Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Super Deluxe Edition - 11 LPs/1CD

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by rhino4evr, Apr 19, 2022.

  1. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    I've long held that Jeff Tweedy is badly underrated as a guitarist. In addition to a lesson with Lloyd, he also took some flamenco lessons while Golden Smog was recording in Spain, IIRC. That's where "More Like the Moon" came from, I think.
     
  2. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    This doesn’t include any links that will violate forum rules but is a blog that details the differences of Demo/Engineer’s Demo/actual release. I found it interesting so thought I’d post the link (note: it says flac but I don’t think it’s active!):

    100 greatest bootlegs: #61 WILCO - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Demos & Engineer Reference Demos (Flac)

    In summation it includes the track list like this example:
    Ashes of American Flags
    13 Demo
    14 Engineer Reference (Glenn drums?)
    Ok 15 YHF album* (Jay's rough-mix drums were used on this track)
     
  3. Cimrya Deal

    Cimrya Deal Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Yes it definitely is. Probably the best unreleased (well for now) song of all time!!!
     
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  4. BobMehr

    BobMehr Forum Resident

    Location:
    Memphis, TN
    Yes, I did write liner notes to the Wilco YHF anniversary set (or sets). It's described as an essay in the press release but actually it's a 15,000 word exploration/investigation into the making of the record – everything that led up to it and all that followed – and its many complicated facets. While I generally don’t like writing about topics that are as well tread or closely dissected as something like YHF, I believe I managed to find a new approach to the story and the various creative, personal and psychological forces that shaped it.

    To that end I conducted numerous interviews with everyone in the band past and present, including Tweedy, Kotche, Strirrat, as well as Ken Coomer and LeRoy Bach (who almost never talks). And I also draw on unpublished interviews with Jay Bennett that I did and also a number of interviews with Jay given to me by Chicago journalist Robert Loerzel, who probably interviewed him more than anyone. Also spoke extensively with Jon Pines, who helped set up Wilco's loft studio and was close to Jay. So my hope is that I've given everyone their just due and also looked unflinchingly at the how and why of the record. In additon to my liner notes, there is a second seaparate piece, a roundtable discussion between Tweedy, Kotche and Jim O'Rourke, conducted by Wilco reissue producer Cheryl Pawelski. Overall the whole package -- the audio, design, and pics -- is really stunning.

    I won't get too much into the tracks, as that's not my department. But as someone who consumes and creates reissues, I can say this is a really mind-blowing project, one of the best things I've ever been involved with and something I'm sure Wilco fans are going to love.
     
  5. IHeartRecordsAz

    IHeartRecordsAz Forum Resident

    Location:
    AZ
    Well this makes me feel positively giddy that I splurged for the 11 LP set now. I’m also glad to hear that your piece for it will have a more authentic, unadulterated look at these sessions and how the album as we know it came to be.
     
    jalexander, audiotom, BobMehr and 3 others like this.
  6. Rainy Taxi

    Rainy Taxi The Art of Almost

    Location:
    Chicago
    Well if that doesn’t get you excited for the whole project I don’t know what would! Thanks Bob. Looking forward to it.
     
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  7. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    15,000 words! I can’t wait. Thank you for the background information.
     
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  8. Nogoodnik

    Nogoodnik Celebrity Jeopardy and Mini Crossword smart

    Location:
    Saint Paul, MN
    Okay, so math and/or properly reproducing info from Bob’s instagram posts isn’t my strong suit. :hide:

    I was only off by 13,500, really.
     
  9. timnor

    timnor Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    The EU store is sold out of the black vinyl super deluxe. I guess the silver vinyl is exclusive to the Wilco store and therefore they have more copies ?

    I remember being surprised how quickly the Summerteeth coloured vinyl sold out. I believe it was not repressed.
     
  10. DrAftershave

    DrAftershave A Wizard, A True Star

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Could've sworn that when I first ordered the CD box set, it gave me the download link to the entire thing. Now it's just the single track.
     
  11. Is the full essay only in the vinyl options?If so what version of it is in the 8cd set?
    Looking at my Summerteeth booklet it would take about 40 pages of a cd size booklet to fit in 15,000 words.
     
  12. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    It better be a part of the cd set! That’s an important part of the purchase.
     
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  13. jumpinjulian

    jumpinjulian Forum Resident

    Black is sold out in the Australian and USA stores too. Nonesuch may have some still…
     
  14. cable hogue

    cable hogue Forum Resident

    Location:
    Arizona
    Thanks for sharing! Big fan of yours, Bob. Trouble Boys is the gold standard for rock and roll biographs.
     
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  15. Jack

    Jack Senior Member

    Bull Moose has it.
     
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  16. BobMehr

    BobMehr Forum Resident

    Location:
    Memphis, TN
    My understanding is that my notes are in all the deluxe and super deluxe versions, both LP and CD. Not sure about the basic 2-CD version however.
     
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  17. jslcaballo

    jslcaballo Oh the ritual when I lay down your crooked arm

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Black super deluxe 11 LP is available for preorder on Bandcamp and you get a FLAC download included. Everywhere else states MP3 only. Was $250 after shipping and taxes
     
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  18. C6H12O6

    C6H12O6 Senior Member

    Location:
    My lab
    Bob, if you don't mind me asking, when YHF was coming out), were you a staff writer (or freelance contributor?) for the Chicago Reader?

