Brian F.

I'm not looking for any artist to make the same kind of music they did thirty years ago, but I could point to Pearl Jam as a bunch of guys in their 50s and 60s who just released a pretty fantastic album that stands up with anything else they've done. The album has gotten strong reviews from critics and even spawned two number one songs at rock radio, which no Pearl Jam album before had done. Even Pearl Jam fans seem to really like it, which is saying something since a lot of them seem to only want to relive 1992-98. I actually think there are a number of aging rock bands that are still making really great records that get overlooked because younger people are not in touch with rock music and older people are content to relive the greatest hits of the band's purported heydays. I still treat new albums from my favorite rock artists as events and give those albums a lot of attention when they come out. I feel like I am pretty much always rewarded for this because these artists generally do not disappoint.

With respect to Wilco, I know I'm an outlier among fans in that I don't hold up YHF and AGIB as the peak of their output. This could have something to do with the fact that I'm also an outlier in that I was on the Wilco train from the beginning, so A.M. was my gateway drug and then Being There and Summerteeth (my favorite) were the albums that expanded the palette and cemented the band in the pantheon for me even before YHF came along, whereas YHF was the gateway drug for a much larger part of the fan base and AGIB plumbed further depths. At the same time, there are several latter-day albums, including Cruel Country, that I'd probably rank ahead of Wilco's two best-selling albums, so it's not just a matter of me putting the first three albums on a pedestal because of how much I lived with them when they were new.

For those who are unaware, or who are not Starship Casual subscribers, a first draft of "Ice Cream" was shared on the Substack page way back in October 2021:

https://jefftweedy.substack.com/p/ice-cream-1st-draft

(Also attached below as mp3 for those who cannot access the Substack page.)

Ice Cream (1st draft).mp3

Cool. I've always enjoyed them.

3 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

 

Yeah - but I like how VC remains a 'safe space' for differing considered opinions rather than the sycophantic FB place.

Do you know how many people follow them on Facebook/are in the Facebook group/whatever the proper phrasing is? (I'm not on  Facebook.)

6 hours ago, summerdai said:

No paying extra for limited edition white vinyl. 

Neither of these things mean anything to me. The "limited edition" thing is artificial-- before too long, they're going to release it in a more widely available edition that will have the same songs sounding exactly the same. And I don't really care what color it is. It's a gimmick. Obviously, other people feel differently and that's why they jack up the price.

It's funny how, in a sample size of just four or five posters, we run the gamut of opinions on the relative merits of Wilco's last several releases.

1 hour ago, summerdai said:

 

I would say it is Record Store Day prices. It may be $10 cheaper on the website, but the SS version in white vinyl was limited to 1,000 I believe and you could do your own cover! That's what you are paying extra for 

I'm paying extra to do their work for them? I really got fleeced then, since I didn't bother with the customization. Then again, I didn't pay thirty dollars. I paid an unknowable price as part of the FotF package.

I really love both Cruel Country and Cousin, especially compared to Schmilco and Ode to Joy, and my understanding is that the former albums were both products of collaboration more so than the latter two (former/latter referring to my preceding sentence, not the release dates of the albums), so I'm not sure I get the pre- and post-Star Wars demarcation. I actually think Star Wars-Schmilco-Ode to Joy is the low point of the band's catalog, regardless of how those albums came together. If I were ranking the albums, those would probably be Nos. 11, 12 and 13, with a big gap between whatever No. 10 is and No. 11.

My problem with Ode to Joy is that it feels more like an intellectual exercise than an attempt to create enjoyable songs. A lot of it seems to be Glenn deconstructing rhythm to the point where the songs have no momentum or sense of anything pulling them forward. When that album came out, I listened to it every day for about six months to try to uncover what it had to offer. When I went back to it again a couple of years later, several of the songs barely even seemed familiar to me. That's how little of an impression they made despite hundreds of listens.

To each their own: I think "A Bowl and a Pudding" is the second-best track on Cousin, behind "Sunlight Ends," and I rank both at the high end of Wilco's catalog. "Sunlight Ends" might be one of my five favorite Wilco songs, and "A Bowl and a Pudding" might be in the top 20 or 25.

