Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton showed up in New York on the punk rock scene from Memphis in the mid-Seventies, playing clubs like CBGBs. With Big Star and the Box Tops already behind him, he was an old man, playing a disguised loud, sloppy version of the pure pop he'd created in the past. Record stores like Bleecker Bob's had his 45s, autographed in thick cardboard sleeves. He didn't get into the Rock ad Roll Hall of Fame this week. He was 59 when he died in New Orleans today. He'll be a Death of The Day tomorrow.

Is that Tom Hearn in the New York Times?

The tables are turned for legendary punk rock photographer Tom Hearn, the Tabloid Baby pal who chronicled the genre's beginnings with his classic black and white pictures of The Ramones, Blondie and denizens of the Punk magazine offices, as he finds himself the subject of a photo in The New York Times.

Hearn, who turned the tables on his subjects in the past decade as he became one of the most popular and sought-after bandleaders in Connecticut, is shown rocking the Creative Cooking New Orleans Restaurant in Westbrook, Connecticut, with his popular musical group, Big Fat Combo, in a picture accompanying a review of the joint.

The restaurant is credited and rated "O.K."; The tall ginger-haired King of Cheshire Rock and his Combo, purveyors of surf, punk and country music, are not credited by name, though the reviewer notes that "live music heats up the place on weekends."

Tom Hearn is still active with his camera-- among his subjects are those same punk rock pioneers, thirty years or so later. Click here to see and hear The Big Fat Combo in action.