Live in Anvers

Alex Chilton | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 3, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Last Call Records
• ASIN: B0002JELXQ
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #801,951 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Intro

2. Ah Ti Ta Ti Ta Ta

3. Song Intro

4. In the Street

5. Song Intro

6. 634-5789

7. Hook Me Up

8. II Ribelle

9. Song Intro

10. Bangkok

11. Shiny Stockings

12. Claim to Fame

13. Sonata, Grave

14. Autumn in New York

15. Sick and Tired

16. It's Too Late to Turn Back Now

17. Concert Outro

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The great live Chilton album is yet to come, September 2, 2004

By 

PH-50-NC "PH-50-NC" (Southeast USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live in Anvers (Audio CD)

This one's a little frustrating. As was the case with the live record from 1980 (with the Soft Boys members backing him up), the players aren't bad at all. It's just that the American studio and touring bands are better versed and rehearsed than this European counterpart. Those looking to sample the post-Big Star Chilton should look first to "High Priest" "Set" "Cliches" and "Man Called Distruction." Or "Like Flies on Sherbert," if you want drunken mayhem done once more with feeling.

That said, there's enough here to make it an easy recomendation for my fellow Chiltophiles.

"Ah Ti Ta Ti Ta Ta" (not to be confused with "Tee Na Nee Na Nee Na Noo") is a happy little Ernie K. Doe tune that was new to me (and well done in this live version). Sam and Dave's "634-5789" is also a highlight. "It's Too Late to Turn Back Now" is great, though it has a band introduction in the middle that breaks the mood a bit. "Claim to Fame" is more Stax-flavored R&B, and is one of the better tracks on the album.

The intro to Bangkok is funny--Alex refers to his late-seventies self as a "drunken hooligan," the the performance is fine (but not quite sleazy enough to those in love with the original single). I had high hopes for "Sonata, Grave" (hoped it would be as nice as his solo-guitar arrangement of part of a Bach chorale on "Cliches")--alas, the band joins him for this, and it doesn't really succeed.

"Il Ribelle" and "In the Street" are fine--you won't find yourself reaching for the track-skip button, but his studio versions of both tunes surpass what's here.

In the "I don't need to hear this more than once" category are "Shiny Stockings" and "April in Paris"--both rough here (the pickup band just isn't familiar enough with these tunes/arrangements, both from the Count Basie Band book)--and "Sick and Tired," which doesn't recreate the killer New Orleans groove of the earlier studio version. "Hook Me Up" also misses the deep pocket of the studio version. I really wish the band had just layed out on the standards (Basie material) and let Chilton do them solo--also the classical piece. The album is a mixed bag; worth it in the end, but not for the Chilton novice.

EDIT: it's six years after I wrote this review, and almost a year since Chilton's passing, and I've been finding live recordings online that confirmed my hunch that professional-sound quality tapes exist of Chilton playing live with his usual post-comeback sidemen (either Rene Coman or Ron Easley on bass, and either Doug Garrison or Richard Dworkin on drums). For instance, there are a couple of FM radio broadcasts from February 1988 (Hamburg Germany and Munich, with Easley and Garrison as the rhythym section) that for me surpass this official recording (particularly the Hamburg show, which has really good sound). From the same month there is also an FM broadcast from Dornbirn Austria that's equally good.

Moving further afield, there's an audience recording from May of 1998 (look for "Under Acme, New York, NY") that's perfectly listenable, and the band is Alex's own. Likewise, from Nov. 1999, an audience recording of a gig in Philadelpia (look for "The Khyber") that is decent enough to listen to without undue distress. An April 1993 gig at Howlin' Wolfs in in New Orleans has thin but clear sound and a wonderful closer, an unaccompanied version of Frank Sinatra's "Only the Lonely". If you are willing to tolerate a little lower fidelity, there are several others fairly easily available, including NYC gigs from 1977 with Chris Stamey on bass, gigs by the re-formed Big Star, and a September 1981 gig (somewhere in New England I believe) that has him doing a great version of Johnny Mathis's hit "Chances Are" (including an over-the-top guitar solo that contrasts his purposefully loungy vocal delivery). The live recordings from the 80s and 90s won't sound *that* different from his very live-in-the-studio recording approach on "Set" "High Priest" "Black List" and "Man Called Destruction", which are still the best way to get acquainted with latter-day Chilton.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Claim to Fame, June 3, 2010

By 

E. Hurt "--sexington green" (nashville johnnycashville, tenn.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Live in Anvers (Audio CD)

The record under review here is a live set in Flanders, Belgium. The pickup band is pretty good, and Alex is in great form. Here is a typical Chilton set comprising a couple of originals and a lot of great covers. What made Chilton, who has not survived (unfortunately for those of us who revere him as a first-class performer), unique in the annals of pop is his love of the small-scale Southern r&b made by such labels as Stax, Fame and Malaco. This is music that the average music lover knows nothing about. I bet very few of the people who have paid lip service to Alex, the Replacements, and the tedious list of bands Alex supposedly influenced in the blighted '80s and '90s, know anything about, say, Frederick Knight, whose very obscure soul single "Claim to Fame" Alex does up wonderfully on this record. There's a Johnny "Guitar" Watson tune done quite well, a Chris Kenner New Orleans r&b song called "Sick and Tired" that features some great guitar work from Alex, and a song by Ernie K-Doe--another New Orleans r&b singer. In short, this set illuminates a sensibility not shared by the average American ignorant of the kind of music Alex Chilton loved. You hear this stuff in the deep South, in towns like Jackson, Miss., Memphis, Hattiesburg, New Orleans itself, Baton Rouge. A kind of mid-century African-American, humorous, light, soulful kind of music that won't appeal to the maudlin sensibilities of many pop fans, who equate angst with art and art with "self-expression." Alex Chilton may have seemed to be merely perverse, but his song selections were done out of love for a tradition that time has begun to sweep away. This record--which for all intents and purposes is his last real record, since the rather misbegotten Big Star collection released in 2005 was a pure money-making project and barely indicative of what Alex was really into in the last decades of his life--documents that love well enough. I just wish there were more, but Alex realized that rock 'n' roll had to be lived in the moment and on stage, where his gifts were often more apparent than in recording studios.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Live in Anvers or Live in Memphis?, August 9, 2004

By 

Joe Colvin "Joe" (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live in Anvers (Audio CD)

Alex Chilton stole into Antwerp in January '04 with very little fanfare and laid down one of his cleanest, tightest live performances on CD. It's really a bit of an anachronism: three back-up Flemish musicians joined this career veteran in his homage to the great names of Memphis music on this Belgian stage. Thankfully Studio Brussels and Last Call Records managed to nail down the one-time performance.
The slew of cover tunes from the likes of Eddie Floyd, Ernie K-Doe, and Johnny Watson nearly drown out the headliner himself. And the funny thing is, Chilton almost embarrassingly introduces his self-penned tunes as if he doesn't feel worthy to stand among those he prefers to cover.
Fans and collectors of Chilton's 30-year career will welcome the new recordings of like the catchy "Ah Ti Ta Ti Ta Ta," "634-5789," and "Claim to Fame." Few musicians have strung together such an eclectic career as Chilton, and there is certainly a taste of nearly everything here, and it's in all aspects Memphis sound. For good balance, there's a rocking live rendition of "Il Ribelle" and a tear-jerking version of Vernon Duke's"Autumn in New York."
The only "drag" about this otherwise impressive CD is that Chilton never had the chance to play long and deliver "What's Your Sign, Girl?" as the ultimate encore. In the meantime, Amazon should discount this fine album since it will surely lead to mining for forgotten classics from the recent past from Chilton and those he covers so well.