In defense of Jeff......

[El Santo]

your bicycle...is cock.

[kickingtelevision]

"your sister is cock...van halen is cock...your mom is cock, your dad is cock, and your bicycle is cock...and know all my songs are cock, cuz i put the word cock in them...and ive also taken the liberty in putting cock into woody guthrie songs...youre a pretty rowdy crowd, and im thankful that no one has yelled cock at me yet...so thanks for holding back your cocks, keeping your cocks at bay"

genius

and a ghost is born is right up there with yhf...i mean they are two totally different records, and they are both excellent in different ways

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Here's a great post I read over at the Jay board:

Critics need and look for records that they can place in some kind of windbag pop-culture context. Guys like Farrar, whose music has more to do with past culture, as opposed to present pop culture, do not enable them to do this. So they reject him, for the most part. His albums all age well thanks to that though. Tweedy on the other hand is a total rock critic at heart. He leaves lyric references to older cult albums around like bread crumbs. He employs conceits like album concepts and stylistic changes. He talks in interviews like they do in reviews, which is to say like physics professors talking about the properties of plutonium. So they eat him up. Farrar gives them fuck off mumbles and strums his guitar and sings about levees and the past. How can a music crit turn that into a thesis about music technology that references iPods,and MP3s, and Fox sitcoms?

Not that it ultimately matters, but I hope Tweedy's free ride is almost over. YHF was half good, and AGIB was a complete and total piece of shit.

I completely agree with it, especially the Tweedy/Farrar comparison The more I think about it, I almost would like to see Tweedy knocked off his critical pedestal. Not that what the critics write about him influences much if at all my response to his music, but I also think that in a sense all the critic-generated buzz and hype does give Tweedy and co. a carte blanche to do be as self-indulgent as they wish (e.g. does anyone actually like that 15-minute 'sound installation' in 'Less Than You Think'?). I did enjoy much of their last album, but I wouldn't like to see Wilco move further in that direction. Maybe what I'd like to see is a 'return-to-roots' album--not AM-style sunny twang, but some of that old alt-country sound leavened with whatever non-coma inducing sonic trickery they can come up with and which is actually integral to the songs. A blending of tha styles, if ye will. And I'd like to see how Tweedy's writing develops (perhaps no more meaningless non sequiturs like 'I'm a cherry ghost' and so forth) further.

[track11]

Nice Post, HPD!

[HighPlainsDrifter]

*bows*

Thank ye thank ye...I thank Jim DeRogatis, Greg Kot...and Momo over at the Jay board.

[MrWheresMyMoney]

(e.g. does anyone actually like that 15-minute 'sound installation' in 'Less Than You Think'?)

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[El Santo]

well....no...but...it was sort of neat.

Neat in a way when....something of yours that you really value falls and breaks in half...but the fall at least was a little interesting.

[melt]

Man, this page has some...girth.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

I thought it was just my computer...

[THE_DEAN_001]

A.M. and Being There were great albums. Summerteeth was pretty good. But personally, I'd trade YHF and AGIB for couple of Pat Green albums.

[Tabbedout]

and a ghost is born is right up there with yhf...i mean they are two totally different records, and they are both excellent in different ways

I don't think it's even half as good as "YHF". It's lacks the amont of good songs and I miss Jay Bennett's songwriting too. It's the only thing Jim O'Rourke has been involved with that I've heard and didnt like. He did such a good job with mixing "YHF".

I love Tweedy, I own all the Wilco albums, but I don't want to fall into either the Jeff camp or the Jay camp, I think they are both great songwriters, they are two different artists... and I like them both, for diffrent reasons...

Oh, and I'm listening to "Mermaid Avenue vol 2" right now... man it's so fucking good!!!!

[KnobTwister]

Hey WheresMyMoney -

You wanna keep your 'noooooo's' to a reasonable length?

It sucks to have to scroll over a mile to be able to read HPD's great post.

[MrWheresMyMoney]

K grouch

Its a take on 11 minutes of the noise.

Sorry you didn't get it.

[KnobTwister]

Yeah I got it, and yeah I'm a grouch. Thanks for editing. Actually, the 15 minutes of noise was a lot more irritating than your message board take on it. I guess it's more effective when you have to scroll over and and over and over.

[Charks]

A.M. and Being There were great albums. Summerteeth was pretty good. But personally, I'd trade YHF and AGIB for couple of Pat Green albums.

I wouldn't go that far...although YHF and AGIB are still my least favorite Wilco recordings. HOWEVER...after seeing them twice in the last year (and recently at the Cains Ballroom in Tulsa...fantastic) I'm 100% convinced that hearing the songs live...especially those from AGIB...is the only way to go.

Hell...after hearing Spiders (Kidsmoke) and Hell is Chrome live...it makes the recorded versions sound...well...weak.

Maybe I should just get a decent live show recording and toss YHF/AGIB.