Occasionally Andrew Bird joins Wilco on stage for "Jesus, etc." You can find shaky audience videos of some performances on YT, but here is the version that they included on Alpha Mike Foxtrot.
Jesus etc. Love this song. Following the first four tracks, it’s yet another change of pace: almost a “yacht rock” soft disco vibe here. Totally works for me,
Great performance! A few interesting points: Mikael can be seen in the back left Is that Leroy on Hammond? Doesn’t look like him, but it may just be the beard throwing me Jeff is playing Vox amps in this era. More expensive than his Silverface Fenders around Being There, but not as fancy as the boutique amps he plays nowadays
I just finally watched this. Thanks for sharing this. I love Jeff. He is maybe my favorite "rock star" (if you can call him that). I love what he says here about playing songs because he knows they still give people that buzz...that perfect moment. This sounds a little crazy but...sometimes I get the sense with certain musicians that they aren't actually "fans" of music. Or they stopped being one at some point and no longer remember what it is like. Jeff, I think, still remembers being a fan on the other side of it and what the music meant to him then. He has an empathy with the fans. I also like what he said about punk kind of making good musicianship or showmanship "uncool." I'm so glad I have never been cool. It sure seems exhausting to hate on anything and everything deemed uncool!
For the record: I'm 13/13 for "Jesus, etc." at live shows. (Also 13/13 for "I'm the Man Who Loves You." And 12/13 for "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.") I love "Jesus, etc." It's no surprise to me it's their most popular song, beside "California Stars." It has broad appeal. But it doesn't dumb anything down and doesn't strike me as overly sentimental, either. The chord sequence is another fairly stunning Bennett co-write, especially the walk down during "Tall buildings shake / Voices escape singing sad, sad songs / Tuned to chords strung down your cheeks / Bitter melodies turning your orbit around." Jeff always encourages a singalong for this one. I remember hearing him say once that there's something nice about a crowd of people declaring "our love is all of God's money" in unison. I'd have to agree. I just learned by watching that trailer on Kickstarter for the Bennett docu that someone I know professionally, Chris Green, was Wilco's former tour manager. Now he co-manages the animal law program at Harvard Law School. Small world.
As long as we are sharing great Jeff interviews, I recently watched this superb hour long interview of Jeff by George Saunders. If you have an hour, I highly recommend this. There's a part where he talks about how music sounds worse if you are listening with the wrong companions and better if you are with the right people. Not to be cheesy but: I'm so glad to be listening to Wilco with all of you guys in here. The right companions.
There are at least a couple of choir performances of "Jesus, Etc." on YT. I like this one because the voices sound less formal and they have a chamber strings accompaniment, but the one by "Choir! Choir! Choir!" is good, too. According to setlists.fm, "Jesus, Etc." has been played 903 times by Wilco, 175 times by Jeff Tweedy, and 23 times by Tweedy the band. It is Wilco's 3rd-most played song, after "I'm the Man Who Loves You" and "A Shot in the Arm" (although "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" comes close behind it).
And now we come to Wilco's greatest "hit". "Jesus, Etc." is another fabulous song, although I must say that I've probably gotten a bit more burned out on it than any other one of their songs. It's never been one of my favorites on this album, and I remember being quite surprised that it seemed to be the song from the album that received the most airplay. I do love the pedal steel part, and this is probably why I prefer the album version to any live version I've heard. The lyrics are pretty simple; I guess I don't read as much into them from a religious perspective as others do. There are some good lines here but overall, I don't find the lyrics as affecting as on the first few songs we've heard on YHF. Still, it's another winner. 5-for-5!
With Jesus Etc being one of the best though final songs Jeff & Jay worked on together, I wonder what Wilco would've been like had Jay stayed on for another album or two...
