Local writer Andrew Earles, who recently signed his own deal with Matador Records as part of the comedy duo Earles and Jenson, recently republished a tale on his FailedPilot blog from Ross Johnson that spins a tale of playing with Alex Chilton, Recording at Ardent Studios and opening for the Clash - it's quite a read:
THE PANTHER BURNS: A CONFESSIONAL
by Ross Johnson
Pitiful Beginnings In the summer of 1978 I played with Alex Chilton in a three piece band called the Yard Dogs. We played on the street in downtown Memphis for spare change. We did one club gig at the dark and tiny Midtown Saloon that summer and then broke up. Shortly thereafter I moved in with a groupie from St. Louis (not my groupie; she slept with major label musicians who did real tours and real records). Alex asked me to play with him in Austin, Texas, that November, but my groupie companion nixed that. She liked to discourage my contact with people like Alex, or any other Memphians for that matter. She left town in January, ‘79, and I promptly headed for the bars which is where, one drunken night, I ran into Alex and one Gustavo Falco/nee Gus Nelson. They told me they were starting a band and needed a drummer. Chilton had recently returned from a year in Manhattan playing CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City where he’d been somewhat converted to a sloppy punk ethos and was looking for enthusiastic amateurs to play with on his return to Memphis. I knew that this would be my only chance to play with a talent like Chilton (admittedly more than a little down on his luck at the time but still the best thing going in Memphis) and bluffed my way into the band. I auditioned for the band pounding out a beat on a table top along with a Buddy Holly 45 on the jukebox at a local bar. I got the job.
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