Dude

I was surprised Wilco didn't make Rolling Stone's shortlist of Artists of the Decade. They were certainly more deserving than MIA, IMO. That list was: The Boss MIA Kanye Arcade Fire Radiohead Jack White Beyonce U2

A write up and some photos off the Chicagoist: http://chicagoist.com/2009/12/17/tweedy_second_city_raise_some_cash.php?gallery0Pic=3#gallery

True, ultimately the joy of listening to a record comes when you are actually doing it, but you shouldn't have any problem hearing that mystical "vinyl warmth" via a WAV or lossless file.

Not so sure about that. The record player is producing an electronic signal going over speaker wire to your speakers. Taking that same signal and ripping it to an uncompressed WAV file and listening to that WAV file through your speakers shouldn't be a remarkably different experience and a good approximation of what it sounds like to listen to speakers or headphones hooked up to a turntable, assuming the frequencies remain intact and the signal isn't clipped or distorted in any way. For all the mystique about vinyl (and I certainly love listening to vinyl records), you're still ultimately li

Cripes, that's getting dangerously close to getting the thread back on topic. We wouldn't wanna do that now, would we?

Good points. I'd argue that most people can afford a microwave oven. I mean, if a lot of lower-income family kids are able to get their hands on $50 cell phones, surely their parents can afford a $50 microwave. But I'm no sociologist and have no idea what low-income families can or cannot afford. Incidentally, there was a point in my life where I was pretty broke-ass poor, and rather than eat at McDonalds three times a day, I stocked up on Ramen noodles (3 for a dollar!), Chef Boyardee ravioli (50 cents per can) and similar. It was way cheaper than eating at fast food restaurants, even off t

We need to eat, but we have a pretty wide range of choices to choose from and have over the years, including fast food, supermarkets, ma and pa owned restaurants, etc. We overwhelmingly chose fast food, due to the taste, the convenience and the low cost, but we could have made other choices, it wasn't our only option. Just like we can choose to watch a wide variety of programming, some semi-educational, but often choose entertaining crap, hence inspiring the entertainment business to make more entertaining crap to satisfy our demands, and so forth and so on.

True, and to get back to the fast food analogy, we can ultimately blame ourselves for making the McEmpires so huge and powerful. As MattZ says, McDonalds adds shit to their burgers to make us want to eat them, but we as a society made McDonalds the global monstrosity it is, and gave it every tool and incentive necessary to make their food the most streamlined, processed and the most addictive with little regard for their customers health, what they are doing to US agriculture or the environment. At the end of the day, it is the consumer who shapes his destiny, and if there is a ton of low-br

It's basically the folk singer equivalent of a lap dance.

I forgot to add Octomom, Jon & Kate and of course Jackson's death (and life) to that list. Yee gads, what a year.

I'm guilty of it also, its rubbernecking basically, and the better stories tend to be the ongoing car crashes like the bald, lunatic Britney / Lilo / Brangelina /Tiger Woods / Casey Anthony / etc. It's hard to turn away from lives that are spiralling out of control

Yeah, I never considered it a generational thing, but I do wonder if it's the technology or if its the methods we use to seek attention and validation in this culture even if there is a risk we'll be exposed and be branded an idiot by all of society.

True, there is a definite appetite for it. We're both a society of voyeurs and exhibitionists. Clearly both groups get something out of the transaction.

I wonder if narcissism doesn't play a small role in that. The fact that people are willing to be lowered into a vat of live insects, or willingly break the law and instruct their children to lie about being in (or not being in) a weather balloon, all in an effort to get themselves on national television says something about our times. Whatever makes people hungry for notoriety and attention surely feeds into their need to share so much of themselves and their experiences on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, guys. 'All good things...', etc.

Jeff's commitment to Letters for Santa has nothing to do with the end of Wilco. Clearly, when they do break up, it will be due to the fact that they are scheduling a concert on a full moon in March during a non-leap year, and Jeff's guitar neck facing southeast, Jeff's sacral chakra running perpendicular to his guitar and parallel to the constellation Orion's belt, with a cool breeze blowing north by northwest -- all of which are clearly indicative that Jeff doesn't really want to be in Wilco any more.

Is the web-zine equivalent of cancelling a subscription deleting a bookmark / favorite?

No real point, it was a reference to Kevin Smith's hilarious story on Prince and his camel needs.

This is news to me.

Prince may play an incredible guitar solo from time to time, but the man also randomly demands a camel at his Paisley Park residence at 3 in the morning. And he isn't even shooting an album cover or anything.

It won two Grammys for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Recording Package.

Also in RS's 100 Best Songs of the Decade: 67 | Wilco — "Jesus, Etc." 68 | Coldplay — "Viva La Vida" 69 | Santigold — "L.E.S. Artistes" 70 | Arctic Monkeys — "I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor" 71 | Justice — "D.A.N.C.E." 72 | Kings of Leon — "Use Somebody" 73 | Queens of the Stone Age — "No One Knows" 74 | TV on the Radio — "Wolf Like Me" 75 | Arcade Fire — "Rebellion (Lies)" Nice that it improbably outranked Rebellion (Lies) and Viva la Vida.

I like it - I understand that not everyone will. It is pretty messy and chaotic, a bit like the lunatic edges of Radio Cure taking over the asylum. The buildup to the chorus is brilliant. I'd subtract the piano solo at two-thirds in which saps all the energy out of the song, but otherwise I'm a fan.

Dude, you're totally going to have to start paying Jeff royalties for that "Apple cheeks song breathe into me" song. But seriously, it sounds great, and congrats on the great press coming your way.

Here's the original article. I wonder if reel-to-reel is still hard to come by. Tale of the Tape: Audiophiles Bemoan The End of the Reel As Quantegy Shuts Plant, Purists Snap Up Supply; NASA Feels the Crunch By ETHAN SMITH and SARAH MCBRIDE Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL January 12, 2005; Page A1 Jeff Tweedy, leader of the rock group Wilco, prefers to record music on reel-to-reel tape rather than on the digital equipment that has overtaken the music industry. Purists like him think it confers a warmth and richness to recordings that a computer cannot. But last Friday, Mr. T