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Bob_Roberts

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Posts posted by Bob_Roberts

    Let’s Go Reviews and Discussion

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    I also haven't been reading books much in recent years (the internet has killed my attention span, I swear), but I finished Let's Go in just a few days. It was probably the right length for a book of this nature, but I also could have kept reading. I felt like there was much in there I didn't know, or added details that fleshed out stories I only knew part of. I didn't realize, for example, that the incident with Jay Farrar's girlfriend took place four years before Son Volt broke up.

     

    Jeffs's typical stage banter humor pays out well in the book - there were many laughs throughout. Jeff will be discussing something quite serious and then finish the paragraph or story with a deadpan crack. Like his section on how people converse and communicate, and how he feels he isn't on the same wavelength with most other people. "How 'bout the Cubs?" "Yeah, the Cubs, they're going to die someday. All of them... They could be dying right now while we're siting here making conversation about baseball." LOL. I really relate.

     

    RE: one of the questions posted above, I think Jeff is clear about his feelings on the handling of Jay Bennett's departure from Wilco. Jeff didn't tell Ken Coomer personally that he was being fired, so he made sure to tell Jay. And as for his reasoning, Jeff stated that "I fired Bennett from Wilco because I knew if I didn't, I would probably die." I think Jeff was/is sad that it didn't work out with Jay, or rather moreso that Jay didn't get the help he needed to get clean. I don't think Jeff has any regrets about his own part in handling the situation.

     

    And that story leads in to what I think is the key takeaway from the book:  "There are only three people I've committed myself to completely for the rest of my life: Susie, Spencer, and Sammy." In other words, Jeff doesn't want to be defined by Wilco, or by Son Volt, or by who is or isn't in Wilco. He describes the concept of a band consisting of permanently-fixed band members as an impractical fallacy, and something that no musician needs to be bound by. That so much of the book is about Jeff's family tells where his true priorities, and legacy, are to be found.

     

    There was also some unintentional humor in the book. When Jeff talked about going into rehab, he mentioned that he was put into the "Pride Wing" (section for "fragile" patients who wouldn't be best served in the parts of the rehab center that were "a little rough." In reading that passage, I somehow missed a letter and read "Pride Wig." And I am thinking, why they hell did they make poor Jeff Tweedy wear a rainbow wig at rehab? Like, that was the celebrity disguise of choice? It wasn't until I read more on the next page and figured it out.

     

    There are so many other parts of the book that I enjoyed, from his recollections of Belleville to his work with Mavis. Even if Jeff didn't cover all the bases as in-depth as we all might have wanted, I appreciate that he was able to dig deep into those stories that meant most to him to share, that he thought would best illuminate who Jeff Tweedy is.

     

    I guess that's what really turned me off to Wilco and Tweedy after the firing of Coomer and Bennett.  They both worked hard to make the band successful and, just as the band was on the verge of becoming something and their hard work could start to pay off, Tweedy fired them.  Just my two cents.  

    Bands you saw early on who became big?

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    Green Day at Gilman Street in Berkeley.  Around 1989.  Other bands on the bill were Sam I Am and I think Mr. T Experience (but maybe not).  I didn't know who Green Day were and spent a lot of time outside the club talking to people.  They exploded shortly thereafter.

     

    A band I was in opened for Third Eye Blind at some little club in San Francisco.  I wasn't in the band at the time.  Evidently it was not a pleasant experience: small crowd and the singer for Third Eye Blind was kind of upset things.

    Politics 2016 (election edition)

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    Too bad about the heading, "Is this the best country can do for president?".

     

    I myself have wondered what country can do for president. It seems country votes for people that it doesn't actually like for nominee. Country should be more thoughtful in nomination process and maybe next time country will nominate Kasich, and O'Malley, or Sanders.

    lol

    Is Mike Pence an albino?

    Politics 2016 (election edition)

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    I'd say it's actually a good rule of thumb to assume they're lying when considering any candidate during election season. Trump isn't going to build a wall, Sanders isn't going to everyone a free ride on the backs of the rich and Hillary isn't going to take on Wall Street.

    Yep.  However, Sanders believes his lies and will fight for his agenda, whereas Trump and Clinton are just saying shit to win the prize at the talent show.

    Politics 2016 (election edition)

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    Should it or shouldn't it is a separate discussion, the fact is that federal law does trump state law. That is a well settled issue. Article VI, para 2.

     

    It's my opinion that in the modern era with our population being fairly mobile that maybe the time for states and separate laws for them might be at an end. Sure maintain their integrity and allow this state or that state to manage their resources, levy taxes etc... But perhaps it's time for criminal laws and other laws governing society to be made uniform across the country. Just a thought.

     

    Centralization of power is a scary thing - whether the power be corporate or governmental.  With criminal law, there is the Model Penal Code...

     

    People who are very pro-Fed when it comes to the civil rights movement, are suddenly very state's rights when it comes to the issue of cannibis.  Those are actually my positions, and I can see the inconsistency as plain as day.

    Politics 2015

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    I'm going to vote for Sanders in the primary, but it disturbed me how he talked about the US toppling dictators such as Mosaddegh, Allende, Hussein, and Gadaffi.  Mosaddegh and Allende were democratically elected - they weren't dictators. 

     

    And then Clinton and Sanders saying that we've got to take out the dictator Assad who kills his own people -- as if it isn't at all unseemly for politicians in the USA to be calling for the forced removal and assassination of another country's leader.

     

     

    pretty sure it means 'bomb the living shit out of them.'

     

    until the next Tal-Qae-Sis forms.

    Yep.

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