söndag 21 Jan 2007, 1:57

Aaaaah. Been flirting with Big Star again over the last week, getting ready for what may be another major binge. I find that I love to keep favourites like Big Star, Syd Barrett, Yo La Tengo and The Velvet Underground at some distance for fear of wearing them out, and in a bid to keep them so very, very special. It's vaguely masochistic, really, because I am fully aware that they - like The Meadowlands, Swaddling Songs etc - are very special types of music: namely the type you CAN NOT get bored of, and which continually gets better and better the more you hear it. There's never any kind of peak, just continual ascension. We're talking about very special music here, music that almost seems to have been out of its creators hands, forging itself while they looked on.

Anyway, I finally got Rob Jovanovic's book about Big Star, so I'm about to get cracking on that. Really can't wait, as it's something I've been dying to read for years.

Have to also say that sitting listening to The Ballad of El Goodo (and Thirteen) again is quite an experience, charged with emotion, particularly at this time of the morning. Just breath-taking. The effect El Goodo has on me honestly is remarkable. Thirteen is admittedly a more immediate song, so one that I use to try and hook converts, but El Goodo is just unspeakably brilliant, and the most beautifully euphoric and uplifting piece of music I've ever heard. Both these songs can (and have) easily move me to tears, if I let them or they catch me at the right moment.

I should really try and write more about El Goodo, explain what makes it quite so miraculous. It's tricky, though, because it's so much more than the sum of its parts - therefore I understand why people often look blankly at me when I bang on about its greatness. The Byrds influence is shot right through it, as are the guitar techniques Alex Chilton learnt from Roger McGuinn himself. And yet, it transcends these influences. It takes those basic ingredients - the hugely uplifting harmonies, the jangly finger-picking, the inspiring up-lifting lyrics - and it puts them all together in such a way that, somehow, the end result becomes the most beautiful, moving and emotive piece of music I've ever heard.