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I don't remember what Brenda Lee or Janet Jackson's music is like, but I could draw a straight line from most of those artists to something important that happened in rock and roll. Billy Holiday and Nina Simone: protest and civil rights music Donna Summer: disco/electronic music is still a major element of rock and roll Aretha and Etta James: R&B, gospel, and doo-wop are some of styles rock descends from Dusty Springfield is maybe the closest parallel to Whitney out of that bunch. I like some of their music (Wishin' and Hopin' and Son of a Preacher Man are among my favorite music

I just don't see a connection between what she does and what rock and roll is, even in the widest definition. EDIT: To be fair to her, I have not listened to all of her music. Maybe she's done some rock music I'm unaware of.

I think I intended to put them on my list, but cut them off somehow. They should be in, for sure.

The following should all get in. Kraftwerk MC5 Motörhead Todd Rundgren T.Rex I don't see why Whitney Houston would get in ever, but she'll get in this year. 100%. Dave Matthews shouldn't get in yet, but will eventually. I agree Phish should get in first, but this is still basically Rolling Stone Magazine presents the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more than it is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I hope my post didn't come across as argumentative. That wasn't my intent, but I was in a mood this morning, so there might be some aggro tone there that was unwarranted. Anyway, I agree with you about setlist variation. I like being surprised. They've generally done a pretty good job of changing up the setlist at the shows I've seen (I usually only see one show per tour), but there are still a lot of songs I've never see them play, and a number of songs they've almost always played.

It could be that he was consciously using a contemporary reference for the sake of modern audiences, many of whom weren't alive to see the Dead. There's no chance whatsoever that John is unaware the Dead came before Phish, or was slighting them in any way. Wilco did a tour with Bob Weir and played Grateful Dead songs on sage with him. The Dead don't need to be buffed up any more than they already are. Also, do we know for sure that the Dead are the pioneers of setlist variety? Or have they simply been marketed that way? There were probably countless long-forgotten folk artists that k

We Were Lucky looks like it comes across really well onstage.

Everything I've read suggests Tweedy got what he was aiming for. When you work with others, the end result is never going to exactly match the vision one person had at the beginning of the project. Surely Tweedy understands this, but if he had a "real vision for what he wanted," and he's happy with the end result, it's because he knew how to explain his vision to the other musicians so they could deliver something close enough to what he was hoping for. But it'd be impossible to other people to deliver note for note, tone for tone exactly what he was picturing in his head. So the leader

There are two quotes in the John article that encapsulate to me the different ways people are reacting to this album. “Ode To Joy”, finds the band reaching for new heights in a new and exciting way that recalls their adventurous past...Their contributions result in some of the most exciting and surprising sonic explorations the band has committed to tape in quite some time. And “I think that Jeff had a real vision for what he wanted the accompaniment to sound like, and it was very light,” laughs Stirratt of the stark and sparse arrangements on the album. These statements seem like a di

It's the most recent episode, as of last week. I'm not very familiar with Joe Rogan's podcast, or how often he posts episodes, but I listened to this one the other day. It's long, and this story is near the end. Edit: Actually, it's from September 30 and it looks like he's been very busy podcasting since then. http://podcasts.joerogan.net/

For the life of me I can't remember how On and On goes . There's definitely some duds on SBS, but it's high points are really high. I need to listen to TWL again. That's definitely the one I've listened to the least, and I skipped seeing them on that tour. I think I had gown so pissed at the chatty Atlanta Wilco concert audiences by then that I retired from Wilco for that cycle.

In my case, inconsistency is probably a large part of what makes an album enjoyable to listen to. I like an album to show different sides of what a band can do (and sometimes what they can't do), and that creates inconsistency. SBS, AGIB, and TWL (not one of my favorites, but still) and some of the others did that really well. This album is pretty consistent in tone and tempo, and on the tracks where it isn't, it feels to me like they're rehashing things they've done before (the one uptempo song, Everyone Hides, is to my ears pretty interchangeable with Dawned on Me, for example). Which is

As someone who was a Nels fan before Wilco even existed, I thought SBS was a fantastic album right from the start. Nels is well represented on that one starting with the first track. On an unrelated note, does anyone know where I can buy the latest Uncut magazine online without ordering it from the UK?

