By Erik Morse
With the 30th anniversary of punk rock’s safety-pin Gotterdammerung now in full swing, the eponymous social reject-turned-successful-milquetoast might be goaded to drop a small fortune on all the era’s memorabilia and accoutrements in a moment of DIY nostalgia. Merchandise is teeming on record store shelves and label Web sites like the fungus and crabs that once multiplied in the putrid Chelsea Hotel. There’s the umpteenth Rough Trade reissue of the Fall, the “fully re-expanded” four disc set of London Calling with the unreleased “kazoo sessions,” those Johnny Rotten commemorative plates, some “organic” matter lifted from the rotting corpse of Johnny Thunders that’s currently reaching three figures on eBay.
In retrospect, though the truth may be as hard to swallow as a knuckle sandwich at the Manchester Trade Hall, punk was, in its 1977 genesis, a completely corporate invention – from its entrepreneurs to its major label financing to its rather swift absorption into the more consumer-friendly genre, new-wave. Yes, the corrective prologue from Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up and Start Again will not be soon forgotten by punk scribes or post-rock revisionists. Such a realization makes it all the more shameful that, as 2007 rapidly comes to a close, there has been little mention of another insurgent masterpiece that appeared on the shelves of Rough Trade Records, Chiswick, and Forced Exposure at nearly the same time as Never Mind the Bollocks but without all the slack-jawed fanfare. Unfortunately, the band in question did not hail from Brixton or the Bowery, and the LP did not sound like scorched-earth punk rock in the least. In fact, the album was over four years old before it ever found a label, and the band had since dispersed to the four corners of Memphis to do solo recordings. Of course, the group was Big Star – and the recording, simply called Third or Sister Lovers or Beale St. Green or all three in any order.