Autumn of the Band Part III: Music From Big Pink

Now we are finally at the albums by The Band proper. Music From Big Pink is less a record than a talisman or symbol, far larger than the sum of its parts, which are pretty great to begin with. According to the legends, hearing this music prompted Eric Clapton to break up Cream and form the rootsier Derek and the Dominoes. George Harrison met The Band and had a similar road to Damascus moment, leading The Beatles to "get back" to simpler music. Beyond those verified legends, the Stones also took a rooty direction with Beggar's Banquet after the flower power of Their Satanic Majesties Request. Fairport Convention drew deeper from the well of the English folk tradition with Liege and Lief. Dylan himself, who had been there in the pink house too, went country with Nashville Skyline. Big Pink hit the late-60s rock scene upside the head by favoring murder ballads and downhome harmoies over the phased drums and hippy-dippy love songs of the reigning psychedelia. Much as punk banished prog rock to the margins and grunge killed hair metal, Big Pink spoke to an inchoate desire for less affected, more authentic music. 

Music From Big Pink stands as one of the most important and influential albums ever. It's also pretty damn good. While it often gets credit as the origin of "roots rock" I realized on this listening that it just doesn't sound like anything else, much less old timey American music. Much of this is down to Hudson's organ, which is the true MVP of this album. The most virtuosic of The Band's members was also the most experimental, and what he plays does not sound like psychedelia, soul, country, or jazz, but like a singular genre no one else can play. "This Wheel's On Fire" gets a creepy, otherwordly feel from these sounds, for example. "In A Station"'s shimmering keyboards are hypnotizing. The electro riff Hudson puts on "The Long Black Veil" elevates it from a country cover to something more interesting entirely. Fittingly, Garth gets the spotlight on "Chest Fever," his organ sounding like Bach if he had spent a couple of years in New Orleans. It's so overtly muso that it almost becomes an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer song before stepping back and letting the rest of the band groove. 

That groove is key. The Band brought the roll back to rock and roll, which you would expect from a bunch of guys who spent years getting paid to get the punters out on the floor to shake their asses. The groove is there even on the sadder songs like "Long Black Veil." Robbie Robertson's guitar has the Chicago blues' ghost of electricity in it, but there are none of the self-indulgent pyrotechnics of the likes of Clapton and Hendrix. None of the songs are the kind of up-tempo ravers they reeled off with Ronnie Hawkins and Dylan, however. They are profound, mysterious, like messages from another world. These songs emerged amidst the tumult of 1968, but only speak to them elliptically. "Tears of Rage" references the state of the nation, but more the feeling of things being unsettled, rather than the events themselves. The same goes for "I Shall Be Released." a song about injustice, a topic of much discussion then, that universalizes the plea of the poor prisoner singing the song. 

In spite of themselves, The Band managed to write one hippy anthem, "The Weight," due to its use in Easy Rider. I think this song is why people assume this album is the wellspring of roots rock, since it's the most country, with the famous harmony vocals rough-hewn and full of Gospel flourishes. Most people today don't know The Band, and if they did, it'd be through this song. It is a glorious song, one made for campfire singalongs and dive bar juke boxes both. There's good reasons for its endurance. It also signals the direction the group will take on their next record, which to me is in fact the real beginning of "roots rock." 

I think the key to this album can be found in its interior gate-fold. On the one side there's a picture of the group in black and white wearing beards and hats in a look that I heard someone describe as "Appalachian rabbi." These are not people conforming to the love beads and Nehru jacket fashions of the time. On the other side is a picture of the band members with their families, including their parents. In the time of "don't trust anyone over 30" this was a pretty radical move. What's especially interesting to me is that this iconography is wedded to truly innovative music. By calling on the past, The Band found the future. It's quite a magic trick, one that might be useful in our own confused time of turmoil. 

