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ROCK CITY
BY JONATHAN PERRY
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What becomes a legend most? In the case of ’70s power-pop progenitors Big Star, reissues and newly unearthed artifacts. The latest document to be added to the corpus surrounding the cult band’s tumultuous existence and premature flame-out is this essential collection of recordings intended for an album that never was written and performed by a band who barely were. During their brief lifetime, however, Rock City featured two of Big Star’s future founders, singer/guitarist Chris Bell and drummer Jody Stephens. A party-crashing Alex Chilton occasionally stopped by to guest on vocals and steel guitar. Chilton and Bell were already collaborating on songs, as is attested here by early versions of "Try Again" — you can hear Chilton on the count-in — and "Feel," the latter credited to Icewater, Bell’s pre–Rock City outfit. Also on hand for these 1969-’70 sessions was the coterie of Ardent producers and engineers who would, a couple of years later, give Big Star’s first two albums their crisp, crystalline shimmer. Those men do the same for the songs here — in fact, Rock City’s version of "My Life Is Right" sounds almost identical to the later version on Big Star’s No. 1 Record. Although Rock City were more singer/bassist Thomas Dean Eubanks’s songwriting vehicle than Bell’s, what’s revelatory is how much of a template the unit were for what would come later. And how close Eubanks, who would go on to make a few scattered recordings, sounds vocally to Chilton (two of Eubanks’s singles are included here for completists). That said, Rock City also sound like Three Dog Night or the Guess Who with Eubanks at the helm of tracks like the would-be hippie anthem "The Answer" and the campfire clap-along "Shine on Me."
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