I was about to push back against the "since way back when" comment by bringing up Jar of Flies or Broken, just to name two outstanding EPs of recent vintage off the top of my head, only to realize that both of these are at least thirty years old and thus both qualify as "way back when." This made me feel really old.

8 minutes ago, tinnitus photography said:

i doubt that Belltower or Autumn set the price for the Wilco 12" but that's just a guess. 

Also, the edition you bought is different from the one that will be fulfilled via the wilcoworld pre-order. you got to customize the sleeve however you wanted, and it's an edition of 1000. the other will have artwork chosen from the ones submitted, and not sure what the pressing size will be or if it will be on white vinyl.

some enterprising soul has one of the SSF copies available for $200:
https://www.discogs.com/release/31102478-Wilco-Hot-Sun-Cool-Shroud

Customizing the sleeve is a feature? I wish I had realized that. I left mine blank since waiting in line to do arts-and-crafts seemed like not the best use of my time.

Thirty bucks for a 17-minute EP in a plain brown sleeve is a ridiculous price, regardless of the "limited" nature of the pressing or the color of the vinyl. I'm not sure why white vinyl is something I'm supposed to covet. It makes the dark streaks that were on the record when I pulled it out of the sleeve really stand out.

I watched Man in the Sand the other day for the first time in probably over 20 years, and I was also listening to some of the outtakes on the Being There box, and one of the things that struck me is how much the timbre-- "is it timbre or is it 'tambre'?"-- of Jeff's voice has changed. It was so deep both when he spoke and when he sang in those days. Think of "I Thought I Held You" or "Dash 7" (tape manipulation on the latter notwithstanding). (It was also funny to watch the documentary and see skinny Jeff and chubby John.)

Does anyone else hear "Paperback Writer" in the riff for "Hot Sun"? Every time I hear the "Hot Sun" riff in my head, and it was stuck there for a couple of days, it segues into "Paperback Writer."

49 minutes ago, DiamondClaw said:

I would think the next thing we hear about would have to be the AGIB deluxe box set, right? Maybe they'll play a few special shows for that like they did for the YHF one a couple of years ago. In addition to the new Tweedy album late this year/early next year, I think the Autumn Defense has a new album in the can as well that hopefully comes out soon. Maybe they'll support that one with a little run of shows.

Before the storm abruptly ended things on Sunday, Pat said during the Autumn Defense's set that they were working on a new album, and they played two songs that should be on it, but he did not suggest that it is done.

The poster was the same as the one on sale at the merch booth, as far as I could tell, but it was signed by all six Wilcos. There was apparently a pop-up performance by Nels in the lounge on Saturday afternoon, but I missed it even though it was mentioned in the email they sent us.

I think that if I had known where the lounge was on Friday-- by the time I went looking for it, it was closed-- and if I had gone there when the evacuation order was issued on Sunday-- when I asked if I could go there, I was told by someone from MassMOCA (incorrectly, apparently) that I had to either leave the premises or go to the Hunter Center-- I would have come closer to getting my money's worth for the FotF pass.

I think when I ran into you, I was on my way out to get dinner on Friday night. At that point, I didn't know that I could have had dinner in the lounge because I hadn't been there yet.

Anyway, It was good to see you and sorry I didn't see Bridget-- but then again, I never even ended up seeing James during the weekend. We were like ships passing in the night.

You need to update your location from Boston to Brooklyn now that you've blown your cover here.

Mine has some dark streaks on it, but it plays fine.

The record vendors at Solid Sound really took advantage of their exclusive with that $30-plus-tax price point for a six-song, 17-minute EP in a plain brown sleeve. Wilcoworld is selling it for $20. I got it as part of my Friend of the Festival package, so depending on how you account for the value of the other items that came as part of it, I arguably paid about $150 for it. I think the premium for a FotF package over a regular three-day pass was $200, but the only other thing in the package that I definitely would have purchased was Jeff's book, which costs about $25, and I had dinner in the lounge one night, which probably also saved me about $25. The signed poster is cool, but I wouldn't have bought a poster if one hadn't been given to me, and the same goes for the deck of Wilco-themed playing cards, the SSF stickers and the YHF keychain.