Rating: Five Levons (out of five) 

Autumn of the Band Part II: Dylan's Gunslingers

The Band's story is one that makes me think about the role of fate in the universe. The Hawks were a crack rock and roll band of the old school, ripping it up at dive bars and jook joints from Dallas to Toronto. They were precisely not the kind of band that emerged from The Beatles' revolution. They spawned garage bands from coast to coast of young men trying to imitate the mop tops and the more rough and rowdy Rolling Stones. By 1967 this had morphed into psychedelia, which Richard Manuel commented on hilariously in The Last Waltz as a time with groups with names like "Chocolate Subway" and "Marshmallow Overcoat." One can imagine a universe where The Hawks just faded away, relics of the pre-rock era rock and roll talked about by record collectors who might note that this Robertson guy who played on some killer obscure Ronnie Hawkins records went on to be a session man. Or a kid in Ontario may have discovered that his high school music teacher Mr Hudson was once a rock and roller. 

That didn't happen. Instead, the hand of fate came down in the form of Bob Dylan, who chose The Hawks to be his backing band for his tour in 1966. Dylan had famously gone electric, apparently giving in to the post-Beatles shift to rock (not rock and roll) music and abandoning the folk religion. That at least was the narrative of a certain subset of butthurt folkies who loom a bit too large in the memory of the event. What really happened was that Dylan was already shifting his songwriting away from folk into more personal and I would daresay poetic territory, even if he still strummed an acoustic guitar and blew into a harmonica. He was going to make music in a rock band format that was going to go way beyond what it had done so far. 

On the '66 tour he played an acoustic set followed by an electric set, which the aforementioned sect of aggrieved folkies detested and even booed. It was a whole lot of mishagas and Hawks drummer and de facto leader Levon Helm pulled out of the tour, not wanting to put up with it. The rest of the band drew on Canadian stoicism and soldiered on. You can hear the results in the fourth volume of the Bootleg Series, a famous show in Manchester that had been erroneously labelled as being from the Royal Albert Hall in London. If you were to ask me about my favorite Bob Dylan album, I would tell you that it's the second, electric disc from this release. Dylan and the Hawks play with both abandon and precision, rocking harder and louder than what just about anyone would have heard at the time. "She Acts Like We Never Have Met" is not a Dylan classic on the record, but here it rips and snarls. "Tell Me Mama" rollicks like a runaway train. The sneer behind "Ballad of a Thin Man" cuts sharper knowing that Dylan is directing it straight at members of his own audience who think him a Judas. Someone in fact famously yells that accusation (which you can hear on the album) right before Dylan turns to the band, tells them "playing fucking loud man" and they tear into a monumentally percussive version of "Like A Rolling Stone." Those folkies didn't know they were messing with some rock and roll gunslingers who had played some of the toughest clubs in North America. 

Relistening to the "Royal Albert Hall" show again I found myself even more impressed with it. I also thought of the role of fate. Dylan could have chosen any number of backing bands, many that have fallen into obscurity since. Somehow I don't think any of them would have worked as well as The Hawks. They were steeped in the older musical traditions, the ones Dylan had been drawing on his whole musical life. Hearing Rick Danko's high lonesome backing vocals I just don't think any other group could have worked out as well. In 1966 the meeting of Dylan and The Hawks was a world-historical bit of kismet, like Paul McCartney being the Liverpool bloke that John Lennon happened to meet and make music with. 

Even if The Hawks had never become The Band, they would have thus written a page in rock history. They ended up making a bigger impact with Dylan not by taking the stage and daring his audience to hate them, but by recording songs in their basement in upstate New York while Dylan was taking a break from the spotlight in Woodstock in 1967 after the tour in 1966 almost killed him. It was here that Dylan and The Band's shared expertise in the forms of American music really came together. Their basement recordings were bootlegged and circulated at a time when Dylan had taken a step back from the ground-breaking glories of his trio of albums from 1965-1966. The Basement Tapes are quite a thing to listen to, a combination of covers and Dylan songs far more elliptical and even silly than what he had done up to this point. The epic, logorrea of "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" had been replaced by relatively terse trifles like "Santa Fe" and "Quinn, The Eskimo." "Clothes Line Saga" funnily parodies/references the Gothic horror of Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" while "Lo and Behold" takes us to a Mark Twain universe of shysters and ramblers. The Basement Tapes are such a rich text that Greil Marcus wrote a whole book about them that I consider one of if not his best (I read it when it was called Invisible Republic, not The Old Weird America.) 

