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This is how this song should be played...


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wow. i'm not looking to instigate the nels vs jay debate, but i will say that wilco are at their best with this sort of playing.

 

I think that just depends what your subjective definition of "at their best" would be.

 

I wouldn't go as far as to say one is better or worse, but I will say that this is a completely different flavor of Wilco than the current line-up/sound.

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I may be in the minority, but I prefer it with the current line-up much better. I'm a huge Nels fan though. IMO Jay was great, but he really overplayed a lot, and that's probably because he wanted to have a bigger role in the band.

 

In newer versions, Nels does a very good job of letting the verses breathe and throwing in licks between breaks in the lyrics, whereas Jay was almost playing over Jeff's singing and that was actually kind of annoying to me.

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I dig Nels, but I can think of at least a few occasions where he too has overplayed.

 

Yeah, I mean, he does do that occasionally too I suppose.

 

I think this kind of supports what I'm saying.

 

I had no idea until I was just reading another thread that Jay recorded Cars Can't Escape in 2004 for a solo album, and I found a sample of it on Itunes, and it was pretty much unlistenable. Just complete overplaying everywhere.

 

I might be totally wrong, since I didn't become a Wilco fan until 2005 or so, but everything I've gathered and seen, makes me think that Jay was pretty much too big a rock star for Wilco. I think even in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, there's a part where Jay wanted to play electric on a song and Jeff said something to the effect of it being completely unneccesary.

 

I could be way off in my assessment though

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I do think his production work could be heavy-handed in some areas, including his take on "Cars Can't Escape," but his *guitar playing* in Wilco, for the most part, was outstanding. His style served the songs well.

 

Would it have worked on AGIB material? Who knows...either way, he left a tremendous legacy, arguments over how many guitars to use in a song aside.

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Jay died.

 

And Jeff got sober.

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  • 2 weeks later...

After taking a break from "Wilco: The Laptop Era" with a few "palette cleanser" records, I came back to this era. Listening to 5-10-1997, the second of a two-night stand at the Fillmore. They were really ripping it up. I wish I could have seen one of these shows.

 

This is one I always turn to: http://wilcoarchive.com/Wilco%20-%2019990421%20DVD/

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