I know I’ll make it back / one of these days :: Wilco vinyl contest

On most days, my favorite Wilco album is Summerteeth (maybe on most warm days like today, or perhaps it would always be my favorite if I lived in California full time).

So today I am pleased to have a new contest to giveaway the 180-gram double disc gatefold vinyl of Summerteeth. The vinyl-loving folks over at Because Sound Matters let me pick something from their cool stock on vinyl to give away to you guys (not the Neil Young retrospective!), and with summer just around the corner, this one felt right.

TO WIN: Let’s talk about your favorite Wilco _______ (seemingly nonsensical but somehow profound song lyric, live concert moment, etc). You pick what to write about, and the responses will be enjoyable for me to read in these coming days of travel and services. I’ll pick a winner when I get home on Sunday night.

Me? Probably “Via Chicago” when I first saw it live in Denver and it wrenched at my insides when the song broke apart all dissonant. Still one of my favorite shows, and favorite things I’ve written about a show. It blew the veneer off my insides.

Via Chicago (live in Denver 9/1/07) – Wilco

“But the wind blew me back via Chicago, in the middle of the night
And not without fight at the crush of veils and starlight“

Jeff Buckley’s music + Shakespeare this summer?

A new theatrical adaptation that combines Jeff Buckley’s music with Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet will premiere this summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, August 5-20. Under the direction of Michael Kimmel, with music direction and orchestration by Kris Kukul, The Last Goodbye weaves a dozen of Jeff’s songs into the ill-fated love story we all know so well.

Stage readings of its early incarnation sold out in New York last year. Now that the adaptation is completely fleshed out and ready to hit the stage, I’ll admit an intense curiosity to see his songs yearn and take flight inside this story, live on a stage in the open air once again — but it seems a daunting undertaking. Certainly, you can clearly see the story arc that this fits into – “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” during the pining, “Last Goodbye” in the tragic final moments, even “Everybody Here Wants You” or “Forget Her,” all seem almost tailor-made for a story like Will Shakespeare’s. But…it’s Jeff, and that still holds a sacrosanct place in my musical heart.

I am reassured by fans who saw the readings last year at Joe’s Pub; the Music Slut wrote of a fear that the tunes would be butchered, but “the ninety minute show was stunning from start to finish. In fact, I’m still reeling from it, twelve hours later.” “My mind is blown,” wrote another Jeff fan. So yeah — this could be magical. I’d at least give it a shot, in the August twilight in the Berkshires.

One of my favorite quotes of Jeff’s, and one that makes me curious to see how his songs will tell secrets in this adaptation, is where he says:

“Music comes from a very primal, twisted place. When a person sings, their body, their mouth, their eyes, their words, their voice says all these unspeakable things that you really can’t explain but that mean something anyway. People are completely transformed when they sing; people look like that when they sing or when they make love. But it’s a weird thing–at the end of the night I feel strange, because I feel I’ve told everybody all my secrets.”

The Last Goodbye runs August 5-20.

Lover, You Should Have Come Over (acoustic) – Jeff Buckley [from the Eternal Life single]

And, oh: Wilco also is curating and headlining the new Solid Sound Festival down the road during the same chunk of August: Friday the 13th – Sunday the 15th, in North Adams, Mass. It’ll be Wilco’s only East Coast summer tour dates, and the Buckley show may soon head off to Broadway, never again to hit such intimate spaces. Summer vacation? My birthday on the 19th? YES, please.

[photo credit Merri Cyr]

melt on the blue breath of the auctioneers

Released today from the fine folks at La Blogotheque; just exactly what my Monday needed.

Country Disappeared (La Blogotheque) – Wilco

Wilco – Country Disappeared – A Take Away Show

I want to hold you in the bible-black predawn

I saw modern Chicago soul group JC Brooks And The Uptown Sound at the Numero Group’s Eccentric Soul Revue in April, and these young guys added a fiery verve of new sound amongst the vanguards and legends performing that night. I thought they had immense charisma live.

The Chicago Tribune recently called these guys “the real deal,” and the band says by means of self-description: “For us, it’s a little like, ‘What would it sound like if Otis Redding fronted the Stooges?‘”

A friend sent me this incredible cover from a few weeks ago at the Do Division Street Fest in Chicago, where the Uptown Sound played the mainstage alongside acts like Viva Voce, Handsome Furs, and White Rabbits.

All infused with shiny horns and a groove where I never thought I’d hear one, this song makes a freaking fantastic barnburning soul tune.

[via]

Jay Bennett gone too soon

Jay Bennett died early this morning. As Jeff Tweedy once said, “We put an ad in the paper for a guitar player, and he’s the only person that answered.”

I’m really glad he did.

Via Chicago (live) – Jeff Tweedy & Jay Bennett
I’m Always In Love – Jeff Tweedy & Jay Bennett
(both tracks live & absolutely gorgeous from the Old Town School of Folk Music Fest, 7/25/99)

Reservations – Wilco

Can you haw without hemming?

Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco), always the affable frontman, poses this question for thought. Haw without hemming? Never looked at it that way, Jeff. This is a great solo show taped by The Flat Response at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, Colorado in August of 2006.

Was I (In Your Dreams) – Jeff Tweedy

[get or listen to the whole set here]

And then, since I was buying a plane ticket today to Chicago (beginning of April!), I clearly had to have suitable listening. This is by far the prettiest ‘lil version of “Via Chicago” that I have ever heard, from a Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett show at the Old Town School of Folk Music Festival on July 25, 1999.

Via Chicago – Jeff Tweedy & Jay Bennett

[whole show here]

And finally, since you mentioned it, how rad does this film look?

…Okay kids, I have a friend in town this weekend so I am pleasantly disconnected til Sunday, off to play tourist in my own backyard? Sunshine feels good!

[top photo credit]

Joffrey Velvet

Priceless.

(The Socialist free song referenced in the interview is –hooray!!– a great version of that stunning duet of “I Shall Be Released” they were performing back in August in Oregon with the Fleet Foxes — I’ve only listened to the crappy YouTube-ripped version about twelve dozen times)

Wilco and Fleet Foxes live in Spokane :: “I Shall Be Released” (Dylan cover)

Knowing how excited the Fleet Foxes were to be touring with Wilco, I smile to watch them stand all crowded around one microphone in this video, shuffling their weight back and forth in what seems like “still flabbergasted” anticipation. Taken 8/21/08 at the Opera House in Spokane, this Dylan cover is just lovely, especially when Tweedy breaks into hearty and unabashed falsetto around the 2 minute mark.

I Shall Be Released (live in Spokane) – Wilco & Fleet Foxes

And hey, remember what my absolute favorite favorite cover of this song is? Yeah.

[thanks once again, Cusa!]

New from Wilco :: “One Wing” and “Sunny Feeling” (live in Indianapolis)

It’s good times for new music. Wilco has recently been playing a few new songs at their shows these last two weeks. Here are recordings of two of them from Indianapolis on August 4th. Thanks to Cusa for digging these up at my behest, since I’ve been too busy with work to be a proper scout of anything lately.

One Wing (live 8/4/08) – Wilco

Sunny Feeling (live 8/4/08) – Wilco

One Wing (called a “WIP” at Lollapalooza by Jeff – a work in progress) is bittersweet, and heartbreakingly lovely, but builds into those jaw-dropping crescendos that they do so well. The opening minutes have that moody and wistful Fleetwood Mac-ish guitar riff. Sunny Feeling is feisty and evokes what the title describes (even though that feeling is taken away, sadly, by the chorus).

My friends who’ve caught Wilco in action lately say they look “dang good in those Nudie-meets-Sgt Pepper outfits…” Well yes, they always do. High class! I have a Tweedy & Co date next weekend at the Outside Lands Festival in golden SF. I will hope for these tunes to make an appearance, and any other new ones they care to bestow. Sounds like Nels is still as busy melting faces as ever.

[brooklynvegan photo credit, from Lolla]

Wilco plays someone else’s songs, Part II

Hey do you like Wilco? Of course you do. And most everyone likes covers (especially me). This is part two of a jawdropping treasure trove of lovingly-assembled covers that Wilco has performed in concert over the years.

In this batch, you get covers of everyone from Neutral Milk Hotel (!!) to Herman’s Hermits, an even better version of that lovely lovely “Be Not So Fearful” song that I posted a while back, and you also get to hear Tweedy’s improvisational singsong verse about Grateful Dead fans (”You’re scaring me very much now / I always suspected that a lot of this crowd smoked a lot of pot, and dropped a lot of acid back in the hippy days / Oh, it’s so so sad that you’re Wilco fans.”)

WILCO: SOMEONE ELSE’S SONGS [via]
DISC 2
Give Back the Key to My Heart (11/22/99): Doug Sahm
Kingsport Town (1/4/00): Bob Dylan
Lookin’ for a Love (1/4/00): Neil Young
King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1 (1/9/00): Neutral Milk Hotel
Rock Salt and Nails (5/14/00): Bob Dylan
Organ Blues (5/14/00): T. Rex
Reflections in a Crystal Wind (9/12/00): Richard & Mimi Farina
I’m Into Something Good (9/13/00): Herman’s Hermits
Colon song (11/16/00)
Stairway to Heaven (12/20/00): Led Zeppelin – (Golden Smog)
Ripple (2/25/01): Grateful Dead
I Wish I Was Your Mother (9/15/01): Mott The Hoople
No Depression (11/18/01): The Carter Family
It’s Alright to Cry (2/17/02): Rosie Grier
Three Is a Magic Number (2/17/02): Schoolhouse Rock
Yellow Submarine (2/17/02): The Beatles
We Will Rock You (2/17/02): Queen
Be Not So Fearful (4/6/02): Bill Fay
TV Eye (5/26/02): The Stooges
Henry & the H-Bombs (6/10/02): Mott The Hoople

ZIP: SOMEONE ELSE’S SONGS (DISC TWO)

[photo from Louisville Slugger Field, credit Richie Wireman]