You can see how much Big Star meant to a generation of musicians on Thank You Friends: Big Star’s Third Live … and More.

Lo-fi recordings go one of two ways for me. They often sound like the artist is self-consciously lowering the stakes, making recordings that sound so provisional that we should be happy they got out at all. Others sound human and real, stripped of all the production that inflates emotions to cartoonish extremes. Mr.

Big Star’s Third—or Sister Lovers if you prefer—is the Rosetta Stone of mope rock. It’s not purely mopey, but it's hard to imagine Elliot Smith, Wilco’s more fragile moments, any of the artists beloved by NPR’s “All Songs Considered,” or all of their sad progeny existing without it.

As much as I appreciated the Banksy graffiti pieces that he sprayed in New Orleans after Hurricane Gustav in 2008, I have fonder memories of a stenciled pope on one wall and an angry cat on another. The Banksys were wittier, but the unmotivated, dada-like images enlivened otherwise mute public spaces. Why an angry cat?

Brett Harris is a reason to revisit the nature/nurture debate. The singer and multi-instrumentalist from Durham, North Carolina grew up in a rural area where the only pop music he heard was on commercial radio in the ’90s, and the family had Beatles albums but not a turntable to play them on. There was a piano in the house and his brother had a guitar with a few broken strings, but nobody in the house was particularly musical. Still, Harris figured out how to make music with those meagre instruments.

[Update] When Foo Fighters performed in the front window of Preservation Hall, The Breton Sound’s Jonathan Pretus made it to the front row. Nola.com ran a photo of him, his wife Julia and his brother Brian from punk band Pears separated by a barrier and three feet from Dave Grohl, and the band’s recent EP makes his affection for the band clear.

Today we launch a new regular feature, "Our Spilt Milk," where readers can share the music, movies, shows, games, websites, podcasts or whatever that excites them. If you want to tell people about something you care about, write me at alex@myspiltmilk.com and let's make it happen.

[Updated] The New Orleans Film Festival started Thursday night and continues until next Thursday. Last year, Lily Keber's The Bayou Maharajah ended the festival on a local note, and this year will ended similarly when Joe Lauro’s documentary The Big Beat on the music of Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew screens at The Carver Theater.

In the New Orleans phase of Alex Chilton's career, he had got to a place where he could make music on his own terms. He still had a great ear for pop songs, but he preferred to play other people's than his own from Big Star.

Our favorite things this week include the Big Star doc, the New Orleans Spirits Exchange, and "Pictures of Sound."