They Find a Soul, and Their Dim Moan is Wrought into a Singing Sad and Beautiful, or: Born Sixty-Three Years Ago Today

Alex Chilton was born sixty-three days ago today. Not going to type it all out again, click the Alex Chilton and Big Star tags for other posts here on Chilton. El Goodo is probably on all of them, it's my first and favorite love. I just used one of my gift cards at the joint of one evil motherfucker on the DVD:







Love love love, but did you see, around the 2:00 mark, a blurb exclaiming that this documentary was going to introduce Big Star to a whole new generation? No, all but a very few of the whole new generation (roughly the same percentage as my old generation) will never understand the mythologizing of Alex Chilton by a few of my generation, all of us who aren't geniuses but are brighter than our stations and see in Chilton's failures to achieve his deserved super-stardom a comforting robe to warm in after another cold bath at our station, nor will the whole new generation listen to Big Star any more than almost everyone of my old generation.

• But the music stands.
• Today's Maqroll precept: Some things must be paid for, others must remain debts forever. That's what we believe. The trap lies in the "must." We go on paying, we go on owing, and often we don't even know it.
• Rest in Peace, John Harvill. Yes, he was famous in Gaithersburg as the football coach, he also taught me to drive (did you know, young people, that Drivers Ed used to be offered in public schools) and lived in my neighborhood on Gaither Street and even years after I graduated he would remember my name and shake my hand. Good guy.
• Off Vesta's review of Off Vesta 2013.
• Willfully Obscure's review of Willfully Obscure 2013.
• The Top Ten most popular articles of 2013 at New Inquiry.
• Sinkhole of Dreams: locating Boston's "literary renaissance."
• Styx. More beauty via Tom.
• Re: below link. Serendipity is awesome and awful: Styx's Sail Away is possibly the worst rock song intro ever.
• Best rock intro contest!
• Was going to play this Giftmas but waited until today, BUT WHY ISN'T THIS RECOGNIZED AS THE GREATEST CHRISTMAS SONG EVER!

MOUNTAIN PINES

Robinson Jeffers

In scornful upright loneliness they stand,
       Counting themselves no kin of anything
       Whether of earth or sky. Their gnarled roots cling
Like wasted fingers of a clutching hand
In the grim rock. A silent spectral band
       They watch the old sky, but hold no communing
       With aught. Only, when some lone eagle's wing
Flaps past above their gray and desolate land,
Or when the wind pants up a rough-hewn glen,
       Bending them down as with an age of thought,
       Or when, 'mid flying clouds that can not dull
Her constant light, the moon shines silver, then
       They find a soul, and their dim moan is wrought
       Into a singing sad and beautiful.