You guys are wearing me out!! Exhausted from just trying to keep up here, but I am so happy that this forum, known so much for classic rock, has so many outrageously knowledgeable about such an eclectic and creative band as Wilco
"I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" Right off the bat, there's an incredible complexity to the percussion. This isn't the old Wilco. The somewhat atmospheric intro gives way to Jeff's languid vocal. I adore that three note accent on the vibes. The depth of sounds carries the song through varied phases, culminating in Jeff's distant voice in the midst of a dissonant soundscape. The song itself is fascinating, but elevated by the exploring arrangement. Jeff's cryptic but intriguing lyric adds another layer of mystique. Damn, this is such a great song, and one of my all time favourites by this band. I love this track...and we're just getting started.
"Kamera" At the onset it seems like a fairly basic song, but then there are those little electronic swirls, accents, and squiggles underneath that create an engaging palette of sound. But none of that would matter if the song itself wasn't up to standards, and here Jeff creates another gorgeous little tune framed by a solid performance from the band. The brief bridge section highlights the harmonic intrigue going on here. And yet it all comes down to just a cool little tune that makes you want to bop your head along to the groove. I dig it.
You beat me to it. At the start of this YHF thread I declared something like 'I like it, but it's not my favorite'. Things have changed. All your posts and conversations made YHF going through the roof for me.
"Radio Cure" One of those tracks on this album that I consider a reflection (more so than others) of Jeff's mental state at the time. It's brooding and mournful, and there's that curious layer of noises below the surface that draw one into the narrative. Ultimately, there comes the moment where the song lifts up, for a moment, suggesting a sense of hope. It's a captivating performance.
"War On War" One of my favourite Wilco tracks. The strummed acoustic lead-in offers up a brief electronic dalliance and squiggle that leads into the core theme of the song. It's those curious sonic accents that grab you and pull you into the narrative. Normally, I hate it when effects are brought in as an attempt to enhance a song, but here they compliment the basic musical theme in such a brilliant way. The electronic dissemination that closes out the track adds another layer of creative insight. Yup, these guys are good...
Thanks for showing me the way to this and other choir performances. I love to hear and watch these people singing together.
For Sunday: Ashes of American Flags The arrangement on this song simply sends shivers up my spine. The interplay of the piano and drums, the hazy sound of Jeff's vocal and that weeping, calling guitar "riff" (is that a riff?) The droning soundscape that underscores the second verse... This is some of the most beautifully produced music I have ever heard. It is so close to the bone and the heart and it perfectly captures everything we've been talking about--the mental dissonance and pain of depression and addiction. And then just after 3 minutes, it fades out into almost nothing--gentle chordings on the piano, the chime of the guitar and so much billowing silence. I think the first time I ever heard this song, I was in throes by the end of it. Just weeping. The way it turned what I felt inside myself into actual music...I was startled. What a raw ache. The lyrics are superb. I know people focused in on the 'ashes of American flags' line because of 9/11, and I get it, but the real humdinger lines for me are elsewhere. All my lies are always wishes I know I would die if I could come back new Let me start over. Could I be better than this? The fresh wind and bright sky to enjoy my suffering A sarcastic, self-deprecating line...It sure is beautiful out today. A great day to enjoy my depression. I shake like a toothache when I hear myself sing The intense vulnerability Jeff would have been feeling, putting these confessions out there, mixed in with his own self-doubt about his own talents. This is another flawless piece. The sequencing continues to be superb.
