In my decade long career in the music industry, I’ve learned the three questions I get asked on repeat: What’s your favorite show, how did you get this job, and what’s your favorite band?

I usually mumble through the first two, and name The Replacements for number three. They’re a safe, comfortable choice, most people have heard of them and there aren’t a dozen follow up questions.

Reflecting on my relationship with music, I think the answer to that last question has since changed: it will always be Big Star.

Like most college students hungry for a music experience different than the top 40 radio provided, I started DJing at my college radio station in the early 2000’s. Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich., my alma mater, boasts 89.1 FM WIDR, a volunteer/student-run station founded in 1952 and still going strong. The programming is a traditional CMJ format. You won’t hear anything played on a Clear Channel station on WIDR. What you will hear is earnest somewhat naive college students wax poetic on how The Velvet Underground changed their life. At WIDR I was exposed to a huge music library to pull from. I dove right in.

I can’t remember the first time I heard Big Star, but I remember buying #1 Hit Record and Radio City and playing them on repeat. I was the DJ that talked about Alex Chilton in place of Lou Reed. My best friend was also a Big Star devotee. We talked about how under appreciated they were. We would go through the records song by song, repeating our favorite lines — “Drink gin and tonics and play a grand piano” — and we would take turns saying “How did Alex come up with that line?” It was our secret club.

We even visited his hometown of Ionia, Mich., for the largest free fair in the country. Alex Chilton was playing the outdoor stage as a part of the hits of the ’60s sort of package. He was there as the leader of the Box Tops and singer of The Letter. We didn’t care. We got there late around the time he was supposed to go on. We fought our way to the front past aging baby boomers and children with spun sugar on sticks. We needed to see Alex as close as possible. We sweat through our clothes and got some angry stares, but it was worth it.

What makes music good? Even though this is a simple question, the answer can be so complex. To me it has always been something I feel while listening to a record. You can like a band because they are friends of yours, or respect what they do, but to truly love something it has to make you feel when you put it on your turntable. Big Star does this for me each time.

Good music can also come in and out of your life as you need it. It is like that old friend that you haven’t talked to in a long time, but all you have to do it pick up the phone and things are exactly where you left off.

Fast-forward a decade after college. I found myself in Lawrence, Kansas, listening to The Clean play live. I had no idea that seeing The Clean wouldn’t be the best thing that happened to me that night. After the show, I met the man who I am about to marry. We stayed up all night talking about music, life, and any other topic that came up. He was living in Columbia, Mo., and I was in Omaha, Neb. The next day we shared breakfast, exchanged numbers and went our separate ways.

A couple days later on our first of many phone calls, we talked about Big Star. We went through each record, repeated our favorite lines, and took turns saying “How did Alex come up with that line?” He was a student at The University of Missouri when they played their first reunion show in April of 1993. He talked about never having heard a Big Star record prior to attending, about how Jody Stephens and his drummer gloves made him think the show was going to be lame, about how he felt after the show.

It was like meeting an old friend for the first time. We were both members of the secret club and we were falling in love.

This week a feature-length documentary film about Big Star, Nothing Can Hurt Me, is being released. Having only watched the trailer, I can tell we are going to be very happy to catch up with these old friends.

Val Nelson is Slowdown’s house manager. See Slowdown’s schedule of shows here.