...a few days ago, Kevin Dunn left a brief, thoughtful message on the New York Times website offering his condolences in the aftermath of the sudden loss of Alex Chilton. With his permission, we are reprinting it here:

"Chilton, a member with me (and many of the other posters here, I suspect) of the mystery of musicians -- and (eek) my close coetanean to boot (I'm palpating my chest cavity with my mind as I type) -- was arguably the truest progenitor of American power pop, which, in great part because of his propensity to honest sentiment, was always a more earnest proposition than its more brittle British cousin. If he'd done nothing else but write and record 'Life Is White' he would deserve a verdant berth in critical Elysium -- and he did so much more than that. Ave atque vale, Alex."

Well said, and way better than we could have put it. We were deeply saddened by his departure. Reflecting on Alex's untimely passing, we were struck by just how hard it is to talk about a musician as though he were a man that you knew personally: all we really have to go by is his work. His work is much celebrated, but somewhat selectively: the three Big Star albums are definitely inarguable classics. Yet we've always professed fondness for the darker corners of his oeuvre. Our undying love for the live Big Star album recorded at WLIR has baffled more than a few of our friends. To us, it captures the profound anguish and torment that always dogged Chilton, in an incredibly immediate and raw fashion. Guitar, bass, drums. Everyone sings. Chilton pushes his voice into his highest register, while displaying just what an ingenious guitarist he is...sans effects and studio-generated texture, it feels to us to be the purest distillation of Chilton the pop auteur. And boy, is it heartbreaking stuff.

But the pop life was only one life of Chilton. Unsettled and unsentimental with regard to his own past accomplishments, Alex always struck us as profoundly restless...from the blue-eyed soul of the Box Tops to the Stones-inflected country-rock of his early solo stuff to Big Star to his shambolic and often-brilliant early post-Big Star career (Like Flies on Sherbert and The Singer Not the Song sessions) to his rebirth as a supper-club soul/pop crooner, he didn't seem interested in fulfilling an audience's expectation of him: much to the frustration of fan boys everywhere. But, in each stage, taken purely on its own merits, you'll always find that honesty that Kevin speaks of above, and it -- more than any one song or album -- is his legacy. His vulnerability, wit, humor, and courage will remain an inspiration.