It's ironic, because I definitely would not have paid $30 for the EP at SSF if it hadn't been included in the FotF package, but one of the things that spurred me to purchase the package was the promise of an "exclusive" Wilco release (that turned out not to be exclusive in the way I thought) that I effectively paid a multiple of $30 for.

I wonder whether the Largo shows having been delayed to mid-April this year will factor into whether he does his usual late-December/early-January Largo run. I hope not.

So now that the Chautauqua show is done, we're in a rare moment where there are no publicly announced Wilco or Jeff Tweedy shows on the calendar in the near or medium-term future. Jeff has a couple of "in-conversation" dates at the Evanston Folk Festival in September, and then he's booked to perform on a cruise to the Caribbean next February/March. That's it. I assume he's going to have his other hip taken care of soon and then will need time for rehab and recovery. Supposedly, the new Tweedy band album is close to done. Are we expecting that to come out in the fall with shows in support of it? If so, I would expect that we would see those announced and going on sale soon. What do people think?

"Cruel Country" sans "I Am My Mother"! Cats and dogs living together!

My CDs and LPs are shelved alphabetically by artist and chronologically within artist, so any time an artist deviates from the standard size of a CD or LP, I end up making the Sideshow Bob stepping-on-rakes noise. I'm looking at you, Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball or, more recently, Green Day's Saviors.

Much better this way. A 10-inch doesn't fit neatly with 45s or with LPs. Pearl Jam did a 10-inch one year for their holiday single and it sticks out of the collection like a sore thumb.

There seems to be a lot of consensus that "Livid" is a highlight of this EP. When I first heard it, I thought that it was too bad it hadn't been developed into a more fully realized song.

18 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

 

Swoon . . . (For Cruyff not ol' scary thighs).

"Scary thighs"? Not cool.

11 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

O Bbop, Bbop, wherefore art thou Bbop?

My surmise is that he conscientiously tried several times over the weekend to file his reports, only to find that the site was down, and now that the site's back up, he's in Toronto for the next shows and not quite sure how to convert his reviews to metric.

EDIT: I just realized that I totally misread this question. You're actually asking, "Why is he bbop?" That's beyond my ken.

Or, more likely, I'm just not nearly as musically astute as I like to pretend I am. (Either that or this is the first sign of the damage I've done to my hearing after 30 years of rock shows.)

I didn't notice any issues with the sound.

On the one hand, I felt like they could have gone deeper. I thought they really leaned into the EPs, and I don't think of those songs as deep cuts necessarily. In fact, "Woodgrain" is probably the deepest cut from More Like the Moon and they didn't play that one. I was really hoping for more of the "played-fewer-than-five-times" songs, a la "Sunloathe" (which was played, and sounded gorgeous). And "Quiet Amplifier," a song that is not a favorite from an album that is not a favorite, was quite good in the live setting.

Having seen them not only many, many  times, but also spanning their whole career from 1995 to present, I did come away impressed that they managed to play 13 songs-- fully half the set-- that I had never seen them play before. I saw them twice on the A.M. tour-- excuse me, the I Must Be High TOUR-- but there were three A.M. tracks I had never seen prior to Friday, and they played one of them, "Blue Eyed Soul." Jeff altered the vocal line on that one so it didn't quite land as I would have hoped. Still waiting on "I Thought I Held You" and "Dash 7." I expect I'll keep waiting, especially for the former.

"Secret of the Sea" was tuned way up for some reason. It sounded like it might have been a full step up. It bordered on being above the range of my hearing. I love that song-- it might be my favorite Mermaid Avenue track-- but it sounded weird. And then it was followed by "ELT," a song that's already in an upper register and sounded like it might also have been tuned up a half-step. Usually, as artists get older, they tune things down because the high parts are harder to reach, so these were interesting choices.

I was surprised to see that "One Sunday Morning (A Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" had not been played since 2014. Perhaps since Jeff plays this one solo often-- or at least it seems like it to me-- I thought of it as more of a live staple. I definitely did not think of it as a deep cut and, when they opened with it, I thought, "This night might not go the way I was hoping." I kind of felt that way until they went into "Blue Eyed Soul." Perhaps it was a deep cut because it was the full twelve-minute version?

Wilco.

Wilco.

Wilco will love me, baby.