mastershake

i'm a big jay supporter but i like the new album. huge improvement over SBS in my opinion.

What's your email.. i will send it to you

zepoopy at yahoo.com

say i wanted to do a search to find this .rar link to do some research myself on this "static" catastrophe, where or what should i search? i've tried google blogs, hypem, twitter, none of them returned a link besides the stream.

they shouldn't have blown off miley - she's a nice girl.

I'm still holding out hope that this isn't the case, as the vinyl effect was played out by the end of the 90s.

lol what?

jesus i sorta feel sorry for wilco - it's impossible to please fans when they nitpick about stupid crap like this.

I'm trying to collect some albums from the classic singers of the past - like Etta James, Diana Ross, etc. Wondering what other people's favorite singers were from those days...

I'll Fight

ahhh yeah i like this song a lot

Probably nothing. They recorded over 30 songs for Being There; Old Maid, a Being There reject, was finally completed and released in 2003 on "You Can Never Go Fast Enough," a compilation for some odd thing. Jeff said at the January 2003 Vic shows that, "you can count your chickens when you get laid," was the bolt of lightning he was waiting for to complete the song.

 

Hate it Here was at least 15 years in the making. On that note, I wonder how many other incarnations of the band laid down tape trying it out?

some of those songs i really wanted to get studio recordings of... i can't recall the names anymore and i'm at work so i can't look it up, but i was holding out they'd do a demo release like the yhf demos which contained absolute gold. they have to have quite a few built up from those sessions and any they wrote for this album but didn't use.

so what happened to the song called "i will, i will" - is that song renamed or something?

also what happened to the songs they had made for sbs but were never released? i wonder if they are ever going to put those out on a demo tape or try to sell them to someone

i love my sweet lord (listened to it hundreds of times) and didn't really notice any similarities to "you never know" when i was listening to the new album the first few times. just re-listened to both and don't really see what people are complaining about - maybe the chorus part with the piano is somewhat similar but the rest of the song is completely different. that little slide guitar riff sounds similar to harrison's song but that isn't enough to consider plagiarism. in any case i'd say any similarities are completely unintentional - wilco is not green day (kings of plagiarizing without crediting).

who are these people on other boards saying this new album is boring... if wilco (the album) is boring then sbs must have been hella boring to them. i think the new album is much better paced than the predecessor. i'm starting to like it a lot - wish i had some quality mp3s to listen to though.

This was on a thread before. It was WAY more than I thought. "Bad Company" and "Okkervil River Song" are 2.

Nirvana... is the only one i can think of off the top of my head

i think the album is pretty good - only listened to it twice. sonny feeling - great song. i'll fight - great song. one wing - great song. feist duet - great song. definitely a step up from sbs - and i don't hear out of place guitar solos really anywhere in this album, so that's a relief. some songs though are kinda iffy... but i'm willing to give it plenty of time.

kudos for wilco for once again leaking their own album for free. they are the only band that does that - radiohead might get all the attention and credit for in rainbows, but wilco has been streaming their albums in their entirety for free months in advance for quite a while now.

I'm trying to stay out of this thread, but I found this statement rediculous.

 

 

 

Implying that the guitar solos on Spiders are mistakes, and not the band's artistic choice is crazy. #1 Wilco has recorded plenty of music they haven't released, if they weren't happy with Spiders I don't think it would be on the album. #2 the guitar solos on Spiders are amazing and completely appropriate for the mood of the song. It would take a Celine Dion fan to listen to that song and go "man, that guy can't play guitar, can he?"

no that statement is complete truth, it comes from an interview jeff did. he admitted they kept the arrangement sparse with minimal chord changes because of jeff's health condition. it was the last song they recorded on agib. look at the song now - all those multi-layered guitar solos throughout it - much more lively with nels in the band and jeff at full health.

http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/shaking-it-off/

"“Spiders (Kidsmoke)” is another. I think we performed that song once or twice – we knew it was going to be on the record but it was one that was looming as a real challenge in the condition I was in. So when we put it together the arrangement ended up being as minimal as possible with the fewest amount of chord changes and I just got through the lyrics and punctuated them with guitar blasts basically just to play through the song. It ended up being a song we were pretty proud of. But it was not much fun to record."

my point is if jay was in the band - would he have let the song out the door that way. this may be opinion, but i think the live version is 1000 times better than the recording. its obvious that jeff had a grand idea for this song but couldn't pull it off for the record - maybe with jay there he could have delegated some of the responsibility to jay to give the song justice on the recording.

and p.s. i didn't imply the guitar solos were mistakes. my point is they aren't there on AGIB but they are there in the live set now.

I actually see this thing getting settled rather quickly.

 

And while Jay was, of course, an integral part of the band during those years, why does everyone feel the need to go to extremes when describing his contributions to Wilco?

