Great write up on the first few tracks, William! Enjoyed reading this. You bring up a point I often find myself making about albuns I love from the 90s and beyond: if they had been released in an earlier time, they would be hailed as classics by the very same people who look down their noses at "new" music. But Being There is very much a 90s record, as much as it has classic influences. The lyrical perspective especially is very "end of the century."
Yeah the mentality's closer to grunge and emo compared to 70's rock. And you brought up my point about how picturesque the lyrics are to "Far Far Away" were so I had to erase that after I read yours. Yeah the retro is really the music only and only at times, but I'll be keeping an eye on the lyrics since a lot of people here seem receptive to great lyrics. It would be so cool if classic rock radio picked up this album and then snuck a song from it in between a couple of 70's acts. They have picked up some 90's bands, I wonder if they noticed Wilco yet.
This was a show that was put on by MuchMusic, Canada's video music channel (our MTV). It would have coincided with March Break or Reading Week, the week where students were off school, so the crowd would have been there for free and well lubricated (not necessarily Wilco fans). Is that Max Johnson (still with the band)?
Coincidentally, I was looking at the liner notes to the All Over the Place EP and came across this: "Someone Else's Song" recorded 18 March 1997 on Marble Mountain, Newfoundland, Canada by Doug McClement for Much Music. Filmed on a ski slope during a layover on our way to France. Just Prior to this, Bob had failed to land an ill-advised jump, throwing himself off balance and into a snow bank an impressive six feet away. Our most famous performance.
That's' a really good point. I listened to Being There last night to wind down the day and the same thing sort of dawned on me as well. There are definitely "hints" of Summerteeth throughout this record. Its almost like they took a "sliver" or a "vein" of this record and really dug deep into it for the next one.
Oh, wow. I guess that makes sense, timing wise, I just had never seen Bob with long hair. After he left Wilco, I saw him play with Billy Bragg and then he came to Canada and became a member of Blue Rodeo, who I saw him with 14 times. I even saw a solo show he did in a restaurant in my hometown. He left Blue Rodeo a few years back to take a job at with the Kitchener Public Library. By the way, the song that follows Red Eyed and Blue in that MuchMusic set is I Got You (At the End of the Century) and Bob falls off the stage but keeps playing! Amusing:
That is hilarious. A rock’n’roll leap...and off the stage he goes. (Yes, it’s Bob Egan. I can see him clearly in that clip.)
I think most of the show is on youtube with a pre-show interview where the band predicts/taunts Bob about falling off stage. [EDIT: I assume the interview was taped after the incident ] Well worth seeing but we should probably wait till the end of the album to post it. Muchmusic was a lot of fun in the 90's compared to its American counterpart...
Counting the people on the balcony, there seems to be fewer than 200 people in the audience. But I guess the main point of the booking was to get the band on TV.
It never occured to me to connect Being There with Muswell Hillbillies. The so called Americana tracks are about the dreams of a Muswell Hillbilly to certain regions in the USA (Oklahoma, West Virgina, New Orleans). It's a place, FAR away where he's longing to. There's so much distance between where they are (Muswell Hill) and the place Ray Davies is singing about. Being There is rooted in it's own backyard. I don't hear much similarities in the music either. With all respect to the one's who brought up this connection. Life would be dull if all of us had the same ears. Talking about similarities, listening to Monday I hear so much Brown Sugar in it. Their voices are quite different, but in the way Jeff is singing it I can easily hear Mick Jagger's singing.
It's such a diverse collections of styles, that's it's hard to pin down. I love it. It makes the whole better than the sum of it's parts. It makes me think of London Calling, Tusk and Beatles' White Album. All of them double albums. Coincidence?
