Bangkok. Alex Chilton. 1978. Fun.

 Before his death in 2010, Alex Chiton’s artistic career passed through multiple phases—teen luminary, pop craftsman, studio producer, master archivist of American song—each one underpinning his mythic pop status. While living in New York City after the dissolution of Big Star Chilton recorded and released the single Bangkok, one of the States’ most under appreciated, sexually provocative numbers from that or any other era. Compared with 1978’s other paean to big city sexuality, Chilton bests the cooly seductive, coke fueled bluster of Jagger’s Miss You performance by baring his sexual audacity and fearlessly expressing the bravura wantonness of the sex act. There’s so much vulnerability in the timbre of Chilton’s singing voice that when he turns it inside out, stripping it of its emotive appeal, as he does on Bangkok, he sounds aggressively masochistic. It isn’t a hypnotic performance; it’s too incendiary for that. Descended from vocalists like Gene Vincent, Esquerita, and Eddie Cochran, Bangkok belongs to a long American tradition of delinquency, right down to its ridiculous lyric, which reads like a catalog of juvenile, Asian-inspired fantasies. “Here’s a little thing that’s gonna please you,” Chilton sings, insisting, from the start of the song, that size doesn’t matter. Everyone’s invited.

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