choo-choo-charlie
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Posts posted by choo-choo-charlie
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Never ceases to amaze me how many G > C songs Jeff has written, and how he's been able to write melodies for each. I can see why this didn't make the cut, but I absolutely love Jeff's songwriting/growth period from 1993-1999...Anodyne, A.M., Being There, Down By The Old Mainstream, Weird Tales, Mermaid Avenue, Summerteeth. You could include YHF in there too, considering a handful of its tracks were starting to pop up in solo shows or Wilco shows in 1999.
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The playing was fine. He's definitely one of my favorite bassists. But on this video he plays lots of sustained notes, which isn't something he does anymore, at least not that I've noticed. He has much more of a thumpy sound now. You hear the note and then it's gone...very McCartney-ish. That's been his primary sound since at least as far back as Summerteeth.
Agreed. It’s thumpy and “hoofy.”
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I like this song, but I think they made the right choice by putting It's Just That Simple on the record. It might be that the genre is much more crowded now than it was when AM came out, but Myrna Lee sound a little...I'm trying not to say generic, because that word has negative connotations...but textbook alt-country to me. Maybe I wouldn't have though that at the time.
As an aside, the video of I Must Be High on that Paste link is interesting in that John's bass sound is completely different than how he has sounded in a long, long time.
John’s bass playing has been incredibly melodic and deftly played from the start. I don’t feel like his bass has been at the appropriate level in the mix on studio records until latter day Wilco. Hopefully these reissues shine a light on his excellent playing on those early records.
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Just resurrecting this thread, as it seems to be the main Golden Smog thread on here.
I popped the old Down By the Old Mainstream disc into my car's CD player, and have been listening to it the past couple of days. I remember it mainly for Radio King, Walk Where He Walked and Ill Fated, but it also has a great Tweedy vocal I'd completely forgotten about: She Don't Have to See You. Great tune.
Hearing that JT circa 1996 voice gets me excited for the pending Being There reissue. I'd love to see an expanded reissue of the Golden Smog stuff from this era; too bad there's probably not enough of a market for it.
“She Don’t Have To See You” is in the track list for the deluxe version of A.M.!
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Paste has the scoop. I dig the tune - fun to hear another John song.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/11/wilco-previously-unreleased-myrna-lee.html
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You should poke around in the "In a Future Age" forum. Perform a search before starting a new thread; I'll bet you'll find something.
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This thread is extremely entertaining as is any thread that contains the term "BLOOZY guitar masturbator". I'm not a blues guy but I know of him mainly due to Austin City Limits and my local public radio. A couple weeks ago in an attempt to find a live version of the Beatles doing "Taxman" I went down a Youtube wormhole of guitar freaks. Bonamassa came up with his version which wasn't exactly insulting but definitely didn't hold my interest at a time when I was just realizing that there might not be a live version of Taxman on the entire fucking internet. I did however watch a couple more videos of his which I didn't find very inspiring but as I said I'm not a blues guy. There was a silver lining though to my tireless search, the Bonamassa stuff took me to some Stevie Ray Vaughn stuff which led me to the video of him(and his roadie) switching guitars mid solo after a broken string and it is one of the coolest videos on the internet.
The Beatles never played "Taxman" live, or anything from Revolver. In fact, Brian Epstein usually enforced a policy that they only perform their singles in concert, which explains why "Paperback Writer" made it to the stage a few times, but that's the only Revolver-era tune that did.
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He's a giant douche who loves to flaunt his excessive guitar collection, plays with no soul and in general, is a tool.
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Great Tedeschi Trucks Band show last night at the Beacon Theatre as part of a six night run and last night celebrating their 25th show at the Beacon. Not announced but a few different special guests and Nels joined and just ripped it up (no surprise) on Miles Davis' Ali. TTB tune Let Me Get By" and then the Allman Brothers' Ain't Wastin' Time No More. Video of the latter and for those in a hurry the Nels' solo starts at 5:20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTI5mek6xVg&feature=youtu.be
I wouldn't say I'm ever in a hurry for a Nels solo. I dig his playing, but more so the tasty licks and soundscapes than the elongated IG solos. That being said, the IG I heard last month in Kansas City featured probably the best Nels solo I've ever heard. I usually skip it on live shows.
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Mostly very excited for these...A little bummed, though, that the $80 LP set doesn't include even a digital copy of the Live at The Troubadour set...
