Electricty By Candlelight / NYC 02/13/97 (LP)

Electricity by Candlelight by the now deceased Alex Chilton, chiefly famed as the boy prodigy behind the hit making Box Tops, comes as a bit of a surprise.

Rather then being a reprise of his elder days and later solo career, a slice that saw much critical acclaim but not a hell of a lot in sales, it's a live review of a slew of other composers' songs favored by the tunesmith and performed at NYC's famed Knitting Factory.

Forget that it's being presented way late, 16 years after its documentation, Bar None Records coming to the rescue, because the entire thing is pretty damned unique no matter what the circumstances, even more so for its non-glitzy urbanity.

What Electricity is, is a bootleg recording made by diehard Chilton fan Jeffrey Vargon. That fateful night, 2/13/97, Alex's band had performed one set and was scheduled for a second when the power failed in the venue being serenaded. Many audients took a refund, opportunistic bastards, but a number remained in situ and were rewarded by a guy who just didn't cotton to the idea of robbing fan hopefuls of what might have been their only chance to catch him at work. They found themselves treated to a string of songs chosen on the fly and performed by Chilton on an acoustic guitar lent him by, of all things, an audience member. Every once in a while, that kind of thing happens.