cooperissup3r

dunno if i'll ever like it as much as Bitte Orca, but it is way better on second, third, fourth etc listens than it was on the first. About To Die is so good.

One Wing seemed like it could be a setlist staple.

It is legally theft. And crossing the street away from an intersection is legally jaywalking. I suppose people who's perception of reality is constantly clarified by law must really be struggling with the hemorrhaging of a corporate art market that is ravaged by every aunt, son-in-law and girl next door you know. They are all violating the law, and they go unpunished. Somehow the law never seemed to define the meaning of rock and roll, and how it is used.

i'd say jaywalking and downloading music are quite different. and it's easy to take and take when you're not on the side trying to pay their bills doing this as a living. and maybe that's the artist's fault for deciding this is what he/she wants to do for a living, but on some level we're just making it harder for them.

ps- we are discussing legality, therefore the legal/illegal-ness of the whole thing is settled.

But that's what's up for debate. Society has not been able to collectively deem the inherent value of something that does not occupy physical space. It is not a settled matter. Musicians also have a pretty wide range of opinions about this.

put it this way: if someone gets an advance copy of the new wilco disc, uploads it to some torrent site or rapidshare or whatever, and people download that...that's stealing. this is a product that has been taken without it being paid for. tell me how that isn't stealing, please.

 

Intellectual property theft is one of the most abstract ethical accusations around. If you bit torrent an album someone spent 15 grand making are you taking away something that puts them at a loss? Do they have less goods? If you steal a riff from the Kinks is that wrong? If you get a decoded copy of Adobe Photoshop from your room mate is that hurting people?

 

It's not that you're taking "it" from them...it's that you're not paying them for something society has deemed you should pay for, and that they feel like they should be paid for. If you created something, and you felt you could get paid for it, you'd want to get paid for it (unless you don't...but as we've seen, they charge money to play shows, they charge money for shirts, they charge money for records...so they DO want to get paid for it). If someone took the thing you created and made unlimited copies of it and then everyone is just giving it away, you'd be pissed. That's your creation and your intent was for it to be sold.

Take out the idea of "intellectual property" or whatnot...it's still a product, unless you've decided not to sell it. And it's easy for Tweedy to say "music isn't a loaf of bread" when he's in a great position to say that.

 

Having said that, the starving artist argument is not helped by the existence of bands like Polyphonic Spreeor Sufjan Stevens' touring band which seem to manage to feed dozens of musicians each.

i had questions about that as well. I think Wilco is a pretty good example of a band that does pretty well through touring. They have a loft with at least $100,000 worth of equipment in there and they've had that loft for a good while now...certainly before they were selling out Red Rocks. Look at Justin Vernon of Bon Iver...he built that badass home studio and owns a bunch of nice recording equipment and instruments, and he has taken a 10-12 piece band out on tour for almost a year now...you can't tell me touring doesn't make *some* kind of profit (and he built that studio before the Grammys and his second record).

I kind of wonder if the artists the author is speaking about have possibly surrounded themselves with bad business people who have, to some extent, led them down the path to $35k/year w/no benefits. Lowery makes good points, but I think there are a lot of people out there proving him a least partially wrong.

I don't think the argument here is about live music that is allowed to be recorded or old music where the artist is dead, and his family/record company are already raking in millions on "greatest hits" albums that they re-release every 5 years.

the main focal point of the argument (and there really is no argument about this): downloading active artists' music is stealing. it's simple. he made something current society views as a product, put it out there, and you obtained it without legally paying for it.

I felt bad when I first read this, then I looked at my cd/record collection. It's definitely directed at the "new" generation of listener...but not all of us in that "new" generation steal music only. My tendency has been to d/l something, try it out, if I like it I find a way to buy it, if not I delete it or let it languish on a hard drive somewhere, never to be heard again.

Great article though.

yesterday was a good day.

i don't like it nearly as much as the first two so far i do like it a ton, but i feel the complaints of "rehash" that people had with Wild Hunt after Shallow Grave are feelings I felt through my first 3-4 listens the other day. 1904 is amazing, and there's probably 3-4 other great songs on it, but i'd be lying if i said i wasn't still a bit let down by it.

 

here's hoping it grows on me with repeated listens, but i've already gone back to my other rotation for now.

I feel the same way. After the initial "new TMOE record!" excitement, it's kind of faded. The first three or four songs are really solid, but the middle lags pretty badly.

my album of the year by a wide margin... felt that halfway through my first listen lol. though i feel this year has been lacking severely in great albums (lot of good to very good ones though), so this one hit me like a ton of bricks.

 

after a road rip where i played it all the way through 4x at loud volume a couple months back I realized I like it more than Teen Dream even, which i never imagined.

 

now if only they'd announce a Minneapolis show... dying to see them again and these songs live.

new Tallest Man on Earth might take mine...I don't really do album of the year, but it's so damn good.

It's a really catchy tune, but I thought most of the songs on the record were really cliche and the lyrics bog down on just about every tune. Also, just a bit too Queen sounding. I understand having influences, but it sounds like they listened to some Queen records and just regurgitated what they heard with their own lyrics.

I'm 43 years old and learned everything I know from Allman, Hendrix, Page, Beck. No need to dig anything up. Our band plays Southbound, Whipping Post, Melissa, Dreams, and about 10 other Allman songs. My list of greatest guitarists ever would have Allman way up on the list. But I still get tired of the same list of guitarists as if time stopped in 1975. And I'm not sure what "outplay" means. I doubt Duane Allman could play "Expressway to yr skull" for shit. Just as Thurston probably couldn't whip out "in memory of Elizabeth Reed" worth a damn. So what?

i'd be willing to bet Thurston Moore could do a decent to good job on "In Memory...". He WAS a dead head, and I'm sure was a fan of the Allmans at some point too.

Their cover of Beat It On Down The Line from those Europe 72 shows is rocking.

great record.

been meaning to check this guy out. thanks for the reminder.

can i just say that the Playin' > Truckin > drums > The Other One > El Paso > The Other One > Wharf Rat from 4/7/72 is blowing my mind.

- 72 Playin's are probably my favorite. Never was huge on the gigantic spacey versions from 73-74.

The Jackson bio is very well done and was one of the first 9maybe even the first) to come out after JG's death. I haven't read it since then and might need to dive back in. There are (or at least used to be) outtakes from the original manuscript that got trimmed by Jackson's publisher available on Blair's website.....

read that bio twice. such a great book. Phil's autobio was excellent as well.

Actually, for those of us who will eventually be accruing the Europe 72 shows disc by disc, do you have any recommendations on where to start? Or should I just collect chronologically?

well they're all pretty good. 5-7-72 looks, to me, to be the most interesting. most shows get a Dark Star or The Other One, but this one has both.

ps - i'm starting 4/7/72 right now. it does sound pretty damn good.

pps - i've been listening to some '71 stuff lately, and didn't realize how much donna messed stuff up.

Just wondering by what date you will have worked your way through all the shows?

i was hoping to finish them up by this friday, but i am still going through dick's picks 35, so i really have no idea when that'll happen.

this shouldn't be on page 2.

anyway, got my hands on the complete europe 72 recordings. wow.

I plan to listen to this in its entirety this week.

Bear In Heaven - I Love You, It's Cool

 

In the running for the worst album art as well as worst album title of 2012.

Let's see if we got some real winners like Wholehearted Mess and Lovesick Teenagers.

saw them open for Gayngs in Oct. '10. Gigantic beating.