Video: TV dance party featuring the Box Tops "The Letter"

Big Star has been one of my alltime favorite bands now for 20+ years. The combination of their bittersweet powerpop, on the verge of falling apart, plus their relative obscurity/cult status and the influence they exerted on bands like R.E.M., the Replacements, and countless others make them like the Holy Grail source of so much that happened later. And the driving force in Big Star was singer,

Well, here's an astonishing piece of rock archaeology, and still more proof that YouTube is the greatest thing since blah blah blah. From 1967 (Halloween) it's the Box Tops (with a teenaged Alex Chilton) from a presumed lost episode of Zacherley's Disc-o-Teen . You youngsters may not remember Zach, AKA The Cool Ghoul , but in the late 50s and early 60s he was without question the funniest and hippest of the various [...]