Well, it was going well ... May you have better luck with your audience than I did with mine. Remember folks, don’t jump the OP. Go at her pace. It’s a bad form to jump ahead on an ABA thread. Anyway, good luck! You’re a good writer!
Weird Tales is a great record. “Until You Came Along” is one of my favorites. I’m glad Gary still plays it with the Jayhawks.
Work was pretty insane for a little while there so I was pretty checked out! Hopefully we can grab a beer sometime this year
Sorry that you're missing Jazz Fest. I've gone around 15 times over the years. It's a special event. Hope you can make it next year.
I’ve been meaning to take part in one of these album by album threads but haven’t been good on the follow through. But considering Wilco is one of my favorite bands I thought I’d give this a try. I got into the band through Uncle Tupelo. A friend of mine played me a cassette of Anodyne and I was immediately hooked by the sound. He dubbed me a copy of the album plus No Depression and Still Feel Gone. (He didn’t have the third album.) I wasn’t a fan of country music but Uncle Tupelo was my gateway to alt-country, providing strong songwriting with punk energy and folk roots. Like many fans, it was Jay Farrar’s songs and voice that first captured my attention. It was the same when Jeff Tweedy and Farrar went their separate ways. I liked the first Wilco album but thought Son Volt’s debut was an instant classic. My perspective changed with Being There. I remember the glowing review in Rolling Stone and being intrigued. When I finally heard the album, I was blown away. It lived up to the hype and showed an adventurousness and range that went beyond anything hinted at on A.M. I caught my first Wilco show on that tour, seeing them at the Fillmore in San Francisco, one of my favorite venues. It still remains one of my favorite shows of all time. It was raucous, loud, energetic and fun. I’ve now seen Wilco (counting Jeff solo shows) more than 50 times, more than any other artist. I had tickets to two shows in April before they were postponed but look forward to seeing them again when possible. I know some fans have favorite line-ups and periods of the band, and while I certainly have my favorite albums, I’ve enjoyed seeing the different incarnations and watching Jeff grow and evolve as an artist. I’ll save more for later as we go more into each album.
Big Wilco fan here. Got into them starting with Summerteeth. My brother, a professional musician got me into them. Seen them live quite a few times. One time, they were playing the Wiltern theater and my brother and I were out on the side in the alley having a smoke before the show and there was NOBODY else around. All of a sudden the entire band came strolling through the alley. This was pre Nels days. Walked right up to us like they were here to see US. They were friendly as hell and we were able to shake hands with them, high fives etc. Fast forward a few years, my brother had played some shows with Nels Cline here and there before he joined up with Wilco, and got us laminates for a show they were doing at the Greek theater. After the show the entire band (minus Tweedy) came out to the outdoor restricted backstage bar and started to mingle. I wound up sitting next to John Stiratt, chatting with him for about half an hour about some side projects he was working on and his sister who also is a musician. Very cool down to earth dude! love me some Wilco!
I first got into Uncle Tupelo due to an article I read when I got an unsolicited issue of Pulse magazine in the mail. I ended up buying March 16-20, 1992 and then Anodyne when that came out. As well as Wilco and Son Volt cd when they arrived. I gave up on SV after the third record because I can only take JF’s voice in small doses. Anyway, I have stuck with Wilco throughout some of their records are better than other, but I pretty much like/love them all. I grabbed this off of the wall the first time that I saw them live.
I'm a big Wilco fan. Was a fan of Tweedy in Uncle Tupelo and unlike some here, I was not a fan of the Farrar songs (I would skip most of them). When he formed Wilco, I was in. Wilco is one of the few acts that (for me) has 70 or more good to very good listenable songs in their catalogue. That's quite an achievement. With around 10,000 albums in my collection, I would guess that there may be 25 acts which have that many good original songs. I tend to like the Jay Bennett years best (in the last 10 years I only rate The Whole Moon). 1. Being There 2. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 3. Summerteeth 4. The Whole Love 5. A Ghost Is Born 6. Sky Blue Sky 7. A.M. 8. Mermaid Avenue and then everything else.