Yeah, Snow Job wasn’t really a music festival. It was an annual televised concert from a ski resort (often Banff in the Rockies as I recall, but this time in Newfoundland). It was all a Canadian play on what we see of spring break at Daytona Beach. Spring Break - or Reading Week as it’s called in Canada - happens in February instead of March as in the US. This one seems to have been filmed in mid-March, which would be March Break - a week off for high school rather than college students. Again, that will define the audience here. Looking at the lineup, Wilco would have been the smallest band here - Collective Soul were the big US band with hits. I Mother Earth were a Canadian alt-rock band with several hits north of the border. And Sloan were big in Canada too. (Aside: if you like the Big Star side of Wilco you need to discover Sloan. Still going today they are one of Canada’s music treasures). All of these bands were played on both the alt-rock and normal video programming. In contrast, Wilco were not. They had little presence in Canada and I cant recall ever seeing them in MuchMusic. On the AM tour they played the same venue that my terrible high school band played (my first gig ever!)... dingy basement punk rock haunt. Being There was getting music press but I only knew in person who was aware of this album (and he hated it... mind you he dropped out of college to pursue a hip hop career... I bumped into him years later... at a Wilco concert!). This was definitely a promotional thing... get them in national TV in Canada to build a more mainstream audience. Here’s a blog about that year’s concert: 20 Years Later: Watch MusicMusic's Snow Job '97 at Marble Mountain - Secret East
@Mr. D Thank you for sharing that amazing live clip! Rock and roll! That leads us very nicely into... I Got You (At the End of the Century) Segueing out of 'Red-Eyed and Blue' very effectively, 'I Got You (At the End of the Century)' is like a Wilco take on a power pop rocker. It's also a song that is all about that chorus. The verse melody is actually pretty much the same as the chorus melody. Ordinarily, I kind of detest songs that pummel a chorus into the ground, but I think it works very effectively here. For starters, the hook is strong and a lot of fun to sing along with. I also like the lyrics quite a bit. "It's the end of the century / I can't think of anything except you." There is so much stuff going on in the big, wide world and we are at this moment of historical change, but I'm still just focused on my own small life and my own love. We all see and experience these huge events from just our little limited perspective and we cling to those we love to get through. It's a sentiment I understand completely. This is just a really good piece of rock music. The guitars and backing vocals are great. It picks up the tempo on the album again. Why is this sequencing so perfect? There are a ton of different versions of 'I Got You' available out there including both live and alternate versions. I'll share a couple of them.
Here's a stripped down acoustic version (complete with banjo plucking and harmony singing) of the song done for the soundtrack to This is 40: I like this quite a bit. It reveals the sweetness of the song. Jaunty little solo, too.
And here's the version dubbed 'Dobro Mix Warzone' included on the Being There deluxe. It's looser and feels more like a Neil Young track to me. I think it's the guitars that give me that feeling. I have come to the conclusion that I like this song in whatever guise it takes.
I got you What great fun song... The Red eyed and blue/I got you thing..... It slightly annoys me that the final piano chords of REAB aren't in the same key as i got you.... i don't know why, I'm a weirdo, but when i shake off that minor frustration, these two songs are just about the most perfect back to back songs that aren't part of a concept album. This track just bounces along with joy, and that is a somewhat rare thing for a Wilco song, so it makes me love it even more. The little open string guitar riff that comes in is great also.
Hmm. The banjo is alright but the vocals don’t appeal to me. No emotion? Not sure, but something’s off. I wonder when this version was recorded.
Absolutely Parachute Woman. A chugging barnstormin’ track that highlights early Wilco as a lot of fun. I haven’t commented on the previous two songs but this album is sequenced perfectly so far. I think that if they were to release a single LP it has been these songs up to now plus a couple of others. I think the quality of the songs begins to waver from here and I did find myself drifting away when I used to sit down for a session with Being There as a whole, so if I picked a side it would be CD1 every time. Looking to see if I can re-invigorate some passion with everyone’s thoughts from here on in.
I Got You I once had a mental list of songs in the ‘96-‘99 era that referenced the “end of the century” and this one might have been the earliest entry on it. This is a great song that I’d heard numerous live versions of thanks to tape trading through the mail, back in the mid-to-late 90’s internet days before CDR’s became common, and before torrents even existed. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in this album version of the song because it doesn’t quite gel together the way the live ones did. Somehow the recording is too clean and doesn’t capture the sound of a band playing together in room. Also, that dripping, whistling sound in the intro throws me off every time. I pretty much agree with almost all the production decisions on Being There otherwise, but this is one they missed on. I should take a deep dive today into some of these alt. versions and see if I prefer them better, as this is one track for which I feel I haven’t yet come across a “definitive version”.
Oh yeah, I was going to ask on everyone's feelings about disc 1 versus disc 2 when we got to the end of this one in a few days. I've been basically obsessed with Being There while we are going through it. I've listened to it almost every day, along with the deluxe edition stuff. This is one of the big reasons I wanted to run this thread. These kinds of deep dive threads always make me an even bigger fan of the artist in question. Any others you can remember? 'Electrolite' by R.E.M. is one (20th century go to sleep...)
Red-Eyed/I Got You A beautiful little pairing, and I have a hard time thinking of these songs apart from each other. The lyrics don’t extend any theme between the two, but that little segue has bonded them permanently. (As an aside, I mentioned earlier today that the Newfoundland performance was with Sloan - they are masters of bridging songs together like this a la Abbey Road). Red-Eyed really does need the sister song as it’s more of a song fragment. That said, I really like its mournful quality. The minimal lyrics paint a clear picture, and it’s another case of Jeff’s meta-narrative of songs about music (or making music) that pervades Being There, and a lot of Jeff’s music moving forward. The talk of tape and being broke reminds of a time when a 15 minute reel of 2” tape was expensive, and you couldn’t record an album on an iPad. I Got You... a great big rocker. I love the gang vocals and the coda at the end.
I'm not sure how I missed this track, I guess that means that Pick Up The Change: An Alpha Mike Foxtrot Companion is now 39 tracks.
