Joyner kann natürlich auch wunderbar über Musik schreiben, das Beiblatt zur „To Almost No One“-7″-Box etwa ist ein großartiger Text. Oder diese Rezension einer Alex Chilton-Live-LP anno 2015, als Grapefruit noch kein Laden, sondern nur Label und Mailorder war, und gelegentlich Newsletter verschickt hat:
Alex Chilton „Live At The Ocean Club ’77″(Norton Records) –
While wasting the Senior Master Sergeant’s money at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in 1989, I saw my other hero, Alex Chilton, play the Ivory Tusk, the only shit bar that would have him. The Ivory Tusk smelled like a century of ruined livers and mangled covers of Free Bird– a perfect little rock and roll bar, the size of a large closet. In my memories, I loved that awful little petri dish and I am transported there instantly whenever I step into a bar that hasn’t washed the floor in awhile (which is most of them, considering my own career trajectory). The Ivory Tusk just threw sawdust down and gummed up your sneakers. I don’t think they every saw a mop they liked, except an electrified one Eugene Chadbourne brought with him once when he couldn’t find his rake. I was lucky to see a handful of memorable shows at the Tusk in my short time pretending to write poems and otherwise acting like a character from a Bob Rafaelson film or a Barry Hannah short story. The Chilton show was one of them.
Chilton was surly and self-destructive, playing music from his late 80’s sub par repertoire, records I had dutifully purchased in the hopes of hearing something close to Like Flies on Sherbert or Bach’s Bottom or any of the Big Star records. Instead, he was doing songs like „Jailbait,“ „Volare,“ „No Sex,“ „Baby Baby Baby,“ that kind of thing. But, it was still Alex Chilton with a rock trio in a tiny bar. The clerk who looked like Poison Ivy at The Vinyl Solution record store said he’d tried to score heroin there earlier that day, pretending to be interested in purchasing a used Camper Van Beethoven record before asking where a Memphis kid could get a certain need met. On stage he snarled if you applauded and he hissed when the applause wasn’t generous enough. He was totally disdainful of his audience and it didn’t seem like he wanted to be there at all or be forced to look at any of us any longer than absolutely necessary. I was a little crestfallen, he seemed as bitter as the mythology implied. I guess he had every right, in retrospect. Yes, Chilton was punching the clock that night in 1989, but even at his apparent worst, playing his least inspired material, he was still an absolute fucking Quasar. You couldn’t take your eyes off the man.
After the show I approached him and told him how much I enjoyed the show and that Big Star was my favorite band, „next to the Velvet Underground.“ Stupid things to say but shaky sincerity was all I had going for me. He wasn’t very kind about it. „Yeah, you and every other boy who picked up a guitar.“ He was all dripping southern charm to my girlfriend though, saying „Yes, Maam“ with a sinister grin when she asked him if he’d sign her copy of #1 Record.
But let’s talk about this here double LP. It was thirteen years prior to me learning my hard lesson about never meeting your heroes, back when Chilton still played his best songs and was still writing great new ones, like „My Rival.“ So, it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? It’s a double album of the late great Alex Chilton, in his prime, live in 1977. What else do you need to know? Oh, did I graduate? No, I did not. I went on tour! -Simon
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God told me to do it.