I love @Parachute Woman 's idea that Jesus etc. and Ashes of American Flag form the emotional center of this record. It is physically true (the fifth and sixth song of an 11 tracks record), but thematically as well – the album being a collection of songs of ****ed up love on one part, and songs of disconnection in modern american culture on the other. But “emotional” is definitely the best way of putting it, especially regarding Ashes, a truly devastating track, one of the crowning achievements of the LP and of the Tweedy/Bennett partnership. We all know that this is essentially the Bennett demo with overdubs. The mellotron returns in all its might, the piano intro and guitar hook/riff are instantly iconic, I swear the fuzz tone guitar + mellotron majestic line at 3’00’’ could be a Moody Blues Hayward/Pinder glorious masterstroke. Tweedy sings a brutal lament about the state of american society, maybe the lyrics are about his longing for another time where things (and rock music ?) mattered more, and about his regrets that he can’t make the same difference or have the same impact as some of his rock & roll heroes. He would like to salute the ashes of the american flag like in a sixties or early seventies protest. But he’s fully aware this won’t happen. How this guy pronounces «speaking of toma-orrow» just kills me every single time. This is the one Yankee Hotel Foxtrot song that really take things where the Summerteeth aching ballads left them (some others, such as Cars Can’t Escape and Venus Stopped the Train were not used and never properly finished, and I’m pretty sure it’s because Tweedy decided the album needed only one of those, and Ashes was the one). There’s definitely a musical thread coming from She’s A Jar, We’re Just Friends, some parts of Pieholden Suite (also Blasting Fonda) and this one. It lies in the classic rock chord progressions Jay obviously favored, that Jeff also used quite often in the early years in his own compositions, but has clearly turned his back to since then, in favor of more folkish or impressionistic harmonic structures. This must be the very last Wilco songs in that vein, a farewell to a style that was once one of the band’s signatures. The next ballad will be Reservations. just as beautiful but unmistakably different, still aching but more serene, more resigned, and musically more subdued, like most the slow stuff Jeff has written since then. I know Ashes was such an instant favorite of mine when I first got this album because it gave me some of what I was expecting from Wilco at the time. I’ll admit that I’ve missed this aspect of the band’s music since then, even though I've never stopped admiring, loving and enjoying their constant evolution.
Not vibes . . . crotales! I finally learned what these tiny tuned cymbals are called and now I’m spreading the crotales gospel.
This was the first track to draw me in when I downloaded the album some time in the fall of 2001. In the wake of 9/11, having witnessed the events that day in person and fleeing Manhattan on foot across the Queensborough Bridge with that horrible cloud on the horizon to the south, no music made sense to me those first few weeks. It just didn't work anymore. Eventually, while riding the subway to work a few weeks later, I put the CD Walkman back on, and this instrumental track by Grandaddy was the first thing to penetrate that wall of numbness. Something about the dissonance and almost weeping melody matched where my head was at in those first few clouded weeks. This track, too, by Hawksley Workman. It was a somber time, but music like this started untangling things for me. On a phone call some time in October, a musical-minded friend asked me if I had heard the new Wilco album. What new Wilco album? That's when he tipped me off to the website, and the band putting the album out there for free since their label rejected the album. I had dial-up back then. Like Abe Lincoln walking five miles in the snow to borrow a book from the library, I set about downloading the album piece meal, one track a night. "Ashes of American Flags" had the same penetrating effect as these other tracks: that fractured guitar line, and hearing Diet Coke mentioned in a song (not since "Lola" by The Kinks ...). The rest of the album flowed out of that one track for me.
Ashes Of American Flags: I was playing this yesterday on a long drive and was struck by a thought; this would be a very difficult song to sing. At least I think so. Jeff Tweedy, though, pulls it off flawlessly. Ashes is one of the three songs that Tweedy was sequencing the album around (the others were I Am Trying to Break Your Heart and Reservations). This song, too, features in Ken Coomer’s ousting as both Tweedy and Bennett weren’t satisfied with Ken’s work on this track (along with others). I am guessing that this reverts to the Summerteeth-era Jeff and Jay show. Jay plays: Drums, bass, pianos, synths (airy sounds/fake organ), acoustic guitars, mellotron, manual tape loop effects and ‘artificially generated orchestra sounds’ (too weird to explain). And is credited with 30 (out of the 50%) of the music, truly ‘much of the music.’ Jeff, of course, writes all of the lyrics. “I know I would die if I could come back new.” Wow. What an intense song. Simply brilliant.
