Big Star’s Third Live

An ad hoc tribute act featuring legendary power pop and indie rock artists paying homage to one of the key works in the pre-new wave pop cannon, Big Star's Third was organized to pay homage to Alex Chilton and his group Big Star's final album. In 2005, Chris Stamey, a major Alex Chilton acolyte and founder of the dB's, and Frank Heath, the owner of the noted Chapel Hill, North Carolina venue the Cat's Cradle, staged a benefit show in 2005 in which Stamey and some of their favorite local musicians performed the songs from Elliott Smith's album Either/Or. The show was a success, and Stamey proposed to Heath that they present a similar concert that would feature a re-creation of Big Star's album Third (also known as Sister Lovers). It wasn't until 2010, after Alex Chilton's untimely death, that Stamey and Heath were able to make the Third concert a reality. But with arranger Carl Marsh rewriting his original orchestrations for the event, and a band featuring Stamey, Mike Mills of R.E.M., Mitch Easter of Let's Active, and original Big Star drummer Jody Stephens joining the cream of the Chapel Hill music community, the show, held at the Cat's Cradle, became a media event. The Third concert was such a success that Stamey and Heath were invited to stage similar Big Star tribute shows across the country, as well as in the U.K. and Europe. In April 2016, a performance of the Big Star's Third show was presented at the Alex Theater in Glendale, California; guests at this show included Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, Jeff Tweedy and Pat Sansone of Wilco, Robyn Hitchcock, Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, Dan Wilson of Semisonic, and Benmont Tench of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers. The concert was filmed and recorded, and released in a special audio-visual package in April 2017 under the title Thank You, Friends: Big Star's Third Live … And More.
© Mark Deming /TiVo