    When the album topped the Pazz & Jop poll, I think Jim DeRogatis wrote about some snarky comments from voters who claimed it was being overhyped by "dewy-eyed" Chicagoans. (That adjective stuck out, with Jim asking, "you people know me, am I 'dewy-eyed'?") Anyway as someone growing up in Illinois it left me wondering how true that was, enough that I was surprised by how many Wilco fans there were when I left for the coasts years later. So I'm glad the band isn't just a hometown phenomenon, but at the same time, for anyone who was in Chicago at the time, I imagine it was pretty cool to see an artist strongly identified with the city getting these well-deserved accolades. I missed out on the '90s heyday that came with Liz Phair, the Pumpkins et al, and Wilco's rise to prominence may be the only time I've experienced that with a rock act in Illinois. (Later, we had Kanye and Common's ascendance which seemed to coincide with hip-hop displacing rock as the center of youth culture. Not a criticism, just an observance on the cultural shift as I loved the music they were making in the '00s.)
     
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  19. the gang gets tough

    the gang gets tough Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Florida
    Not sure if it's been said yet (haven't read through the thread yet haha) but I'm glad from the looks of it, they omitted the demos that were already available elsewhere (notice how Heavy Metal Drummer is only on one bonus disc?). It's a possibility these recordings are unique and aren't available in any shape on the internet. However, I would've loved a remastering of the 2 circulating demo albums, if they have existing masters of them, that is.
     
  20. Justin Brooks

    Justin Brooks Forum Resident

    Pretty sure most of all of the demo sets are covered here although I could be wrong. Someone made a good post about it a few pages back.
     
  21. tstrapac

    tstrapac Forum Resident

    There's no real reason to think the songs from the two leaked CDs will be on this set.

    In 'Learning How To Die' they talk about the band working on up to 10 versions of each of song.

    I think there is a lot more stuff in the vaults than was leaked on those two CDs.
     
  22. dalecooper

    dalecooper Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, GA
    I have no idea what to make of this release. Can someone who is familiar with the previously circulating demos and such break it down a bit for a more casual fan? I've followed Wilco since the beginning, buying each album basically as it came out, but I never dove deeper than that. Love this album and I'd definitely be interested in unreleased tracks from that time period, but I don't know what to think of this huge flotilla of demos and alternate versions (which sort of stuff usually doesn't excite me much regardless of the artist). The bigger set seems clearly only aimed at the super-duper fans. But even the simpler 2CD seems to have more demos and alternates than new tunes on it--am I wrong? How good are all these demos anyway?

    I think for me this is a "either get the 2CD or stick with what I got" situation, but maybe someone can enlighten me.
     
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  23. couchdave

    couchdave Founding member of Mystik Spiral

    Location:
    Boston, MA, USA
    These are all great questions, but we won't know until we actually hear the new set how much overlap there is with the previously circulating bootlegs, or whether anything important was left out, or even where everything fits in the overall development of the album. I think it's fair to say that the word "demos" on the bootlegs was a bit of a misnomer in that much of what came out in the two collections of so-called "demos" seems to be prospective album versions, though not necessarily in a completed state—or, perhaps, dating from the sessions with Ken Coomer that were mostly junked once Kotche joined the band. As far as I can tell, for example, the two "demo" versions of "Heavy Metal Drummer" were just (mostly similar) alternate/in progress mixes of what became the YHF album version, and maybe that was the only vocal take of the song that was ever worked on by the band (which would explain why there's only one alternate version of the song on the new super deluxe set).

    I've enjoyed hearing the bootlegs over the years—there are versions of some songs that are different enough from the final YHF album to make them worthwhile for me—but I think I'd enjoy them more if I had a sense of what they were and where they fit into the timeline of the album's production. So I'm hoping that the new set sheds some light on that. And if you love Wilco's music and aren't familiar with "Cars Can't Escape," "Venus Stopped the Train," "Shakin' Sugar" or "Magazine Called Sunset," those are all good-to-great "lost" tunes from the band's golden era that are well worth hearing (I'd rate "Not for the Season" and "The Good Part" one notch below the others, but that may just be my personal taste).
     
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  24. thecomposer10

    thecomposer10 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA
    Just sprung for the silver version of this set. It’s a top album for me — a no brainer.
     
    Zeki, jumpinjulian, timnor and 2 others like this.
  25. Balding Jay

    Balding Jay Forum Resident

    Location:
    Arlington, VA
    Even after the excellent Being There and Summerteeth deluxe editions I’m stunned at the scope of what they’re putting together here. And Bob Mehr’s involvement really gets me excited, as the three recent Replacement boxes have all been outstanding.

    Even the choice of live show is great here, one that’s not just officially unreleased but not available as a bootleg. So many bands just put out deluxe editions with the same live shows that have been circulating for years (looking at you, R.E.M.!).

    Wilco will love you, baby.
     
    Bill_H, ARK, Zeki and 5 others like this.

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