First off, sorry I haven't posted in the past few days. Been busy, my bad
Wilco is one of my favorite bands of all time. I've seen them live countless times and they are one of the tightest bands around. Their masterpiece album is entitled Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It is chock full of atmosphere and feel.
The story behind the album is pretty legendary amongst indie music fans. In fact, there is an entire movie(I Am Trying To Break Your Heart by photographer Sam Jones)dedicated to the story of the album(peep it, it's pretty hot).
Here is the short rundown: Jeff Tweedy(singer/songwriter) and co. went about making their most ambitious and artistic album yet. The chief(and big supporter of Wilco) of their record label is fired during the recording due to a buy out of their record company by AOL Time Warner. The new prez decides he doesn't like the sound of the record and doesn't hear a single. He refuses to release the CD. The band asks out of their record contract and gets their masters back for free, yet have no label to release it on. After this, they decided to stream the album for free on their website. The response is huge. They start to get huge attention from all kinds of labels. They end up signing with another subsidiary of AOL Time Warner who ends up paying them big bucks to release the album. SO, AOL Time Warner releases them for no fee, and then buys them back for 10 times what they originally figured they were worth. These guys did the online Radiohead experiment before Radiohead ever thought about releasing an album online. Bet ya didn't know that.
My favorite track on the album is the opening track, "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart." This song was drummer Glenn Kotche's audition to the band. He knocks it out of the park with such a cool drum part/melody(Melody in a drum track?? YUP). His use of crotales, effects, and a broken-up beat really take an ordinary song and make it uniquely amazing:
Their CD's since YHF have been great but none have(or probably will ever) live up to it. Their latest, Sky Blue Sky, feels like a mix of The Band and The Grateful Dead. It consists of their most straight-forward songs which can get stale at times, but still is full of substance.
Until Whenever,
BD
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