In the few years before making his name in Big Star, Chris
Bell bounced around a few different Memphis bands. The interesting thing about each
of them is that Bell’s retro sensibility was already well in place when he
strummed for The Wallabys, Ice Water, and Rock City, which featured fellow
future-Big Star Jody Stephens behind the kit. Like Big Star, each one of these
bands owed more to mid-sixties British pop than circa-1970 American Rock. Some
of their songs, such as Rock City’s “Think It’s Time to Say Goodbye” and Ice
Water’s “All I See Is You”, sound like they could have been on #1 Record. On the rare occasion Bell sang
lead, the results often ended up in Big Star’s trick bag, as when that band
recycled Rock City’s “My Life Is Right” and “Try Again”.
However, the new early-Bell compilation Looking Forward: The Roots of Big Star is not limited to Big
Star-esque power pop. There’s also a pronounced psychedelic influence on a lot
of this stuff that never bled onto Big Star’s records so unabashedly. The
Wallaby’s “Feeling High” is pure Syd Barrett bounce while the title track
sounds like a groovy outtake from Crimson
& Clover. The aptly named “Psychedelic Stuff” has a whiff of The End
about it.
The only time that Looking
Forward really sounds of its time is when Rock City cobble together an
almost proggy suite of songs about the dubious nature of religious leaders.
This five-song sequence also contains this compilation’s only blunder since a
couple of random songs are senselessly programmed within the suite. Otherwise, Looking Forward really holds its own as
a superb collection of tracks that mostly look back at pop’s 1966/1967 peak.