I think he was a huge part. Wilco would not be as popular as they are now if it wasn't for him. Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would not have been as great of albums if it wasn't for Jay Bennett pushing Wilco's sound in the direction he did. Tweedy was far from a one man show in the band when it came to arranging the songs. If you watch the movie, it is obvious that Jay had a lot of influence over Wilco's sound just because of his ability as a multi-instrumentalist to completely take apart and reconstruct songs with different instruments and different arrangements. I like to believe that all those weird sounds and noise that appear in the recording were Jay's ideas, but I may be wrong on that.

The other thing that was obvious in the movie was that Jay was very annoying. I have similar friends like that who I like hanging out with, but I find some parts of their personality extremely annoying and they get on my nerves. Jay is someone who is a huge naysayer and who constantly takes opposite sides in an issue just for the sport of arguing about something whether he really believes what he is saying or not. It was obvious that Tweedy got to a breaking point with Jay's personality and decided to let him go and move on without him. However, when he finally let him go, the majority of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot had already been completed.

It was after that album that we began to see the gradual shift in Wilco's music from experimental rock/ experimental alternative country more toward just mainstream "dad's rock" as many people refer to it. I seriously doubt Sky Blue Sky would have sounded anything close to how it turned out had Jay still been influencing the music. Parts of ghost is born came off sounding flat and uninteresting (for example - Spiders or Handshake Drugs). Had Jay been in the band would that have been the case? Spiders came out the way it did on the album because Jeff was going through his troubles with pain killers and he couldn't play guitar to the best of his ability. Knowing that (as we now do from interviews), I wonder would Jay have done something differently with the arrangement of the song to spice it up (like Nels does live)? And to be honest I love what they do with it live now that Nels is involved. But still it marks a significant shift in their music from the days of being there and summerteeth and YHF. Sky Blue Sky is a complete 180 from their earlier tendencies.

Jeff said when he was making Sky Blue Sky that he wanted to use less metaphors and illusions in his lyrics and instead write songs for people to sing that have literal meanings. Maybe I'm speaking for myself, but I think Wilco was their best when Jeff was actively trying to manipulate his lyrics with his poetry to make something that once analyzed had more substance than the literal meaning of the words. There is something just beautiful about the lines:

Crazy rides rockets

Waves a magic wand

Empty out your pockets

Words without a song

I myself have found

A real rival in myself

I am hoping for

The re-arrival of my health

It's impossible to know if Jeff would have continued writing songs like this had Jay still been in the band, but you have to think he'd be pushing for more of an experimental Wilco instead of mainstream rock (which is what Sky Blue Sky basically was). Then of course maybe a lot of Jeff's originality during this period was attributable to the pain killers. But it makes you wonder what could have been. I think Jay and Jeff relationship was a lot like Lennon and McCartney. Near the end of the Beatles they hated each other but were still writing some great stuff and were giving each other ideas on their songs despite their intense competition. The Beatles were better for it with their conflicting personalities because if Lennon heard something in McCartney's song he didn't like, he'd wouldn't hesitate saying something. Same the other away around. I've said this before, but I wonder if anyone ever questions Jeff's judgment. Jeff is unquestionably now the main song writer, and while maybe Pat Sansone or Mikael Jorgenson come up with a riff every now to help Jeff build a song around, it's ultimately Jeff who decides the direction of Wilco. Jay isn't there to argue with him, play things differently, and basically be an ass until Jeff concedes that he has a good idea and incorporates it in some way. There's too much group think in the group and it seems to be effecting the quality of the music.

That said it would be wrong to doubt Tweedy's ability to pull it off since he's so incredibly talented. The new album is still at the top of my list of albums to pick up this year despite my reservations about the direction the band is headed in. They still are quite good live.

there really needs to be another mermaid avenue album

i like the track - it's old school wilco.

And Glenn rollicks on every song. Boy does that get old. That's what I hate the most about rock: awesome drums and killer solos.

 

And what did Jay Bennett do? At least here they want Nels to throw in a killer solo. I'm sorry, but toward the end Jay's live solos reminded me of that exchange from That Thing You Do: "Is Chad gonna solo on 'Wipeout'?" "Every song is 'Wipeout' to Chad."

 

If you want rock without killer solos, you can probably score some Hanson tickets?

i don't think nels solos are killer, that's just how rolling stone put it. this is of course the same rolling stone that consistently gives nickelback albums 4 stars. i'm not sure how much they can be trusted.

but anyway hendrix did killer solos, stevie ray vaughan did killer solos, jimmy page did killer solos, nels not so much. he's a jazz guitarist - not a rock guitarist. i think all his solos sound the exact same. but that's just my opinion.

I take issue with your grammar here. Unless...

you take issue with my grammar? :blankstare:

For a few more weeks, anyway. Then the new one will be last.

heh maybe. but i think they'll at least make a more upbeat album this time...

So the description of one song means every song?

 

Should there not be any guitar solos on the album?

