a-me-with-a-you

Brown-Eyed Women, their Grateful Dead cover on Day of the Dead is great (find on spotify).

It's not blocked here so anyone who wants'em can grab'em here:

Go to Wilcobase and search on the song -

 

Then click on the show - scroll down to the bottom and see if there is a show source listed -

 

The links to the Wilco Live Show Archive won't work anymore - but you can just go to the Wilco Live Show Archive and find the show.

 It's this one on KCRW I think, thanks so much.

http://wilcobase.com/event.php?event_key=227

a quick search came up with these three other Morning Becomes Eclectic radio sessions:

http://wilcobase.com/event.php?event_key=362
http://wilcobase.com/event.php?event_key=75
http://wilcobase.com/event.php?event_key=845

Does someone know of any other radio programs they used to frequent? The only other ones I know of are the tiny desk concerts on NPR.

Okay WilcoTheologian, that's a fresh take 

Orders are gonna differ but as for me, I save up play time of my favorite albums, the more I play it, the more I wear the songs out and after a while they stop surprising me and that makes me sad. YHF is far from my most played Wilco record just because I like it so much. 

Btw: you do realize Summerteeth's retro sound is intentional? It's a love letter to the Beach Boys era.

I lost access to an old hard drive, and subsequently a couple of personally compiled bootleg collections. 

Now, I distinctly remember a radio session where a young Wilco covered that Uncle Tupelo tune. A search for a concert bootleg is a needle in a haystack. But can there really be a hundred radio recordings out there that predate Summerteeth (if my memory serves me right)?

I'll broaden the question: I'd love a listen to any professionally mixed radio sessions Wilco's had over the years, the older the better but anything's welcome.

All the Fante talk has taken me to one of his I haven't yet read:

 

 

But I'm also in the need for some noir. It's been many years so I think I'll re-read this:

 

I could never get into noir books as much as I love the movie genre. I tried a Jim Thompson once, an Elmore Leonard, they didn't take. Granted, I've never tried Ellroy (is he considered a guilty pleasure read?) , or Raymond Chandler which would be my best bet if I ever want to try noir. Right?

This Fante talk has stirred up a renewed desire to read Dreams from Bunker Hill, alas I lent out my Bandini quartet. I did find the beginning of the Road to Los Angeles weak compared to the preceding two, but I'm intrigued by the romance behind the writing process of the last one.

I'll probably end up reading 500 years of solitude before I get the quartet back. But first The World According to Garp of course, I love it already and I've barely scratched the surface. I've never had this many books burning a hole in my book case, if you will, and this topic is not helping (that want-to-read list on goodreads is getting intimidating).

I'm playing the top 100 pieces of my local classical music station Klara. With Erik Satie - Gymnopedie No. 1 - Aldo Ciccolini ao things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtB0xB182_Q

Before that:

Has anyone read The Dark Tower series by Stephen King? My wife has been trying to get me to read it for years. She knows I love westerns, fantasy, time travel, and alternate world stories. I'm 6 books in now, turns out she was right. I'm not a big Stephen King fan but this has been good. He's done a good job at taking what would sound like a silly idea, like say, a secret society of women who throw plates as weapons, but when you read it within the story, it doesn't seem that stupid. The first four books were written over the course of 15 years, the last three came out over two years, but so far I haven't noticed anything feeling rushed. 

I love these books, my brother turned me onto them and is furious with me I stopped six books in. Incomprehensible, I know. I'll get to it someday, it's just that book six was kind of weak compared to book 4 and 5 which were the best ones in the series in my opinion.  

I'm usually a little pretentious about literature but these are great fun none the less, and I think Stephen King sometimes gets too little credit. He'll never win a nobel prize for literature but he always engages a reader and he genuinely loves telling a story and it shows. I also think The Stand holds up but the rest of the books of his I've read I've sort of disavowed. Not the Dark Tower, just to be clear.

There's an article or Rotten Tomatoes about the adaptation that will soon come out, starring Idris Elba as Roland, Mcconaughey as the man in black, and Ron Howard at the the helm (but not in the director's chair). I think that director has done mediocre things as well as great things. Rush was great, for instance.It'll be a trilogy and a tv-show, from what I understand.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dark_tower_2017/

 The feature film will be followed by two sequels, each of which will be bridged by two television series. Akiva Goldsman (Da Vinci Code, Batman & Robin) provides the screenplay.