For this blog I re-listened to the entire officially released six disc set, which I own because I am a weirdo like that. (Although a friend did burn CD copies of his bootlegs for me back in the 2000s.) This time around it was interesting to hear the primitive nature of the early recordings and covers, and slowly find The Band and Dylan figuring out an entirely new path in American music by drawing on its deepest wellsprings. It starts mostly with covers, with the lonesome "Still in Town" among my faves, along with the Johnny Cash covers like "Big River" and "Folsom Prison Blues." There's folk classics too, like "Ol' Roisin the Beau." It's a whole lot of fun, the fun you might have just hanging out with friends and banging out old favorites on guitar, like some of my happiest evenings in my 20s in grad school. Things get really wacky on stuff like "See You Later Allen Ginsburg," but there's also heartfelt beauty like the epic "The Sign on the Cross." 

I am not giving this album a ranking as a "Band" album because Levon Helm did not join up with them again until late 1967, after completing these recordings with Dylan. It's not the true Band sound without Levon on drums. Richard Manuel would often play drums in a delightfully ramshackle way that I think Greil Marcus described once as a "shopping cart with a broken wheel." (If you can't tell, Manuel is my favorite.) Levon also doesn't play on the 1966 tour, and you can hear it. Mickey Jones eagerly bashes the shit out of his kit, and in the context of that tour and its alienation of its audience, it makes sense. However, Helm played the drums with a kind of light, loving touch that would give The Band a foundation more profound than the hard rockers of the day. 

I can't even imagine what impact the Basement Tapes bootlegs would have made at the time, coming amidst the countercultural explosion of 1967-68. According to the Dylan obsessives of the day, the Bobfather had withdrawn from his position as generational prophet (one he NEVER wanted) at a time when the hippie masses needed him most. Here the supposed savior is making silly songs disengaged from the headlines. I think his true prophecy was to understand that "the Sixties" were going to run out of gas, and that the Chocolate Subways and Marshmallow Overcoats of the day were going to be period curios, not lasting milestones. By partnering with The Band, he rediscovered the rich seam of American music that could sustain him for over another fifty years. Again, a true moment of the rare benevolence of the hand of Fate.

Next time I will finally get into The Band's first proper album, one that supposedly prompted Eric Clapton to break up Cream and ended up radically reshaping rock music. Appropriately, it would be named for the big pink house where the Basement Tapes were mostly recorded. 

Autumn of The Band Part One: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks

I have been neglecting this blog in favor of my Substack and part of the reason is that I use this space for pop culture stuff, but I have been getting that out of my system through multiple academic writing projects. To get back on track here I have decided to do one of my patented "listen throughs" of a classic rock artist. 

This summer, as I was driving home from a Southern trip and I decided to put on the entire Last Waltz show so I wouldn't have to futz with Spotify while trying to concentrate on the road. I hadn't listened to The Band for a long time, and I was suddenly reminded that there was a three year period in the 2000s where I was absolutely obsessed with them. There is something about them that inspires fervid conversion experiences, like Clapton hearing them and breaking up Cream because they exposed the emptiness of the en vogue psychedelia. I had also been fortunate this summer to spend time with old friends from those 2000s days who shared my love of the group. Since it's been awhile, I thought it was time to go back, both to The Band and the time in my life I associate with it. There's also the sad fact that with Garth Hudson's passing, all of the original members are dead.

Unlike my other listen-throughs, I am going to do this one mostly album by album, since The Band's catalog is not as huge as Dylan or Springsteen's. The first installments, about their days before their first proper album under the name of "The Band" will be exceptions. Albums will be rated from one to five Levons once I get there.

They started as The Hawks, playing with Arkansas rockabilly wild man Ronnie Hawkins. The story is improbable, as Hawkins settled in Toronto and over time replaced his Arkansas band with local Canadian musicians (except for drummer Levon Helm.) The Band made some of the most quintessentially American music, but ironically, five out of the six members were Canadians. As a lover of Canada in a time when our president is threatening our relationship with that great nation, I think it's especially good to contemplate The Band.

I listened to Hawkins' first album, even though it was still the Arkansas players, just for context. He really rips it up on this record, which is a hidden gem in my book. I am a big fan of 1959's "Forty Days," his take on Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days." This is some real deal rockabilly from the piney woods of the "Natural State," not the watered down music that was beginning to cash in on and replace the harder-edged stuff that broke out of Memphis a few years before. 

