, Teenage Fanclub, and Jimmy Eat World. Of course, with most of these bands becoming MUCH more well known than Big Star, the influence is diminished somewhat because the original is heard AFTER the followers. Regardless, Big Star's 1st 2 albums create an essential release made even sweeter by the 2-for-1 deal, and the tunes still sound fresh listen after listen. A few songs drag a bit, to my ears anyway, but even the less enjoyable tracks like "Don't Lie To Me" and "Life Is White" are worthy due to great performances and lyrics. Along with Badfinger, Big Star is the absolute touchstone for melancholy pop songs that should have been huge hits - forming the basis for every power pop pretender to the throne. Fans of any aforementioned bands will do themselves a favor to pick this up, along with fans of absolute classics such as the Who, Beatles, and Byrds (lead genius Alex Chilton's faves).

Best Tracks:
"The Ballad Of El Goodo" - George Harrison-esque, shimmering ballad with stunning harmonies and guitars. One of the most celebrated examples of Chilton's genius.
"In The Street" - The feel-good Chris Bell classic that was used in "That 70's Show" (warning: that version was done by Cheap Trick!)
"Thirteen" - Another Chilton gem. Gorgeous acoustics, tender and somewhat striking lyrics. A great, honest portrait of youth.
"Way Out West" - Oh, those guitars... What a tune, this is the blueprint for all left of center jangle pop (and the guitar tone is frequently channeled by pop wonders such as Myracle Brah)
"Back Of A Car" - Great drumming! This song follows typical pop song structure but is quirky enough to stand out, and that chorus is to die for.
"September Gurls" - Depending on personal preference, this may edge out songs like "Surrender" and "Couldn't I Just Tell You" to be the #1 pop song EVER.
"I'm In Love With A Girl" - Heartbreaking and sweet, this is a pure and simple folksy ballad with engagingly imperfect vocals. Great album closer.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two of the greatest pop albums ever recorded + two bonus tracks, June 16, 2009

By 

hyperbolium (Earth, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: #1 Record / Radio City (Audio CD)

So much has been written by the brilliant pop music of these two albums, that there's little left to say about the music itself. Lauded by critics and ignored by pop music buyers, Big Star became the most influential rock band never to make it commercially. Their debut album, cheekily titled "#1 Record" (1972) and its follow-up, "Radio City" (1974), were reissued in 1978 as a gatefold two-fer that pricked the ears of pop fans and collectors who'd missed their original release. The group's name would be bandied about by an ever-growing underground of in-the-know fans-turned-worshippers. The group's unreleased-at-the-time third album (alternately titled Third and Sister Lovers) appeared briefly on vinyl on the PVC label shortly thereafter. The `80s passed before a CD reissue of the seminal first two albums appeared on Big Beat in 1990. This was followed by a domestic release on Fantasy in 1992, which was paralleled by a period live FM broadcast from 1974, Big Star Live, and a CD reissue of Sister Lovers.

The attention finally brought vocalist/songwriter Alex Chilton back to his Big Star catalog, and along with original drummer Jody Stephens and the Posies' Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, a reconstituted Big Star recorded a live album at Missouri University, Columbia. Additional reissues of the three studio albums followed, along with more archival live recordings and rehearsal tapes (Nobody Can Dance) and a studio album in 2005, In Space. The selling point of this latest reissue, aside from renewing media and retail interest in two of the greatest rock albums ever recorded, is a pair of bonus tracks. The first is the single version of "In the Street," which is an entirely different take than the album track. This version was previously reissued on a grey-market vinyl EP in the 1980s, and appeared on Ace's Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story. The second bonus is a single edit of "O My Soul" that shortens the original 5:35 to a radio-friendly 2:47.

The fold-out eight-panel booklet includes liner note from Brian Hogg penned in 1986 (as previously included in both Big Beat and Fantasy's earlier CDs), and shorter liner notes by Rick Clark, penned for Fantasy's previous domestic reissue. In fact, the booklet reproduces Fantasy's 1992 insert almost exactly, with the original's solicitation for a Fantasy catalog trimmed away and the two new tracks grafted onto the song listing in a font that doesn't quite match. Those who've purchased one of the many previous reissues might see if download services offer the bonuses as individual tracks; if not, buy this for yourself and give your old copy to someone yet to discover Big Star. That should hold you until Rhino's Big Star box set arrives in September. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]