What a pisser man---just 4 months after the passing of lead singer & guitarist Alex Chilton, the founding bassist in Big Star, Andy Hummel, died on Monday from complications related to a long, hard-fought battle with cancer. While I have to admit that “power pop” has never been my favorite genre of music, these guys brought just enough hasty distress & nihilistic irony to their proceedings that all the sugar felt successfully balanced by some smoked salt; and man was this stuff sugary, harmonies so sweet they could send Belle & Sebastian or Paul McCartney running to the dentist with rotting teeth! This song is probably the band’s best known cut, perhaps the most defining slice of power pop ever put to wax, cotton candy chord progressions tempered by Chilton’s lascivious lyrics, “… September gurls do so much, I was your butch and you were touched; I loved you, well never mind, I've been crying all the time…when I get to bed, late at night, that's the time she makes things right… December boys got it bad, December boys got it bad…” Even misspelling the word ‘girls’ in the title was a wry, cutesy move that makes it hard to tell if anything beyond the music was meant to be taken seriously (as well as revealing their glam rock / bubblegum pop influences). Their music has inspired generations of artists, from having ambient influence over the Paisley Underground & mod revival scenes, to being the absolute reason for a band like Teenage Fanclub’s existence, securing Big Star the recognition they didn’t receive back in the day.