 

I'm not sure I'm really interested in a Wilco album that didn't have any guitar solos. That's one of the many things they do great. If I want to hear music without guitar solos, I'll put in another band's album that does other things better.

wilco should have emotional guitar work... what jay bennett used to bring to the picture. nels cline is nothing more than someone who does what he is told but brings no originality to the band - he has amazing guitar skill, yes that is obvious, but is it necessary to display it in every song? no, and we all know from listening to wilco live that just about every song these days turns into a nels cline guitar solo extravaganza. i much prefer it when jeff handles the solos because again his guitar work evokes a lot of emotion. that's why at least that's what you said is one of my favorite wilco songs. if nels played the solos on that, or on i'm the man who loves you, those songs would immediately become stale and dull, like most of sky blue sky.

i just think it's a bad sign that already rolling stone is talking about one of the songs erupting into a nels cline solo. for one, the solos all sound the same. it's him hammering as fast as he can 2 or 3 strings to make that noisy buzzing sound. it isn't a solo like a jimi hendrix solo or a jimmy page solo, it's basically just him beating the shit out of his guitar. i'll be happy when tweedy and co. prove me wrong, but i think a wilco without nels would be much improved. lets make tweedy do all the soloing or pat sansone.

the only one i'm certain of is sky blue sky is last.

"the nearly-six-minute jam

i've listened once through the new album, i liked what i heard. doesn't seem as worldly as his past few albums but still I think its a decent pick up. it's all good struck me as classic dylan (even with his messed up voice now).

i think the lineup is god awful - one of the worst ever...

pearl jam is good

but then you go to beastie boys, dave matthews band, kings of leon, ben harper, etc.

jesus terrible for $185. hopefully pearl jam will do their own solo concert friday or saturday and i can see them then.

how is ghostland observatory a main draw? sonic youth is well past their prime (as well is pearl jam, but pearl jam can still put on a decent show). toadies are horrible live, one of the worst. john legend - i like him but wouldn't expect much from a live performance out in the blistering heat.

arctic monkeys - how did they go from almost headlining acl a couple years ago to being like the 20th most popular band on the list?

then you have coheed and cambria (they are still making terrible emo music?) and girl talk (hurray lets sit around and watch a guy press buttons)

i'm very glad i waited for the lineup this year. ACL has been increasingly a huge disappointment. I thought maybe they'd get wilco to come back this year after an absence but I guess no luck in that. Tweedy probably saw the lineup and told them thanks but no thanks.

you keep thinking that... there's ALWAYS going to be a subset of people who will need to buy a physical medium, and i'm one of them.

 

i don't buy digital music, sorry. i listen to digital music that is created by ME from my own physical media. sure digital music will surpass physical and physical will be a small portion eventually, but the fact that vinyl sales are up 800% over the last 3 years tells me something... that's a format that's been around for over a century.

 

and i guess if you think that people are going to forgive the concept of artwork for albums in the future, i weep for future generations, cuz that's just lame and lazy.

 

i'm not saying it's the most important thing, but to write it off as quickly as you seemed to do, is dismissing decades worth of great album artwork.

maybe so, but my guess is that it'll just become too expensive to bother with it. i don't know why you are against the digital medium, but I have fully embraced it. it is absolutely wonderful to just go to amazon and download a newly released album at midnight and listen to it on the way to work. in the past you had to wait until stores opened, get in line to check out - it was always a huge hassle. i'm very happy those days are long gone.

the future is going to be digital distribution for movies, video games, and music. it's simply inevitable - it's too convenient not to be the case - and the growth explosion of the digital medium compared to the continuing decline of sales for CDs just proves that people are making the switch - more everyday. Some people will still like the physical medium, but that will become a specialty item sold online on stores like amazon.com. that's exactly what vinyl is - it's a speciality item and its growth is due to more collectors getting involved. i can see it being the same thing for cds - though we are a long way away from that.

That said, I can easily see a day when bestbuy doesn't carry cds or dvds anymore and instead has a website that serves those products to it's customers (and gives the option of the physical medium - sorta like what blockbuster did with HD-DVD when it was obvious blu-ray was winning the format war). netflix on demand - think how amazing this service is (or can be)? you get an idea in your head you want to watch some movie and instead of having to travel to blockbuster you just go to your tv and with a few clicks the movie is playing.

but you do make a good point about vinyls - artists probably will continue to do artwork just to satisfy people who like to collect stuff like that. so maybe we won't see an end to it after all, but honestly i could care less what the album cover looked like for middle cyclone.

then why do artists even bother spending time and money putting together artwork?

 

i mean seriously... artists have just been wasting their time and money the last century!!!!

i am serious - the music is the important part. artists are spending time and money on artwork now - but give it another 10 years and all songs will be purchased digitally. they won't be making cds anymore and artists won't be spending so much time worrying about a cover.

why does anyone care about the album cover? you buy cds for the music - who cares what is on the cover?

I'm kind of feeling the same way. It's not blowing me away just yet.

 

Don't really think "Magpie to the Morning" is the standout track, either - I'm digging "Fever".

that's like saying a 10 is better than a 9.9