I know that we start with I Must Be High from A.M., but if you want a to whet your appetite with pre-Wilco Wilco, then you should check out four A+ Jeff Tweedy songs on the final UT album: The Long Cut We’ve Been Had New Madrid No Sense In Lovin’ Along with the aforementioned Give Back The Key To My Heart. It is arguable if there are any songs on A.M. as good as these (in both composition and performance). But they are important....it’s nearly the same exact band and these songs features heavily in their first year of touring. I was lucky to see them twice in 1995 and though A.M. was only OK in my book, those live shows were simply high rocking excellence. I mean, we were blown away and those performances (including knock out performances of the above songs) sealed the deal for me. When I heard Being There I was like “oh, yes. That’s the band we saw last year.” Not to get ahead or anything. Just saying I’ve considered those tunes above quasi-Wilco tunes since 1995.
Yeah, those Anodyne songs have stayed in Tweedy’s live sets to this day (with and without Wilco), so they are definitely required listening!
Wilco are my favourite band of these times. Never really took to Uncle Tupelo though (listened after I knew Wilco), don't like Jay Farrar's voice or his songs very much, the Tweedy songs are decent, but he was still finding his way. Once he was free of Uncle Tupelo, he became arguably the finest songwriter in the US, and (eventually) assembled the finest band (current line up).
Alright Wilco people! Are we ready? First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for getting this thread off to a great, great start. So many cool stories and wonderful enthusiasm. I'm really looking forward to digging in to the catalog with all of you. And we begin... A.M. Released: March 28, 1995 A.M. was recorded throughout mid-1994, essentially beginning immediately after the dissolution of Uncle Tupelo. Jay Farrar also formed Son Volt very quickly which led the press (and fans) to begin a healthy debate over which of the new bands would release the stronger debut record. A.M. came out before Trace but it didn't end up getting the same level of praise. Both albums were produced by Brian Paulson, who had also produced Anodyne for Tupelo, and both records retained an alternative country feel but the differences in Farrar and Tweedy's voices and songwriting perspectives immediately set the two records (and the two bands) apart. A.M. was recorded in Memphis, Tennessee and mixed by Richard Dodd (who also mixed one of my favorite albums, Tom Petty's Wildflowers). Dodd was instructed to mix Tweedy's vocals high in the hopes of increasing the songs' success at radio. Of course, that didn't really happen. The album features the same line-up of the final Uncle Tupelo album (minus Farrar): Jeff Tweedy (vocals, guitar), John Stirratt (bass), Ken Coomer (drums) and Max Johnston (dobro, fiddle, mandolin, etc.) Brian Hennemen from the Bottle Rockets was brought in as lead guitarist for the album but he didn't join full-time and was replaced by Jay Bennett for the tour. Wilco began touring long before the album actually released. Their first show was on November 27, 1994 in St. Louis. The album received good if not rapturous reviews at the time: In the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot (who would write a great deal about Wilco over the years) gave A.M. three and 1/2 stars and stated that the album "suggested the feel" of artists such as Gram Parsons and Neil Young and that Tweedy "shows an undeniable feel for melody." Interestingly, he accidentally refers to "Casino Queen" as "Casino Boogie" (which is the fourth track on Exile on Main St.). Holly George-Warren also gave the album 3 1/2 stars for Rolling Stone and also mentioned Gram Parsons and Neil Young. She wrote, "The band’s back-porch groove is the perfect underpinning for Tweedy’s laconic baritone; he leaves wide-open spaces with his laid-back phrasing and the plain-spoken poetry of his lyrics." (Reviews linked at the publication names if you would like to read them in full. I will always try to find some contemporary reviews to open each album up). There are 13 tracks on this modest, unpretentious debut record and we'll go through them each in turn. Today we begin with: I Must Be High Wilco's career opens with this highly melodic mid-tempo rocker. It's a break-up song but written from the perspective of the person who is doing the breaking up. He must be high to be ditching a girl like this, but she sounds like she always had her mind on other things anyway. "You never looked in my eyes long enough to find any peace of mind." It isn't really a sad breakup song or even an angry one. Just sort of a resigned shrug. Ah, well. Guess that one is over. It suits the relaxed, loose mid-'90s feel of the entire album. Jeff Tweedy has said he was smoking a lot of marijuana at the time of the making of this album and it influenced the writing. He certainly wasn't taking any huge risks on A.M., but he does show off his song craft. "I Must Be High" is a very well-constructed little tune ("Bye, bye, bye, bye" is just plain singalong hookiness) and it works very well to open everything up. It's the work of a young band and a young songwriter but I find that very charming. It was played a lot live in the early days but has become rarer since the 2000s. Comments on "I Must Be High" and A.M. are now open!
