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I'm Julia Turner, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest number one record edition.

This is also the daily podcast from slate.com for Wednesday, March 24th, 2010.

On today's program, we're going to talk about the death of Alex Chilton, the frontman of Big Star, an article in the Boston Globe positing that music criticism is worthless, and the newest addition to the New York Times Sunday magazine, Ben Zimmer, who's taking over the on-language column written for so long by William Sapphire.

Joining me today is Slate's film critic, Dana Stevens. Hi, Dana. Hey, Julia. And sitting in for Stephen Metcalf, who is absent for a week, but not forever, is Mike Peska. Hey. Good to have you here.

Good to be here. And we also have Slate music critic Jody Rosen sitting in to talk with us about our music-heavy first two topics.

So, Jody, tell us a little bit about Alex Chilton.

Tell us about what he did and why we will miss him.

Alex Chilton was a great singer-songwriter who was born and raised in Memphis, began his career as a kind of boy band star after a fashion in a group called the box tops, with whom he had a number of chart hits,

including The Letter, which is a big hit all over the world. And then in 1971, he founded

the group Big Star.

That's the group which he made his name and recorded three terrific albums in the 1970s,

especially the first two, number one record and Radio City, which to me are just, they're perfect albums or perfect pop albums, perfect power pop albums, actually.

And maybe we'll discuss a little bit more about power pop later on.

But let's listen to one of his great songs, the song, September Girls.

September Girls. So tell the girls

Do you so much

...