 

Just finished Stranger Things and now moving on to Broadchurch.

Both good shows, I didn't follow through with the second season of Broadchurch after watching s02e01 but the first season is stellar. 

Tig Notaro's "One Mississippi". Binged it last night. Good.

I watched this last night. Very intriguing. Pamela Adlon's new show is off to a good start too.

 

FX channel is gaining a reputation as a place where show runners have total creative control.

This playlist was supposed to have been handpicked by the band and is actually really nice. I've found some new addictions through it. Steve Gunn i.e. 

Other standouts (I already knew) include William Tyler, Kevin Morby, Julia Holter and Whitney alongside more well-known artists like Yo La Tengo, Van Morrison and Richard Thompson.

These are just the first tracks in the image, mind you.:

It's worth mentioning there's not a lot out there that sounds quite like this record. I'm not good at naming genre blends but they tap from a whole array of sources here. 

I've read a few Fante books as well, including the Bandini saga. I'd recommend another great short story writer, Raymond Carver. Also, Hubert Selby (Last Exit to Brooklyn, Requiem for a Dream, etc.), or one of my all-time favorites: Flannery O'Connor. 

I've got "What we talk about when we talk about love" on my shelf, collecting dust unfortunately. I'm more motivated to crack it open now, thanks. Flannery O' Connor is a recommendation I've had twice now, my hesitance is my cheap nature (I couldn't find it second-hand). I've had an anti-recommendation for Selby from a non-vc-member but I've got a vintage picture of Tom Waits reading "Last Exit To Brooklyn" so maybe that cancels each other out.

Thanks for that. I was probably going to read it eventually anyway, but now I'll definitely read it sooner.

 

I don't really click with the Selby Jr. recommendation above. He kind of cranks the cynicism and bleakness over the edge, beyond the charm of Fante.

 

It may be pointlessly obvious choice but I think the appeal of Kerouac is similarly in that lost American guy tries to find his way. Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels or Subterraneans seem like decent companions to Fante. Thr main difference is he's more of a wounded romantic and the prose is not nearly as tight or economical.

 

Another book of beautiful losers is Welsh's Trainspotting. As you might already know you have to crack the dialect which is initially incomprehensible for some, but most people get the hang of it and start to feel like they're reading in a hilarious and filthy second language.

I've read Ask the Dust, and Brotherhood of the Grape. I loved both, yet I'm not sure what else he's written.

There's no way you won't enjoy "Wait Until Spring, Bandini". The people I've spoken to about "Ask the Dust" and that one have the hardest time stating a personal preference. I'm rarely confident recommending a book, being not nearly as well read as I'd like to be, but it just so happens I just got a raving review of this book back from the most well read person I know (not even stating my jealousy for said person's intellect in all other areas). We're talking about someone who averages 2.5 books a month. Anyhoo, you won't enjoy it of course if you didn't think much of Ask The Dust.

Can you recommend me something besides Bukowski based on a great personal liking of Fante?

Name me a book you wish you could entirely erase from your memory, simply so that you could discover it again as if for the first time. A book so good you wish it could be brand-new to you again.

 

 

 

I'll go with "The Brothers K" by David James Duncan

 

 

This looks good. I added it to my want-to-read list.

I've never had much urges to re-read a books (though I did do that with Love in the Time of Cholera just to highlight all my favorite parts) so my entry in this list would be blank in that sense, in another sense I wish I could transport myself back to age 18 when I was cracking open all the Dark Tower books (Stephen King). There are better books but just the wonder turning each page at that age was amazing. This is in a kind of way me concurring with the above poster suggesting the Harry Potter series (of which I read the first four and then stopped).

I do immediately regret that books can't go on forever sometimes like Catch-22.

If Random Name Generator doesn't inspire you to explore you can probably hang it up. That song feels like a single and a mission statement for the record to me.

I didn't like that one until I found the version of the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2015, now I'm leaning towards thumbs up for that one. Actually, because of how soft Schmilco's sound was I grabbed back to Star Wars for the first time in months and months, remembering I disliked it on first listen but also thought it was an edgy, interesting try. I don't want to be 'that guy' who's always dissing new albums because he doesn't have the capacity to evolve, but on the other hand, how come I loved the Whole Love on first listen, you know?

