Big Star drummer Jody Stephens sounds genuinely taken aback as he talks to Spinner about the band's massive retrospective, 'Keep an Eye on the Sky,' which is out now. No doubt, like legions of fans and fellow musicians, he's not only amazed at how the music of this Memphis formed band, which was originally headed by Alex Chilton and Chris Bell and included bassist Andy Hummel, has endured, given its three-album lifespan in the '70s. But, also, the amount of rare and previously unreleased cuts that the band's sessions reaped, many of which were shelved until now, genuinely surprises him.

"I wasn't part of the archeological dig team, but I'm just really impressed with what they came up with," Stephens says of the set's producers, who unearthed long lost tracks for the four-disc compilation. "It's really an amazing story on the evolution of the band and, in some respects, not just how we evolved musically, but emotionally as a band."

The packaging, which includes many vintage photographs of Big Star, took Stephens for a trip down memory lane, too. "We were lucky in that regard. We had William Eggleston in town and he became known as the father of color photography," he says of his fellow Memphis native. "He took the front and back covers of the 'Radio City' record."

In that regard, we'd say the fans were lucky too.

Listen to 'There Was a Light' (Demo)