Big Star For Rare Brooklyn Concert

Combined with the box set and the Chris Bell reissue, it sounds like a great way to cap off The Year of Big Star, eh?

By Fred Mills

This week marks the release of the sprawling, 4-CD Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky from Rhino, and we trust we've kept you fully apprised of that not-so-arcane-artifact thus far. A free stream of Big Star's unreleased song "Lovely Day" is available now at www.rhino.com/bigstar in case you need a nudge or somethin'. We further trust you don't need much nudging, however... that box has got to be one of the most handsomely designed pieces Rhino has ever done, loaded with photos that even the most ardent (pun intended) fans have NEVER seen.

Meanwhile New Yorkers should mark their calendars for November 18: that night at Brooklyn's Masonic Temple, Big Star will reconvene for a rare performance. Original members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens, plus latterday members Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer (both from the Posies) will perform classic Big Star material as well as songs from 2005's comeback album In Space.

It's shaping up to be The Year Of Big Star for fans and collectors, of course. We've already seen both an in-depth book on the band and reissues of its first two, key, LPs (go HERE to read about the book and CDs), and in addition to the box set there's also an upcoming Chris Bell archival release, an expanded 2CD edition of the Big Star founding member's s posthumous I Am The Cosmos, due Sept. 29 from Rhino Handmade.

We'll have a full report on both the Big Star box in the new print edition of BLURT ("With 98 cuts altogether, plus detailed track annotations and copious liner notes, the archival dig runs deep," sez our ace  reviewer) and the Bell collection on this website very soon.