Jody Stephens will lead a special SummerStage concert performance of Big Star’s THIRD on June 30 (photo by Daniel Coston)
Central Park SummerStage
Rumsey Playfield
Sunday, June 30, free, 7:00
www.cityparksfoundation.org
www.bigstarthird.com
In March 2010, Chris Stamey was getting ready to head to SXSW to ask the re-formed Big Star if he could put together an all-star band to play the group’s seminal 1970s record Third / Sister Lovers when he found out that Alex Chilton had suddenly passed away at the age of fifty-nine. With the help of Big Star cofounder Jody Stephens, the project eventually went on because, as Stamey explains on his blog, “regardless of who performed it, it should be heard out in the air, not confined to earbuds, cars, and living rooms. In the same way that Mozart and Beethoven, in their day, were heard.” On June 30, Stamey will lead a diverse group of friends in a performance of the full album, which includes such tracks as “Kizza Me,” “Holocaust,” “Kangaroo,” “You Can’t Have Me,” “Femme Fatale,” and “Take Care,” in Central Park, with vocalists Sharon Van Etten, Kurt Vile, Marshall Crenshaw, Pete Yorn, Reeve Carney, Jonathan Donahue, and Becky Stark joining instrumentalists Mike Mills, Mitch Easter, Ken Stringfellow, Richard Lloyd, Dale Baker, Charles Cleaver, Django Haskins, Brett Harris, Skylar Gudasz, Stephens, and a twenty-piece chamber orchestra featuring Jane Scarpantoni and the Uptown Horns. Big Star fans can get even more beginning on July 3, when Drew DeNicola’s documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me opens at the IFC Center, with Stephens, DeNicola, and others participating in Q&As at select shows on July 4.