We're a kind and sharing community of fans. I'm sure you could get your hands on the Troubador set very easily once it's out there.
Wasn't My Words a BT era? Also, wasn't there an AM era song called Rock Rock or something? Not sure why the Golden Smog tunes are on there. I'm sure there's more in the vault. This might be the beginning of the reissues of all of the albums.
"Let's Hear It For Rock and Roll" was the tune. Its main riff and some of the chord progression later evolved into "Let's Not Get Carried Away," the SBS-era b-side to the "What Light" single.
I haven't bought a CD in a long time and would really like to get the liner notes for these reissues. Does anyone know if the deluxe edition CD sets include download links or anything?
You could always just rip the CDs and voila, digital version. I always go for the CD releases with deluxe reissues to get the liner notes, plus CDs still sound really fantastic in my car and serve as a permanent backup if/when a hard drive crashes.
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If there are a couple of officially remastered/remixed live shows from the AM/BT era, I'd love that. As in Kicking Television sound quality, that is, if any of those old shows were ever recorded on multitrack. I have a ton of the old SBDs from 1995-1997 and most of them are pretty decent, but I'd be a total sucker for an official release.
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I assumed that any extra material from the AM/BT era was released on the Alpha Mike Foxtrot box set. Perhaps I assumed incorrectly? Could there really be more to hear? I didn't think Jeff was particularly interested in these types of releases, not being one to dwell on the past or devote energy to "archival" projects. But if there's unreleased goodies from the era coming, I'm on it!
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There's nothing on Rhino's website. And nothing from Wilco's camp. If there is an A.M. deluxe reissue forthcoming, we'll hear about it soon enough. A.M., BT and ST all got reissued on Nonesuch a while back when Wilco was still on Nonesuch. My prized possession in my LP collection is an original pressing of A.M. on Sire.
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This is my serious face.
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I wonder why they played it in that key - seems to be too high for Jeff to sing comfortably, and it's a higher key than the original...
My guess is that Jeff liked to sing it live then because he could belt it out like a punk rocker vs. singing more of his sad, mellow country tunes in the middle to low-end of his vocal range.
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but with passion! and cuss words! many many cuss words!
That much was clear.
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Ah, the old sit vs. stand debate.
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The title of the thread says Via Chicago, as does the first sentence of the post...plus the whole "audience going nuts during the cacophony" part made it clear we're talking about the murder ballad. Such a brilliant album juxtaposing sunny pop songs, dark lyrics and layered production.
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Thanks. Anyone know where I can grab a copy of the full video of Wilco - 11/27/1996 - Chicago, IL and or the FLAC's
Henry
Some basic google searching will take you places. Entering Wilco 11/27/96 into a YouTube search immediately turns up the entire video:
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I happen to listen to my first Wilco show the other day. Memphis 10/30/2002 and was reminded of a couple of things. It is a great show and there is a pristine soundboard of it to listen to. I particularly remember how intense "misunderstood" was, the Jeff was almost in convulsions and lots of spit was coming out during the "thank you" crescendo. I was not sure until yesterday whether this was just a memory or that really, it is quite a cathartic performance. Well, it is, you can listen for yourself here.
What I was wondering how many permutations did this song go through? And might this be the most intensive period of performance? I listened to a few other years that I have and did not feel anything compared. Also wondering who was onstage playing guitar as I know Nels was not there, nor Pat or Jay?
link to track on my dropbox
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hpdurhvhyvheatw/Misunderstood.mp3?dl=0
Most versions from 1996-2000 are the same, with Jay Bennett making some noise on the keyboards and Bob Egan making even more noise on the pedal steel. It mostly resembled the album version. That song definitely took on a different form during the fall 2001 tour (Wilco the quartet, sans JB) and in the Leroy-Mikael era, 2002-2003. I've listened to a ton of shows from 2001-2003.
It became darker and more atmospheric. Less melodic in some parts, with Jeff fingerpicking through some dissonant chords and eerie keyboards hovering over the top, particularly during the instrumental passages between verses. There usually were some weird electronic blips and beeps weaving in and out of the song, which reflects the "sonic mentality" of Wilco at that time.
And yeah, Jeff definitely was exercising some demons during those years...imagine being pegged as an alt-country hero your whole career while you're trying to shed that image, evolve your sound, battle addiction, fight your record company, have a falling out with your closest creative collaborator. One definitely could feel misunderstood, so to speak, and it's easy to see how that song would provide an outlet for Jeff to belt it out.
