Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (2012)

This one I got to in a round about way.  It all started with Charles Laquidara, the DJ from Boston, who was on WBCN for a decades.  He played the song "Alex Chilton" by the Replacements  many years back as one of his featured and recommend songs.  I thought the song was fantastic, bought the CD "Pleased to Meet Me" for that song alone, and it has ranked as one of my favorite songs ever since.

I was under the impression that Alex Chilton was a music producer (which he was) but knew nothing of his work as a musician.

MANY, MANY years later, after hearing that the theme song for "That's 70's Show" was written by Alex Chilton for his band Big Star, was I made aware of the band Big Star.  After getting hold of their albums and listening to them, they didn't really make a big impression on me and I didn't see the magic in them or know that they had a cult following.

Once I found out about this film, I watched it at the first chance I got.  It was through watching it that Big Star finally made a big impression on me and I came to understand the relevance of Alex Chilton.

The movie is a bit hard to follow at times, and it may lack appeal for those who have no knowledge or interest in Big Star.  The reason the film is hard to follow is that at times the it was hard to understand the relevance of some of the people who spoke or were spoken about by their relatives, as their names and relevance may not sink in with their names only being shown in their initial introduction.  It took a while to realize (after reviewing the film and checking on line) that the person whom they kept coming back to throughout the film was the drummer (and last surviving member of Big Star) Jody Stephens.

I have found the songs "September Gurls" and "I Am the Cosmos" to be especially outstanding.

I was quite depressed to learn of the passing of Alex Chilton in 2010 (as well as Andy Hummel the bassist for Big Star) and also that Chris Bell had died tragically in 1978.

While a number of great event took place for me in 2010, there were also a large number of tragic events (as the passing of two member of Big Star, as listed above), including the passing of both Robert Culp and Stephen J Cannell (of the Greatest American Hero and a large number of other projects) in that same year.