Here is a live clip of "I Must Be High" from 1995 at Chicago's Vic Theatre: Very good, clear footage of the band in these early days. It's funny to me that Jeff has circled back to his early cowboy hat look in recent years.
I came to A.M. "backwards," owning Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost is Born before I actually bought it. When I got it I was already familiar with a number of songs through hearing them live. I uniformly like it, and there are a number of songs on it that I would put on any Wilco "favorites" playlist. I like it. Its not my favorite Wilco album by any means but there's something about it I really like/enjoy. It's kind of a "shaggy dog" record for me. For a band putting together their first record (although the circumstances of Wilco forming meant those guys had played together a lot before and weren't a "new" band per se), it's a very "loose" record. It's a great "driving" record, I love to listen to it in the car. But anyway, "I Must be High" sort of fits into that category. It's a loose, fun song.
The Mrs was very pleased to hear this album in the cd player when we drove over to a friends house on Sunday. I like the feel of this song. It breezes along nicely with a kind of subtle statement of Tweedy's slightly different take on things. This album is very new to me, and I have only heard it ... probably twice ... but this is a good solid opener, without being earth shaking. To some degree though that is Tweedy's calling card. He has a subtle laid back approach, that once you "get it", you're where you need to be to totally appreciate these guys
Lyrically, the Tweedy 'phrasing' is already apparent right off the bat. "You... / always wanted more time..... / to do // what you / always wante...d to do" -- the clipped cadence, the stuttering rhythm where the lines are enjambed as in a minimalist poem (I always wondered if he read poets like Robert Creeley or George Oppen, who can be understood to be disjunctive). That kind of phrasing is all over the catalog; the Tweedy fingerprint, as it were. His love of internal rhyme shows right off the bat and, again, is all over the catalog (e.g. "Pecan Pie," also from 1995). So here's where my lack of knowledge re: production and sound comes in. Can anyone comment on the "full" drum sounds of this song? It's a sonic fingerprint of this era of Wilco and distinguishes the band from UT or Golden Smog.
AM is one of those records where I feel like I'll end up having the same thing to say about a lot of the songs, but I do think "I Must Be High" is one of the best songs on the record and points to the higher, more multi-faceted levels of songcraft Tweedy would achieve on later records, where other songs on AM feel more like rote articulations of the alt-country format at the time. There's an undercurrent of melancholy in this one that always sets it apart for me. That said, nothing on this record is special to me like so much of their later work is -- it's very much a "just sort of there"-type album for me, and it only gets much of a workout when I'm on a Wilco kick or participating in a quasi-academic exercise like this one.
I was at the 9.13.03 REM/Wilco Red Rock show -- cold, cold night. Wilco opened the show with Kicking Television - a great, rocking way to kick off the night. Also saw the same bill in St. Louis on 8/19/99. I thought in 99, REM's performance out-shined Wilco's, while in 03, we enjoyed Wilco's performance a bit more.
I didn't get into Wilco until "Being There" (I've always been a sucker for double-albums), but I always thought AM was their weakest album - it's not a bad album, but just not nearly as interesting as all their other work.
First time I saw them live was on that tour (99), thought they blew R.E.M. off the stage actually (and I was a big fan).
I backed into A. M., as well, from Being There and Summerteeth. I'm more fond of it than some here. I Must Be High seems the perfect song to introduce Wilco to the world. Although there's a slight country element to it, it's clear that this is a rock band. A rock band with hooks. Tweedys phrasing is established. The lyrics are good. It's melodic as hell. It sort of establishes what Wilco is and foreshadows Being There. A great beginning.
Mine was the 9/14 show. I'd bet there won't be any Red Rocks shows this summer. A.M. is a fun album, basically fairly straight country-rock with a little Tweedy twist. It's hard to believe the experimental music that would follow on the next few albums. Like many here, I came to it backwards; in my case after YHF and Summerteeth, which I picked up shortly after that Red Rocks show. It's not an album that I reach for a lot, but I always enjoy it when I do. I Must Be High is a great opener. Melodic, dynamic, yet laid-back all at the same time.
