Life Is Right: Omnivore Plans Standalone Release For Classic Big Star Concert
Omnivore Recordings has long been the destination for all things Big Star–and next year, the label will release one of the band’s few official live concerts outside of the box set it debuted in.
Live At Lafayette’s Music Room, to be released January 12, showcases the legendary power pop band kicking off 1973 at the acclaimed Memphis venue. Co-founder Chris Bell had recently departed the group, leaving singer/guitarist Alex Chilton, bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens to continue as a trio. While the group would not yet commit to recording a follow-up to 1972’s #1 Record until fall of the next year, this show at Lafayette’s features tracks from both #1 Record and the album that would become 1974’s Radio City, including future classics like “O My Soul” and “Back Of a Car.”
Months after this show, which found Big Star opening for Archie Bell & The Drells, the band would return to the same venue for the Memphis Rock Writers’ showcase, electrifying the assembled critics to evangelize for one of the best bands that never quite made it. But it’s this show that found their way into the hearts of fans everywhere when it was released in Keep An Eye On The Sky, Big Star’s Grammy Award-winning 2009 box set. A new master of the same show by Michael Graves, as supervised by Omnivore honcho (and that box set’s co-producer) Cheryl Pawelski, is what features on this new set, available on CD as well as vinyl for the first time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly4T39yQyKw
New extras in the package include liner notes by Bud Scoppa, who was in attendance for the band’s May show at Lafayette’s, as well as a previously unreleased radio interview with Chilton and Hummel conducted in the summer of 1972. That interview will be available as a digital download with all physical formats of this release. You can pre-order the set from Amazon U.S. right now!
Live At Lafayette’s Music Room (Omnivore, 2018)
CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
- When My Baby’s Beside Me
- My Life Is Right
- She’s a Mover
- Way Out West
- The Ballad Of El Goodo
- In The Street
- Back Of a Car
- Thirteen
- The India Song
- Try Again
- Watch The Sunrise
- Don’t Lie To Me
- Hot Burrito #2
- I Got Kinda Lost
- Baby Strange
- Slut
- There Was a Light
- ST 100/6
- Come On Now
- O My Soul
- Alex Chilton & Jody Hummel Interview with Jon Scott on FM 100, Summer 1972 (downloadable bonus track)
All music recorded at Lafayette’s Music Room, Memphis, TN – 1/1/1973 and released on Keep An Eye On The Sky (Rhino R2 519760, 2009)
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An interesting set…the choices from “#1 Record” are ones that had some more production depth that “Radio City” had less of….especially songs like “The India Song” and “ST 100/6” are unusual, to me at least, so i am looking forward to hearing this! Thanks for the heads up!!!!!!