- Alex Chilton
After hearing of Alex Chilton’s passing Memphis musician and long time music scenester Harris Scheuner expected someone to announce a tribute concert. He assumed there would be an event like the one held for Jim Dickinson, which he describes as, “grand, and perfect.” Every day he posted a message to his Facebook page: “Whoever put on the Dickinson tribute, please put one on just like it for Alex.” But nothing happened.
“I heard about, and attended the memorial for Alex at Minglewood Hall, which caused me to tear up,” Sheuner says. “It was touching, and beautiful, but it was not a musical event.” After the Minglewood event he called Ross Johnson who played drums with Chilton in Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and told him that he had either a terrible idea or a great idea to put on a Chilton tribute concert. “He told me that he thought that a tribute show had to be done,” Scheuner says. “So I hung up the phone, and went straight to the computer.” Not knowing where or when it would be he posted a message on on his Facebook page announcing an event that would allow local musicians influenced by Chilton to pay their respects in song.
“When Jews die, other Jews sit Shiva,” Scheuner says. “When musicians die other musicians play their songs. That’s just how it is.
Throughout high school Scheuner thought of himself as a “rock-n-roll elitist.” He played the drums, had big hair, and was into Led Zeppelin, and Rush. When he started started college at MSU he found out about a whole world of music that he didn’t know existed: The Velvet Underground, The Soft Boys, The Dbs, and Alex Chilton.
“It was truly an epiphany,” he says. “I realized that I had been duped by the record industry,and that the real rock-n-roll, the true spirit of rock-n-roll was kept alive by musicians from underground. It not only opened my eyes about music but about culture in general, the difference between product and art.”
Scheuner & Greg Cartwright perform the Bell Notes hit “I’ve Had It” at the Antenna Club Reunion. The song also appears on Alex Chilton’s LIKE FLIES ON SHERBERT LP with vocals by Jim Dickinson.
