Brian F.

Like you, I am a physical-media person. The only way I could even listen to streaming music or MP3s is on my desktop computer, and I am generally not sitting at my desk. When I got the email with the link to download the album that was sent to Solid Sound subscribers, I downloaded it as .wav files and then burned it onto a CD. 77 minutes just barely fits on one CD. I will still buy the CD (and vinyl) whenever they come out, but the burned CD will bridge the gap until then. I also put the album's lyrics into a Word document. If that would be useful to anyone, it's attached. Th

If you want a top 10 hit, you'll have to go even sexier than Buble'. The best he's ever done is No. 20.

And here's the scan!

I like the song "You Never Know" (and love the album on which it appears), but for someone who had read Billboard since the early 1980s and who first saw Wilco in 1995, I was so excited when this happened so many years after the beginning of both relationships that I cut out that entire chart and saved it for posterity. Alas, if Wilco had another Triple-A chart-topper today (which could happen), I wouldn't even be able to do that because they don't publish the chart in the magazine anymore. They don't even publish the whole Hot 100 in the magazine. The magazine is not even worth reading any

A "hit," without more qualification, is a broadly popular song-- one that reaches a wide audience that goes beyond a specific, narrow genre audience. The songs you see listed on Billboard's Wilco artist profile do not meet this definition. Wilco had a number one song ("You Never Know") on the Triple-A (Adult Album Alternative) chart, but that is such a niche genre that the number of streams/spins/downloads necessary to be number one on it doesn't amount to a drop in the much larger ocean of music consumption. Put it this way: the Hot 100 is an all-genre chart. Any song in any ge

There are still plenty of hits. It's just that not everything that's in the top 40 or even top 10 is a "hit" in the conventional sense of the word. But there is no shortage of hits.

What do you mean? The Billboard Hot 100 hasn't gone anywhere. It's formula is broken, but it's still attempting to rank the most popular songs every week. There are actually more charts than ever, as there are now Spotify charts, Apple Music charts, and a slew of genre-specific Billboard charts that didn't used to exist. Hits are still hits. Pop music is what's popular, regardless of genre. Rock music-- at least, new rock music-- is not particularly popular these days. But the pendulum could swing back. Harry Styles' first album ("Sign of the Times") was a classic rock album

When "Touch of Grey" came out, there were other songs similar to it in terms of tempo and instrumentation in the top 40. There is nothing at all like Wilco's recent output in the top 40. They would never get played on top 40 radio-- certainly not with the frequency necessary to climb the Hot 100-- and they would never amass the kind of streaming numbers necessary to get near the top of the chart. In all seriousness, the best chance Wilco has to have a "hit" on the Hot 100 would be for us to recruit 300 people to each buy 1,000 downloads of a Wilco song in the same week. Because

The vocals on "I Am My Mother" sound like Bob Dylan.

Thanks for the reassurance!

Should I be concerned that I have not yet received my tickets for SSF, which I purchased on March 17? It says they'll be emailed closer to the show date, but we're now T-minus 11 days. Have any of you received your tickets yet?

Yes, I assumed it will be available for streaming immediately upon release, but I don't have a streaming subscription. There are multiple reasons for this, but one of them is that I don't have a convenient way to listen to streaming music. I would have to sit at my desk and listen to it on my desktop computer. I completely understand that not having an MP3 player and not having a streaming subscription are choices I made and that I could choose differently. I'm not faulting the band for their approach to the release. I was just noting that, for the outliers like me, the news of

I feel the same.

Anybody else hear echoes of "Natural Disaster" in this new song? Maybe it's just the way it's sung.

I agree. I will already be paying twice for the CD and the LP whenever they're available. For someone like me, who doesn't have an MP3 player (and I realize I'm an outlier), the fact that this album won't be available in physical form until some date to be determined puts a big damper on this news. I guess I will hear these songs at Solid Sound and then not again for a while.

I don't think you could get a CD done with artwork on that time frame.

If this album is actually going to be released on May 27, that suggests a digital release with physical media to follow later. If a physical release is coming May 27, there should a pre-order already underway. As a non-streamer, I hope I'm wrong about this.

I really enjoyed the performance, watched via the livestream. The direction of the livestream video, however, was terrible. There'd be a horn part, and the cameras would be in a closeup on Jeff or Nels. There'd be a closeup on the horn players, standing with their instruments at their sides. There were constant shots from the very top and back of the theater. The cameras would zoom in or out or pan at odd moments. It was a visual trainwreck accompanying an aural treasure. I still couldn't tell you if the outro to "Reservations" was played like by Pat or Michael (or both) or fed in prere

Here's the menu for the March 1 show.

For the record, although Largo is very close to West Hollywood (the city limit is just a half-block away), it is actually in the city of Los Angeles.

When Jeff played "Tired Of Taking It" tonight (at night five at Largo), he commented that it was his first time playing it outside of the studio or his house. He also played "Hints" tonight.

On Jeff's list, "Love My Country" was listed as "Choir USA." "Still My Mother" was listed as "I Am My Mother." Other unfamiliar (to me) titles included "Story to Tell," "Hints," "All Across" and "Tired of Taking It." The complete list is below, including "Charlie," which is presumably "Drawing from Memory (Charlie)." Credit to Eric for the photo, and for thinking to ask to take a photo. I asked to see it but, not being a picture-taker, it didn't occur to me to take a photo. A fun moment for me last night was asking Jeff to play "The Ruling Class" and Jeff responding

I ran into Jeff on the street before a show in August 1999 in Vermont and I asked him if they were going to play "Pieholden Suite." He said they couldn't play it without the trumpet. Liar. Kudos to James W., whose shouted request for "Lou Reed Was My Babysitter" might have been accepted faster than any shouted request in history. It was like, James: "PLAY LOU REED IS MY BABYSIT.." Jeff: "O.K., I'll give it a try."

I was amused that the printed set list said "Tonight (Dylan)" as if, but for the parenthetical note, the band might have broken out into, say, "Tonight" from West Side Story. "Ultra Orange Room" was sound-checked, but not played.

Excellent writeup, Paul. I'll just note, for the sake of completeness, that I was the person who inquired as to the traditional gift for a two-year anal fissure anniversary, and the full inquiry was, "What's the traditional gift for that anniversary, paper or wood?"