wilco

what am i not getting here?

 

what do you mean? they rock! singer-songwriter/lo-fi/alterna-country twang good ol' rock 'n roll, what's not to love?

 

Hot dogs 2 for $1.00

 

alternative country? hmmm.... i will check out soon.



larry: if they are even slightly country, i might not get it either. cant download anything just now. yankee hotel foxtrot any good? what tune is good?

 

Jheez

How to abbreviate my comments? I'll try, but it'll be in vain.

Larry - I think you've been around me just enough to get an idea that I probably wouldn't go for "twangy" music. (That's pretty much true, though I do like slide guitars in some modern rock songs). But I do like Wilco, a lot. They are one of my top 10 bands.

Wilco is Jeff Tweedy's baby. What you need to understand about Jeff to get Wilco is that he was one half of Uncle Tupelo, one of those definitive bands that started a movement and cloned dozens of sound alikes. They were twangy, but in a bluesy, roots-rock kind of way that a LOT of non-country folks like. Songs like "Gun" and some of my personal faves like "Chickamagua" & "The Long Cut" might twang a tiny bit, but they rock underneath that. Some very heavy blues/rock chords there.

Anyway, eventually that band broke up because Jeff & Jay Farrar were battling over who was the songwriter in the band. Jay started Son Volt. Jeff started Wilco. The first Wilco album sounds a LOT like Jeff's songs on the last U.T. album - "Anodyne". But then he got restless. It's blatantly obvious to me that he started listening to three things: The Beatles (especially Lennon stuff), Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys (Jeff loves the harmonies and expiremntal sounds Brian did on "Pet Sounds"), and my favorite, Alex Chilton of BIG STAR (early 70's band). I know from talking to Jeff that his favorite Big Star song is "Thirteen" (which Wilco covered on a never released Big Star tribute), though he also likes other standards like "September Gurls". Here's where I have to reign myself in, because Big Star has influenced damn near every one of my favorite bands/musicians, no matter how different they sound from each other - from Wilco to Elliott Smith to Jeff Buckley to Matthew Sweet, etc. Heck, Cheap Trick even covered "In The Street" as the theme song for "That 70's Show".

After Wilco's first album, the critics panned it some saying it was just more UT stuff and that Jeff wasnt creative enough to go anywhere. So this guys with a head full of eclectic, legendarys ounds, started branching out. The double album "Being There" still sounds somewhat "alt. country", but it has some really dark moody tracks like "sunken treasure". The next album, "Summerteeth" is a complete departure. If anything, it is overproduced, but it is probably the most eclectic, yet mostly mainstream album of the past 10 years. I love half the songs on that album, so I wont bother.

I could write an essay on the next album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot", and in fact, there's a documentary movie coming to Charlotte soon about it called "I am trying to break your heart", named after the first track. Among other things, it tells my favorite stick-it-to-the-big-record-labels story. To cut to the chase, the band made it, fired their guitarist over it, the record label hated it & rejected it, dropped them from their contract, and then the band bought the album back from the label for a lousy $50,000. It sat on the shelf for about 9 months while a huge bidding war was fought, and ironically, it was bought by another division of the same label for quite a bit more money (they paid for it twice...too funny). It debuted at #13 on the Billboard top 100 and Rollingstone magazine (as well as just about everyone else) praised over it. RS gave it 4 stars and called it "an amercian classic". Do I think it's THAT good? No. But it is this best attempt at a new and true American sound in a long, long time (critics are always eager to find something with integrity to supplant the PURE CRAP that's on the radio these days). I think the album has a couple weak spots, and I think there's no way it will ever appeal to the masses, but I still think it's fantastic. One of the top 10-20 or so albums I own (I own 400+).

Anyway, if you are more mainstream oriented, you might like "heavy metal drummer", which probably WON'T sound like you'd expect, but it's still a great driving song. I like "I am trying to break your heart" but it it's an expirement in melodic dissonance, much the same as "so misunderstood" from the "Being There" album, so you might hate it. Some other almost radio playable tracks are "Kamera" (I like the heavier/louder version not on the album) & "War on War".

The bottom line is that it isnt something you can pick up and like immediately, like you could with older WIlco tunes like "Box Full of Letters", "I must be High", "Got You (at the end of the century)", and the concert classic "Passenger Side". Also, those of us who know and recognize the roots of the music are obviously gonna get a whole lot more out of it. But it's still worth listening to, at least a half dozen times, to see if you like it.

 

By the way

If you want a sanitized, commercialized version of Jeff/Wilco, go get some Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown tracks.

That guys owers his entire career to Jeff Tweedy & Jay Farrar. He's "Bush" to their "Nirvana".

 

SPAMMING THE GLOBE....

Now that Im completely SPAMMING this thread...

Mathmajors - a few years ago when Wilco were putting out their third album, Time magaizne posted an issue full of their best pictures of the year.

One of them was a lonely, jacknifed Wilco gas truck on an otherwise beatiful stretch of black asphalt highway surrounded by lots of very green tress & grass on an overcast/rainy day.

I always thought that was damn near the perfect image for a Wilco album cover. Kinda captures the mood of their music - sort of beautiful destruction. Always wanted to get a copy of it and ask another fan what they thought.

But Jeff's in that whole Chicago mode now. Guess it wouldnt work...

 

spam away, nineradvocate!

this is way fresh!!!

thanx, you are quite convincing. your stuff is way better than google's.

 

LOL

I deserved that.

Sorry, I got carried away.

 

i downloaded a butt-load of wilco the other night and saw the "jeff" name on a few.

i'll give it another listen to.

i didn't get radiohead, either.