Queen Amaranthine

Lovely picture! Congrats and glad to hear it went well. Best wishes!

Fantastic! Congrats!

I love your story! There are so many sparkly Wilco-related bits floating out in the universe, and some landed right on you and brought you back into the fold!

I like the way you worded that!

Also like Chinese Apple's dopamine reference--in good spells, this music really can have that effect.

Totally understandable.

This is too long, I know, but who else besides you guys would appreciate this story if you bother to read it? No one in my waking life cares, and once I started typing below it all flowed out.

I took a LONG break from Wilco from shortly after SBS was released until almost a year ago. SBS wasn't connecting with me, plus I was busy with young children, work, and extended family member conflicts that all demanded my time, attention, and energy. Plus--I laugh at this now--I thought it was finally time I "grow up" and be "normal" and not so OCD over a music band, of all things. I put away all my Wilco CDs, gave away most of my Wilco and Tweedy solo boots, and didn't attend any shows from spring 2006 and late last year. I didn't listen to much of my favorite music at all during that time and NPR and children's music became my listening fare.

Bizarre and kind of funny: that whole time I was off the Wilco wagon, it kept sneaking into my life in small ways here and there--

Not too long after I made the decision to quit using, I was reading an article in my local newspaper about some natural disaster that had happened in a northern European country--I don't recall what though, or exactly when. Anyway, here I am trying to shut myself out of this music entirely, and the local quoted in the article had the first name Wilco. Wilco von SomethingorOther. No shit. Wilco. What was his mother thinking when she picked that name?

Summer 2008, my family went over to my mother-in-law's for an afternoon, as we frequently do. She is an avid Cubs fan. We just happened to be there right in time to catch Wilco sing during the 7th inning stretch--I had NO heads up on that because I was so out of the loop, yet the universe made sure I was in front of the TV at that very moment. Same with their appearance on SNL--I rarely watched the show that year but just happened upon it that same night they were the musical guest.

Those years were full of little instances like that, including songs playing on TV episodes or in Barnes&Noble or Starbucks. I remember thinking, Wilco, will you not leave me alone?! Then last spring a friend sent me a Tweedy solo boot out of the blue. Long story short, it prompted me to dig out SBS again and it all unraveled. I made up for lost time and here I am loving the band like it's new to me all over again. I even have some ideas for Wilco lyric-inspired artwork again once I find some time.

When you wake up feeling old

Before the 2004 Presidential election--I don't remember the exact wording which was clever, but it had something to with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and taking a vow of celebacy if they were re-elected.

Saw this long ago:

Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole.

Liking it so far.

Thanks for the suggestions here so far--I will look into books and movie mentioned above. Culinary arts as well--fine food is an art!

I am in the process of contacting state and local organizations too. They tend to give excellent info about music, dance, folk art--physical kinds of arts that immigrants keep alive from their cultures. Here every year when I put out this call for suggestions, I tend to get excellent movie, book, and avant garde art/photography recommendations, so the variety of input from various sources is nice.

No Hmong near here that I am aware of, although St. Paul has one of the largest Hmong populations in the U.S.--I'll try contacting an organization there.

The age range for participants for this project is really wide, many traditional college age students but lots of older adults too.

Not sure if South Korea is technically SE Asia, but this movie looks funny, titled My Boyfriend is Type B. Some Asian cultures strongly believe that

blood type determines personality and other traits, and type B individuals are said to be unreliable and quirky. It's English subtitled, I hope?!

The original goal was to focus on the Philippines since we have a sizeable Filipino immigrant population in this region, for a rural area. For some reason, the committee decided a couple of weeks ago to broaden it to the larger SE Asia region, possibly because we have some small Lao, Vietnamese, and Thai communities here and in the surrounding counties. I'm not sure exactly why that decision was made, as I missed that meeting--home sick with bronchitis--and haven't had a chance to ask anyone else why that decision was made. At least I wasn't nominated to do something in my absence, which is the typcial good-natured practice with this group...anyway...

I'm open to most any arts from any of those countries.

On a side note, this topic makes one wonder how many organizations asking for our money are at all legit or just playing on our emotions. While there are many international issues, organizations, and charities that deserve our attention and support, I'm a firm believer in giving in our own communities first. It's easier that way to know which organizations or causes are legit and to see whether the money is actually put into action to do something good. Local homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, humane societies, etc. are always in need of donations and know how to work on shoestring budgets and put donations to very good practical use.

As a Wilco fan who is not extremely well versed in UT (and I call myself a fan!?), I too recommend Anodyne as a starting place. For me, it's the sweet fine line between early twangy Wilco and even twangier UT.

Also, I have a couple of boots of live UT shows, and it's the songs from Anodyne that are my favorites in those shows.

VCers are well read and keyed into media, so maybe you can help me!

I'm on a committee organizing book, movie, and other artsy events for the community later this year. Every year this project focuses on a different country or region. This year it's the Southeast Asian region. As a committee we aim for materials that could reach a variety of age ranges.