I guess it's good that I didn't know there was FB group. Now that I've had a chance to listen several times through, I'd say this album puts them on an upswing after Schmilco, but is nowhere near as good as SBS or Star Wars, so I don't understand the "Best album since AGIB" thing that's been pretty common in a lot of reviews and commentary.

I think a large part of the criticism is that it isn’t enough of a curve ball after Schmilco, Warm, and Warmer. People wanted a curve ball and didn’t get one.

However anyone might feel about this album, I think we can all agree that this is not the type of album one would expect from a band that recently announced their inaugural Mexican beach bash. That kind of thing implies "we're going to have some fun." But the album is mostly bummer rock. As for me, I think this would have been a better record if they found a more uptempo song for track 2, or if not uptempo, then something that puts across a different feeling, sort of like they did with Kamera after I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. The sequencing doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but

I haven't heard it yet, but I don't know how he's going to top the bouncing a hotdog off the forehead of a bully story he told on the Joe Rogan podcast.

That's how the black vinyl is. I like the simple album jacket rather than the unnecessarily thick gatefold that Wilco typically uses, and is common with a lot of modern bands. As someone who has accumulated tons of albums over the last three decades, I can't spare the shelf space for records that take up half an inch (a gatefold album was always more like 1/4 inch thick until he vinyl resurgence, and now some of them are almost an inch thick...the National's latest album, for example.) If they were all that big, I'd need a larger house. It's gotten to the point where record packaging is bei

I collect pencils, but did not get one with my order. Was that a colored vinyl only thing? Or maybe because I pre-ordered at the last minute.

Kung Fu has offered me a refund. On a related note, I just returned from two record stores. Neither had the album (not surprising at one, but very surprising at the other). Apparently there is a wide scale problem with the pressing of this album, and shipments to a lot of stores have been recalled. The employee at one store told me they didn’t receive their copies, and stores they’re affiliated with have told them they’re seeing seven out of ten records with obvious problems.. I hope everyone else has better luck.

That's good to hear. This thing is W-A-R-P-E-D. I have video of it spinning on my turntable, and I sent them an email.

I looked over their return policy. It says open items are non-returnable. I only knew it was warped because I opened it so I could listen to it. All returns are at the expense of the buyer. The warping, it could be argued, is the fault of USPS (since they delivered it in the morning rather than in late afternoon like they do every other day). Or even my own fault for ordering a record in summertime knowing where it'd be left. (Although I know from being an Amazon seller that a delivery is the seller's responsibility until the buyer has the item in their hands and is 100% satisfied, so

This may be true for all music now. It seems to me "new fans" rarely come from albums anymore. But new fans may come from hearing Everyone Hides, or whatever other individual songs they push. Albums, as a general rule these days, are for people who are already fans, especially with older acts like Wilco. I agree though with your bigger point. This is definitely not an album for the masses.

Regarding tempo... I don't know if this is true for anyone else, but when I sit around paying guitar by myself I come up with a lot of different things in slower tempos. But if I'm practicing with a band, what we come up with tends to be mid-tempo or faster, and almost never anything at a slower tempo. In Wilco's case, it could be that Tweedy experiences this same phenomenon, writes a lot of slower tempo material, and rather than working these musical ideas up with the whole band playing as a group, which tends to rock things up quite a bit in terms of tempo and swagger, the songs remain

Having just completed my first listen, the songs that I was most drawn to were Quiet Amplifier and An Empty Corner. It seems pretty obvious this album will be a grower for me. AGIB was like that, too, to some degree. I'd agree this album is sort of in the Schmilco universe, but that could be an unfair first impression.