After that first record (which was without The Band) it's hard to know which songs and albums had the whole compliment of The Band on them since different members joined at different times. Instead of trying to name them, I'd rather write about the general feel of the music. I've heard rockabilly described as up-tempo country-style hillbilly music with R&B singing over it, which makes sense with Hawkins' first record. On Mojo Man, which had a lot of Band participation, things are VERY bluesy. I find it striking because while The Band was obviously aware of the blues in their music, the first music with their name on it drew more from country. That in fact is what seemed to draw in other musicians in the late 60s, who had mostly been playing a hopped up version of Chicago blues music. It's as if The Band already went through their blues phase before anyone else got there. 

The Hawkins records, which I do really enjoy, are a reminder that The Band were not of the British Invasion, nor were they of the legions of garage bands that formed in the wake of The Beatles and Rolling Stones. They predated both, but like The Beatles they cut their teeth playing in rough clubs to rough customers. It makes sense that they would seemingly come out of left field in 1968 with Music From Big Pink because they had been woodshedding far from the mainstream. Even though their music in that time sounded nothing like the raw early rock n' roll they cut with Hawkins, it had the same uncompromising spirit. 

That spirit meant that the Hawks would have to leave Hawkins' nest and fly. (Sorry, couldn't help myself.) They would really make a name for themselves playing with Bob Dylan, but before then managed to cut a 45 for Atco with "The Stones I Throw" on the A side and "He Don't Love You (And He'll Break Your Heart)" on the flipside back in 1965. The A side seems to be a song in favor of civil rights, and it's dominated by a heavy organ from Garth and muscular singing from Rick Danko. The B side is less hooky but better, a funky groovy number that sounds like a lost track from the Stax vaults. Danko gives it the appropriate level of sweat. This sounds nothing like their later music, but crucially, it also does not sound like Ronnie Hawkins, either. 

You can hear in their early music why Dylan would have chosen them to be his backing band on tour in 1965. If he was going to enrage the folkies by going electric, best to do it with a bunch of guys who could really play some hardcore, gut bucket music and knew how to survive a hostile audience. The angry folkies were child's play next to the kind of people who showed up to Jack Ruby's burnt-out club in Dallas. 

Next time I will write about those famous live shows, along with the "Basement Tapes" recorded with Dylan.

Memories of Ozzy

[Editor's Note: I apologize for letting this blog slip. My writing on Substack has been my focus, as well as academic projects I am working on as well. I plan on using this space for more personal and pop cultural thoughts with more frequency. Don't worry, Orson Welles will be back!]

Ozzy Osbourne's death this week flooded my mind with memories far more than most celebrity deaths usually do. He was a singular figure of a kind we don't see much today. In the first place, rock stars are no longer really a thing in terms of youth culture, and heavy metal is no longer being blasted out of cars in high school parking lots anymore. While the culture wars still rage, he was a figure from a time when its frontlines were quite different than they are now. 

In the 1980s fundamentalist Christians felt far more confident in attempting to censor cultural life in the United States. They did not merely criticize "the culture," they were of the mind to drive out what they didn't like completly. In the era of the internet the explicit content stickers added to so many tapes and CDs seem absolutely quaint. Likewise, the Satanic Panic of the 1980s sounds like a joke, but in the moment some people really did think that Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal music were full of satanic messages. This panic destroyed lives, but it was in many ways tamer than what we have today. QAnon, for example, is the Satanic Panic directly applied to our politics, with far greater harm. 

No one cultural figure embodied what the culture warriors opposed more than Ozzy Osbourne. Growing up in a small Great Plains town in the 1980s (as I did) he was less a musician than either a folk hero or a demon, depending on who you talked to. For the hordes of disaffected teen headbangers in these places he was a demigod, an avatar of rebellion. Your Ozzy t-shirt told everyone around you that you were not interested in conforming to the rules of conservative small town life. Now that parental figures are less interested in regulating their children's pop culture diets, we really don't have people like this anymore.