We need to find a novel, something by a Southeast Asian author or that has a setting or characters in or connected to that region, to use in local book clubs. Preferably something fairly recent that might interest avid readers as well as spark the interest of less avid readers to encourage more participation. I've been looking at the novel Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss as a possibility--has anyone read this?

Do you know of other novels to recommend? Children's books or young adult literature? Music? Art? Photography? Traditional dance? Architecture? It can be current or past, historical. In fact, I wonder if some arts from or about the Vietnam-era war might be important to include, as it seems that teens and young adults don't have much knowledge of that war. The Pol Pot regime is another lesser-known historical era, so The Killing Fields might be a good movie for this series.

Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

He did the tornado chasing--and still does thunderstorm chasing--as a volunteer, believe it or not. Meanwhile, I hide out in my basement. :-)

May through August is the worst of it in the Midwestern states and probably longer further south, but this round is awfully early this year.

My brother is a storm chaser. He and his wife used to "chase" tornados and report sightings to a state meteorologist, but now that they have kids I don't think they do anymore.

Some of the unreleased songs from the YHF era would be great, like Won't Let You Down.

Yes! Shaking Sugar and Magazine Called Sunset too.

Someday Soon

Dash 7

What Light (really! seriously!)

Funny video!

Love the Brady Bunchesque look of Wilco smelling flowers.

Fantastic bands and solo acts are listed here!

No one mentioned The Sundays, unless I missed it in a list. In the '90s they were my favorite band, and I listened to Blind so often that I don't know if I can listen to it anymore.

From Mike Nesmith on Facebook:

 

"All the lovely people. Where do they all come from?

 

So many lovely and heartfelt messages of condolence and sympathy, I don’t know what to say, except my sincere thank you to all. I share and appreciate your feelings.

 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

 

While it is jarring, and sometimes seems unjust, or strange, this transition we call dying and death is a constant in the mortal experience that we know almost nothing about. I am of the mind that it is a transition and I carry with me a certainty of the continuity of existence. While I don’t exactly know what happens in these times, there is an ongoing sense of life that reaches in my mind out far beyond the near horizons of mortality and into the reaches of infinity.

 

That David has stepped beyond my view causes me the sadness that it does many of you. I will miss him, but I won’t abandon him to mortality. I will think of him as existing within the animating life that insures existence. I will think of him and his family with that gentle regard in spite of all the contrary appearances on the mortal plane.

 

David’s spirit and soul live well in my heart, among all the lovely people, who remember with me the good times, and the healing times, that were created for so many, including us.

 

I have fond memories. I wish him safe travels."

I agree, that was beautifully said. Mike always was the Deep Monkee.

Corny show, yes, but great songs. A friend of mine and I went through a spell one year in college in the mid-'80s when we refused to miss an episode of the Monkees mid-afternoon after classes. It was the perfect, light escape from reality. My mom claims I loved the show when it was new, but I was really little and don't remember that.

Roughly 90% of my Wilco listening is on CD in my car, when I'm driving by myself (have finally stopped trying to push Wilco on others and selfishly keeping it to myself). Once I'm familiar with an album, I'm mostly a track or track-section seeker (such as the first four songs of SBS or the last three of TWL, for example).

Roughly 8% of my listening is when I bring work home and have it playing as background music while I'm on the computer.

The other roughly 2% is other random ways, such as the Wilco and Popeye video online or my husband surprising me by DVRing Wilco's appearance of Farm Aid a few years ago.

Personally I'd much rather see David Gilmour perform than Roger.. But I'm a guitar nut, and David's one of the greatest...

Gilmour is amazing! That would probably be my husband's preference too. He's a classic rock enthusiast and guitar nut too. Wilco he's not so fond of (ironically though, he was the one that found Wilco for me), although there's a song here and there he likes (I'm a Wheel and Casino Queen for instance). I've been trying to think of a way to get him to listen in to Nels Cline, in hopes that maybe he'll be hooked and want to go to Solid Sound with me someyear! Or at least a Wilco show?

Roger Waters at Fenway on July 1st!

My husband would love to see Roger Waters! The closest he'll be to here is Chicago or the Twin Cities, though, and I don't think even that much travel is in the cards for us this spring.

Unless you count the kids' school concerts , until Wilco swings through these here parts again, it's gonna be a dry year-plus in terms of concerts. Thank goodness for internet access and living vicariously through others.

Writing a tweet takes less effort than writing a blog post, so I think more and more blogs will become the tool of specialised, skilled people like journalists, while twitter will serve the general population.

That makes sense.

It also brings to mind something my favorite blogger mentioned above said about social media: "Having a weird experience. Interfacing on social media is actually alleviating feelings of failure & loneliness...quitting while I'm ahead."

As a parent, I find Teresa Strasser incredibly funny! And painfully accurate in her perceptions.

http://www.teresastrasser.com/