I have to be in the right mood to hear those versions. The sound and the song communicates such a different vibe than the version played today, which has such raw power, dynamics and an anthemic feeling.
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I farted around in the Wilco Archive for a bit and found they opened with it in this show back in Nov of 99.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B5xZV5X8KwRCTzFDdkhraklaXzA
Much more Jay Bennett guitar forward doing the loud electric tremolo stuff. Ken Coomer mostly stays out of the way and does a couple loud crashes during the noise part. Not nearly as developed.
Now to find an '01 version with Jay Bennett and Glenn Kotche... I'm curious.
According to Wilcobase, Jeff Tweedy performed it a handful of times at solo shows, but the band only performed it once in 2001, at First Avenue in Minneapolis on 6/30/2001. Now, I believe Glenn had replaced Ken by that point (Jay's last show was the Grant Park gig in Chicago on 7/4/2001, immortalized in the IATTBYH film) but this show isn't on So Out of Tune, my go to site for streaming Wilco. Looks like there may be a few etree users out there who have it, if someone REALLY wants to dig for this.
But, I've listened to a lot of Wilco shows from the late 1990s and the noise section was tame compared to today. As previously mentioned, there might be some shimmering tremolo guitar work from Jay and some cymbal crashes from Ken, but overall it's pretty close to the record, which only has a touch of noise other than the squealing guitar feedback that fades in and out, though rather unobtrusively.
I've also listened to several key shows from the Leroy-Mikael era, 2002-2003, where Via Chicago was performed. By "key" I mean shows for which there are high-quality recordings available, either SBDs or really good AUDs. Shows for which good SBDs or AUDs exist during which Via Chicago was performed include 6/21/03 (Three Rivers Arts Festival) and 6/28/03 (Penn's Landing, Philly), neither of which have a huge explosion of sound. It might be slightly more pronounced than the late 1990s versions, and they're definitely more keyboard heavy (with the emphasis on keyboards during that era), but again, absolutely nothing like the fireworks display (see what I did there?) that we're treated to at modern day Wilco shows.
FWIW, you can view a list on Wilcobase of every time any Wilco song has been played, well, from its debut through 2012, when the site quit keeping stats.
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Summerteeth is the worst selling album? What the hell were people in 1999 doing??
Great recap WYWU!
I couldn't believe it either. Buuuuuuut at the same time I do believe it.
AM had support from UT fans. BT was next level and won over a sizable new audience, plus was supported by a really long tour. ST was a sharp left turn away from alt country and faded away pretty quickly when the record label wouldn't get behind it. The label wanted Jeff to churn out a "One Headlight," as I recall reading in "Learning How to Die," and when they realized Wilco wasn't a "hit-making" machine, they cast them off as a cult act...oops.
What were they doing in 1999, and what are they doing now??? I love that album. Most of my Wilco listening is live stuff, but Summerteeth gets regular play. Great album to my ears.
Same here. Mostly live recordings, and the studio recording I return to the most is Summerteeth. A truly beautiful record.
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Are you guys trying to start a turf war or something?
('turf war' is probably on my brain since I watched a bit of last night's Tupac/Biggie Fox investigation special)
Hahahaha, now that's funny. I was a member of VC looooooooong before I even know about this FB group. Really just stumbled onto it one day randomly, and have been an active participant there since things went a little dormant here. I certainly lobbied hard for Being There during the voting period leading up to the album show at Solid Sound this year.
In my observation, there seem to be a lot more new-ish Wilco fans there vs. the hardcore fans we have here, who know the deepest and dorkiest details about the band, songs, albums, tours, what have you. And, as it is with many FB groups, plenty of people who start threads looking for information that is readily available on the Internets and could be found through a Google search.
I don't see them as intruding on one another, though I do appreciate the organization of topics/threads/forums/information here vs. the random/chaotic, "what's the post of the day today?" approach of the FB group.
Previously Unreleased Song "Dynamite My Soul" from Being There
in Just A Fan
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Probably the reason I return to early- to mid-period recordings of The Beatles above others. I really love hearing the growth and development of budding songwriters. For The Beatles, it’s from late 1964 through end of 1965 — Beatles for Sale, Help! and Rubber Soul, plus the singles of the era. Their country, folky, Dylan phase. Love that stuff.