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im pretty sure Bennett produced the last Blues Traveler record, but that may have been a year or two ago...

 

 

this would be correct.

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A new friend who had the chance to talk to John after one of the shows this week told me that John felt sad by how things have turned out for Jay, that his producing work and solo career haven't really taken off.

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Guest Speed Racer
A new friend who had the chance to talk to John after one of the shows this week told me that John felt sad by how things have turned out for Jay, that his producing work and solo career haven't really taken off.

 

This says to me that, though Jeff may indeed have been difficult to work with, Jay has his own share of trouble that he hasn't yet been able to work through. He most definitely is a hell of a studio whizz, and anyone who's heard Summerteeth or YHF and wants that sound knows who to go to - I think the fact that they don't is telling.

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Guest Muncle Douchey
ive heard from numerous people that they thought tweedy was the ass in IATTBYH

 

i'm not sure i really feel like either of them were right/wrong. i mean, i've always sided with jeff because he's, ya know, the man and all, but i think that group of scenes in the doc were just a clear depiction of a dissolving relationship.

 

it's brutally apparent that jeff no longer felt like jay was someone he wanted to be around, and perhaps even more apparent that jay was too wrapped up in himself, or whatever else, to know it. thus, the tension, the argument, the control issues, and eventually the circle only having one center.

 

plus, the fact that both were most likely dabbling in a handful of drugs at the time didn't help.

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it's clear that jeff just wasn;t meant to work with guys named jay. just sayin............

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from his myspace page that has not even been logged into since June 2007:

 

"One of his latest production efforts was Blues Traveler's Bastardos!, released in September of 2005 on Vanguard, a project which caused the songwriting flood gates to open. Jay went on a creative tear, writing and recording over 70 songs, and the good folks at Rykodisc released the album titled The Magnificent Defeat which captured this output on September 26th, 2006."

 

I'm surprised he hasn't put out another album with the rest of the 70 songs not used.

 

I listened to clips of two of his albums on Amazon and it sounded pretty good, it's just his voice seems to have such a limited range.

 

I think his best chance of success would be if he found another Tweedy aka a person with at least a better voice that he can collaborate with - even if it's just Bennett writing and recording all the backing tracks of the songs and having someone sing the songs that don't fit his voice. I guess that was the deal with Burch, but from what I heard (granted very small clips) he doesn't have a very wide range either.

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I guess that was the deal with Burch, but from what I heard (granted very small clips) he doesn't have a very wide range either.

 

 

I think Palace at 4AM (the album attributed to Jay Bennett and Edward Burch) is a super fantastic album, and Edward has a beautiful voice. Save your Pepsi Points and buy a few songs. :pirate

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I think Palace at 4AM (the album attributed to Jay Bennett and Edward Burch) is a super fantastic album, and Edward has a beautiful voice. Save your Pepsi Points and buy a few songs. :pirate

 

that's Burch singing Venus, right? on the amazon clip it just doesn't sound that expressive or like he's going anywhere with it.

 

that's funny, i just redeemed my first point.

how many does it take to get a song?

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I watched IATTBYH with the band's/director's commentary audio track on, and the Jeff and the other guys left the room during the infamous studio/mixing argument and basically had no comment on that. So that truly must have been the climax in that confrontation.

 

Also, I watched the documentary on the making of Mermaid Ave., and it looked like Jeff and Billy Bragg clashed at times, too. That left me with two impressions: 1. Combined with the clashing with Jay on IATTBYH, I figured Jeff as artist might be a little difficult to work with at times. Hey, it happens and I don't think less of him because of it. 2. I think Billy Bragg thought he was hiring Wilco as American alt-country backup band for his pet project and suddenly found himself in a 50-50 endeavor.

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it's funny how the split from Wilco will always follow Bennett.

every review of Magnificient Defeat had a paragraph or two about it before starting the actual review - this was what, 5-6 years (he left Wilco in 2000, right because YHF came on in 2001 i think or was it 01/02) afterwards?

 

here, i've just asked where the man was and it turned about it.

 

i guess because that was the last the public knew of him, whereas, tweedy/wilco has gone on to put out a couple well known albums, etc.

 

(i had to add "well known" to that last sentence when i realized Bennett had put out 4 in that same time period)

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that's Burch singing Venus, right? on the amazon clip it just doesn't sound that expressive or like he's going anywhere with it.

 

that's funny, i just redeemed my first point.

how many does it take to get a song?

 

 

I don't think Jeff's delivery in the demos is all that great either. I love Ed's voice, but I guess it's apples and oranges.

 

I think it's five pepsi points. ;)

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My take on Jay Bennett is that he is an incredibly talented musician and an incredibly talented songwriter, and unfortunately, at the end of the day, that just isn't enough to make it in the music biz. His story is a sad one. I hope he is making music and happy wherever he is.

 

And I never thought the Jeff/Jay B spat was anything other than the completely normal, and not infrequent, progression in the evolution of songwriting teams. It happens. It's not Jeff's fault or Bennett's fault. They grew apart. End of story. Lennon and McCartney didnt want to make music together any more either. The fact that it was captured on tape by Sam Jones makes the story all the more dramatic, but it's a pretty common thing. Not just in music either.

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My take on Jay Bennett is that he is an incredibly talented musician and an incredibly talented songwriter, and unfortunately, at the end of the day, that just isn't enough to make it in the music biz. His story is a sad one. I hope he is making music and happy wherever he is.

 

And I never thought the Jeff/Jay B spat was anything other than the completely normal, and not infrequent, progression in the evolution of songwriting teams. It happens. It's not Jeff's fault or Bennett's fault. They grew apart. End of story. Lennon and McCartney didnt want to make music together any more either. The fact that it was captured on tape by Sam Jones makes the story all the more dramatic, but it's a pretty common thing. Not just in music either.

 

Great post, Matt.

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My take on Jay Bennett is that he is an incredibly talented musician and an incredibly talented songwriter, and unfortunately, at the end of the day, that just isn't enough to make it in the music biz. His story is a sad one. I hope he is making music and happy wherever he is.

 

true.

it's sad that the entire page of comments on his Myspace is all spam except for one i think.

 

i wonder if he's considered scoring film (or even ever been asked to)?

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it's clear that jeff just wasn;t meant to work with guys named jay. just sayin............

He makes some pretty fucking good music with guys named Jay. He's just not meant to be friends with the two Jays he's worked with.

 

2. I think Billy Bragg thought he was hiring Wilco as American alt-country backup band for his pet project and suddenly found himself in a 50-50 endeavor.

I didn't feel that way at all. He went out of his way to say it was a group project - but one in which he had the final say, since Nora Guthrie asked him, not Wilco, to work on her father's songs.

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