Live on WLIR

"Big Star sounds like a different band here than they did on #1 Record and Radio City - tougher, with a more pronounced garage accent - but in many ways, the occasional jagged edges give the songs considerably more energy than the studio renditions of these tunes ... This recording documents a good but not great night in the life of Big Star, but it's a fascinating artifact of what the band sounded like outside the confines of the studio, and this is the best presentation of this material to date".

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"A crystal-clear WLIR-FM radio broadcast from March 1974 of a set culling the best songs from #1 Record and Radio City, surely here was the chance to hear the band at the height of their power-pop powers, an experience forever denied latecomers with the Memphis band lost to the wind, Chilton lost to the night and Bell lost to the cosmos ... Live On WLIR is Big Star on the verge of everything and nothing: of success, of happiness, of acclaim, of failure. While all of these would eventually find the band, it was not in the order Chilton desired - and here you can hear the tragic but breathtaking consequences of that crushed early ambition. Put your twofer down and turn your radio on".

"Originally released as 1992's Live, these once murky recordings have been remastered and restored brilliantly in a vital reissue accompanied by a brief, but revealing, interview with Lightman, conducted by Bell biographer Rich Tupica ... And the band, as a whole, seems more flexible and willing to trespass on new territory in this engaging set, drawing songs from the first two Big Star albums without going too far afield on Stephens' snappy drumming, Chilton's slippery, yet substantive and charismatic six-string magic and Lightman's more malleable approach to the bass. As a snapshot of a band at a crossroads in its career, Live on WLIR is an archivist's dream".

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