After the chaotic but legendary Like Flies On Sherbert in 1979, it'll take a few years for a proper Alex Chilton album to be released, despite the releases of Feudalist Tarts and No Sex, two eps which had satisfied die-hard fans and hip college kids alike in the meantime. This 8 year gap can be explained by the fact that it was a time when Alex left his hometown bound for New Orleans. With the sturdy backing of drummer Doug Garrison and bass player René Corman, Alex sounds really happy with his guitar. He alternates original numbers as well as cover versions, be they jazz, country or rhythm'n'blues, with a great deal of class. Who else than Alex Chilton can indeed sing Porter Wagoner's Rubber Room, the jazz classic Margie, a song he learnt thru Fats Domino version or Charlie Rich's Lonely Weekends, two of the most well-known numbers here ? Thing For You is one of his best songs from the Eighties. The horn section is crisp and punchy as hell, as evidenced by sax player Jim Spake's work on Forbidden Love, another tune he wrote. A Lowell Fulsom classic, Make A Little Love is one of those forgotten nugget that Alex's innate good taste makes immediately stand out from the vaults of american vernacular music. Like his rendition of Nobody's Fool, a far more convincing version than Dan Penn's original on his Bell eponymous album or Let Me Be Close To You, a lost treasure once sung by Skeeter Davis where Lisa McGaughran plays the piano. Raunchy was learnt from the source along with its writer, Sid Manker, a friend of his father and a Sun Records session player, « the best Memphis guitarist » according to Alex. He is the only musician he ever took lessons with. This careful choice of covers displays a rare musical eclectism and a total lack of selling out to the so-called commercial norm.
Conveying a great deal of hedonism, 1990's Black List starts with Little GTO, a car song reminding of the early Beach Boys. In the same mold, the horny Jailbait mentions under age romance that would have appealed to Chuck Berry while the lazy number Baby Baby Baby expresses a great sense of Southern lust. I Will Turn Your Money Green shows Alex paying dues to Memphis blues legend Furry Lewis, whom he'd always known, only to realize how great his music was after Furry passed away in 1981. In between lounge music and vocal jazz lay the influences of Guantanamerika and Nice And Easy Does It, a number made popular by Charlie Rich, displaying paths Alex would follow later in his career. Four bonus tracks, originally to be found on a Japanese version of Black List top the second cd. First released on Play New Rose For Me compilation in 1986, With A Girl Like You, a Troggs' nugget, evidences Alex musical gifts. Like on the Furry song, Alex played all the instruments here, when this track was recorded in a small New Orleans home-studio. A raw version of Big Star's September Gurls, recorded live on Alex's first French tour in the Mid-Eighties, is a good testitomy of the timelessness of that song. He's having a ball doing Lou Christie's I'm Gonna Make You Mine, a bubblegum pop hit from the early Sixties Alex may be about the only one to remember except for oldies stations. Take Me Home And Make Me Like It speaks volume about the Mid-Seventies Memphis atmosphere when Alex was experimenting mostly on his own at Ardent recording studio, a place where the first six tracks of Black List were recorded in 1989.