People seem to have forgotten Alex Chilton was in the Box Tops.<\/p>\n
Labels make a difference.\u00c2\u00a0 If Big Star had been on Warner Brothers instead of Ardent, if not a household word, the band would be as well known as Little Feat.\u00c2\u00a0 People would ooh and aah when they heard "September Gurls" or "Back Of A Car".\u00c2\u00a0 They might not be party staples like "Dixie Chicken", but they’d be a rite of passage, listened to by adolescent males as well as power popster gurls.\u00c2\u00a0 And "Thirteen" would be "Pink Moon", Alex Chilton would be bigger than Nick Drake.<\/p>\n
But Alex didn’t die.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s still out there hitting the boards, still working for a living, for the modest few aware of his greatness.\u00c2\u00a0 But before Alex Chilton was a cult item, he was a star, in the Box Tops.<\/p>\n
Joe Cocker did a killer version of "The Letter", still it’s eclipsed by the under two minute original.<\/p>\n
Oh, you know it…<\/p>\n
Give me a ticket for an aeroplane As great as the song is, it’s Alex’s delivery that puts it over the top.\u00c2\u00a0 With a throaty urgency an adolescent Alex captures the angst of\u00c2\u00a0 Shakespeare, it’s a modern day "Romeo & Juliet".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s utterly perfect.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not the only great Box Tops song.<\/p>\n If you lived through the sixties, you also know "Cry Like A Baby".\u00c2\u00a0 A trifle follow-up back then, but a classic when heard today.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, there’s a plethora of backup singers, but it’s the offhanded Chilton vocal that enraptures you.<\/p>\n And then there’s the magical "Soul Deep".\u00c2\u00a0 Which didn’t get much airplay in my market, but bridges white and black to create a number that makes you want to dance, elatedly.<\/p>\n But the Box Tops track that’s my favorite is the one I heard on the Bromley jukebox.\u00c2\u00a0 At the end of the day, when the sun had gone down, before my mom and dad rescued their newly-minted teenagers from the base lodge and took them home.<\/p>\n I fell in love with the Who in that out of the way alcove, "I Can See For Miles’ got regular spins.\u00c2\u00a0 My absolute favorite was American Breed’s "Bend Me, Shape Me".\u00c2\u00a0 But the third 45 I had to buy when I got home to Connecticut from Christmas in Vermont was the Box Tops’ "Neon Rainbow".<\/p>\n It starts off with an acoustic guitar, like off a Gerry & the Pacemakers record.\u00c2\u00a0 And the atmosphere has an Anglo feel, like a walk in the English rain, until they hit the chorus.<\/p>\n City lights Lying on the floor doing my back exercises the other day I got a sudden urge to hear "Neon Rainbow".\u00c2\u00a0 There was something about the weather, the darkness that made me think of those days at Bromley back in ’67.\u00c2\u00a0 I pulled it up on my iPod and I was brought right back.<\/p>\n Too many of today’s hits have no mood, no darkness, you can’t unzip them and wallow inside, alone, just you and the music.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing "Neon Rainbow" sets your mind free.<\/p>\n And the way it concludes…\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 The instrumental comes at the end instead of the middle.\u00c2\u00a0 For over thirty seconds the music plays and you’re just left with the feeling, of having heard the song.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like walking home from a date.\u00c2\u00a0 With a bounce in your step.\u00c2\u00a0 You never want this mood to end.<\/p>\n And that’s why you play the record over again.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 Something that you don’t want to let go.\u00c2\u00a0 You want to stay in the place the song has put you…outside the regular world, where your humanity is all that counts.<\/p>\n You can live without direction In a neon rainbow <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" People seem to have forgotten Alex Chilton was in the Box Tops. Labels make a difference.\u00c2\u00a0 If Big Star had been on Warner Brothers instead of Ardent, if not a household word, the band would be as well known as Little Feat.\u00c2\u00a0 People would ooh and aah when they heard "September Gurls" or "Back Of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-h6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Ain’t got time to take a fast train<\/em><\/p>\n
The pretty lights
They can warm the coldest nights<\/em><\/p>\n
And it don’t have to be perfection
And life is love<\/em><\/p>\n
A neon rainbow
A neon rainbow<\/em><\/p>\n