Edit: okay, I'd like to change my order to bump up Summerteeth to second place above AGIB. 

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Summerteeth

A Ghost is Born

Being There

(gap in quality)

Sky Blue Sky

The Whole Love

(gap in quality)

Wilco (The Album)

(gap in quality)

A.M.

Basically in no particular order. In other words, this could also read:

01. YHF/ ST/ AGIB/ BT

02. SBS/ TWL

03. WTA

04. A.M.

I have over 5000 plays of them and I appreciate nearly the whole discography deeply and still think it's quite clear YHF is their best album and I think it's a little typical of a fan forum to declare another album above it. 

Love Garp - is that in the classic pile, or the modern pile?

 

Now reading:

 

a Modern classic   

Before that, I just read

:

Now that's a classic classic obviously. I wonder if I think the love story is in the way of the worthwhile anti-war stuff because of the way modern rom coms cram a mandatory love story into everything, and that Hemingway was partly responsible for that consequence, ironically. I like love stories when Marquez does them so I'm not jaded against any and all ones. It was "fine" in this but not the reason to read this book, though it made the ending more poignant (no spoilers in a reply please).

Wolf Hollow has the young adult tag on goodreads, what's it like? I've never even finished the Harry Potter series when I turned 15 because I felt too old for it so I have a kind of mental block for what I suppose are perfectly good young adult books.

McInerney was on NPR's "Fresh Air" this week - it was nice interview.

a (belated) thanks :-). 

My recent discovery of goodreads leaves me with at least 250 books on my to-read list, and my discovery of abebooks leaves me with a decent portion of that on my new, bigger book case. Even considering that, this topic still contains lots of good recommendations since they rarely include the typical ancient critical darlings. I try to do classic-modern-classic-modern lately.

Anyhoo, I'm reading this, which is delightfully funny but very moving too (he says, knowing full well this is hardly an obscurity)

:

Are there by chance any fans of John Fante's Bandini series here btw?

I'm sure it has been said many times, but after YHF and AGIB I think many were disappointed that Tweedy scaled back the sonic canvas in favour of something more simple and direct, and this was seen as something "lesser". I will admit to being in this camp, but years later I'm discovering that "simpler" can be "better" when the songs are this good.

I tend to respect that they just had two experimental-ish albums in them, better this way than to see the ghosts of that quality in a third/fourth experimental album. They had something to say/express and they accomplished that, end of story.

Concerning simple or complex songs, I go back and forth on my preference, both in the Wilco catalogue and on a larger scale. I'm in the camp of the layered ones lately, therefore my album order is:

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

A Ghost is Born

(gap in quality)

Summerteeth

Being There

Sky Blue Sky

The Whole Love

(gap in quality)

Wilco (The Album)

(gap in quality)

A.M.

I fully realize The Whole Love is a better album than Sky Blue Sky but it don't have as much of a personal connection to it, the time it came into my life, the significant times I spent listening to it. I'm nearing 30 now and back in 2007 I felt everything a little deeper it seems, I guess this is close to everyone else's experience, more stability but less intensity. Note 2: I love all of these albums above of course.

Schmilco's too recent to include and I'm having a really hard time finding motivation to explore Star Wars... I've really fallen for You Satellite so I have a tiny bit of hope the rest of the album will follow. I've tried several times and got discouraged. How do people generally rank the songs on that album? 

I can't stop listening to this, been wanting more from him ever since being flattened by "I'm getting ready".

Just finished this. Comparable to other tragicomic cocaine-fueled yuppie satires of the '80s but having a main character with a conscience, dealing with loss and the search for human connection. Can be read just for the comedy but there's more there for those who want it. A little short. 3.5/5.

Almost half way through a classic. Unlike anything I've ever read.:

Dealer's choice

Sad and Screechy

Torres - Honey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVgNYcJeiOg

Sizzling Rock

The Men - I Saw Her Face

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFbwU31NXIk

Bittersweet and wholesome

Night Beds - Borrowed Time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYsUh3xHtQ

Drugs Party (taken by the palmful)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoH6k6eIUS4

So glad Kevin got out the funk kick he's been on over the last few albums. I always think he's at his best when he's focused on straightforward folk/pop songs. Very good return to form.

Amen. It's a shame when abundantly talented people get bogged down by what's probably self-indulgence. I've always liked Sufjan Stevens' more straightforward compositions better too i.e.