I was not a metal head at all, and the metal kids felt dangerous and scary to a meek altar boy like myself. Despite not being a part of that crowd or liking the music, I respected Ozzy because I really disliked the fundamentalists and their agenda. Part of this was my Catholicism, which I knew marked me lesser in their eyes. Part of it was the folk libertarianism of teendom, with its "just leave us alone" attitude regardless of what the adults were trying to regulate. My opposition to music censorship ended up being the germ of my growing feeling that I did not align with the conservative politics of my hometown. 

In the 90s in high school I was one of the earliest adopters of grunge in my hometown, a music that made the metal heads look like yesterday's news. I didn't really learn to appreciate metal until I was in college, due to my friend Dave. He was a Black Sabbath superfan, and dubbed the Paranoid album onto a cassette tape for me (remember doing that?) At that point I was hooked. He also moved to Chicago after college, and in the year we roomed together I really got immersed in Sabbath. Dave had every single album of theirs (no mean feat pre-CD burning), including strange non-metal ones like Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die. He had a VHS tape with a documentary about the band that we watched a few times, which made me appreciate Ozzy's talents as a live performer. 

At that point I realized that Ozzy was not some demigod of rebellion or a demonic influence, but an outcast working class kid from Birmingham who was saved by rock and roll. It made his appeal to so many of my classmates in high school make more sense because the same could be said about their circumstances as well. Dave did not quite come from such a background, but he was a totally unique character who was very self-conscious about being a misfit. He knew he was never going to fit in no matter where he went, and Ozzy helped him embrace that. 

I also remember one day Dave told me a unlikely story in our apartment. He was riding the bus in downtown Chicago, and swore he saw Ozzy, but he looked very feeble, and there was an older woman helping him cross the street. I was initially doubtful of this sighting, but a couple of years later when The Osbournes reality show came out I realized Dave had not been lying at all. That show completely dispelled the whole "prince of darkness" thing and showed Ozzy as a befuddled family man. It was the final nail in the coffin to the propagators of the Satanic Panic from two decades before. 

When I head the news of Ozzy's death, Dave was the first person I thought of. He sadly didn't make it as long as Ozzy, dying suddenly in his mid-30s. Other deaths since have impacted me, but none has lingered as long as his. There's hardly a week that goes by that I don't think about him. This week I am not mourning Ozzy so much as the Dave, one of the many misfits who found a kindred spirit in times hostile to eccentricity. 

Richard Thompson Autumn Part Four: Vagabond Adventures in the 80s

The 1980s were a cruel decade for many legacy artists. Just think of the troughs of Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Johnny Cash, and Neil Young in that time. Richard Thompson broke from the norm of middle-aged sagginess by putting out several good albums after his breakup with Linda. The problem was that few people were listening and his labels were not loyal. All of this woodshedding would pay off because come the 1990s he would be a far more celebrated artist. While all of these albums were quite good, he would not yet create something to match Shoot Out the Lights. 

Hand of Kindness, 1983

This is only Thompson's third solo record, and his first non-instrumental one in over a decade. As an artist he had been a collaborator, first with Fairport Convention and then with Linda Thompson. Here he is on much surer ground than Henry the Human Fly. As with Shoot Out the Lights, many songs are about the dark side of relationships. Unfortunately, the accordion is back in the mix. At least on the driving album opener of "Tear Stained Letter" it gives the song a little extra demented propulsion. The cover, with Thompson looking like a lonely busker on a crappy day, adds to the feeling that this is a man on his own. The big sound with horns adds something, but I don't like this album as much as I'd like to. Thompson still feels like he is searching for the right sound to compliment his songs. Nevertheless, "Tear Stained Letter," "How I Wanted To," and "Both Ends Burning" are great songs. "How I Wanted To" is an especially good song about feeling like you've let someone down in a relationship.

Rating: Four Richards

Small Town Romance, 1984

I am not planning on covering all of Thompson's live records, but this one merits inclusion. It's the only solo acoustic document we have from this time in his career, and it's a winner. He reclaims some songs from his time with Linda Thompson and does solo renditions of Fairport songs like "Meet on the Ledge." I love hearing Thompson play and sing by himself because it really lets the power of the songs shine through. The only drawback is that the sound quality could be a little better.

Rating: Four and a half Richards

Across a Crowded Room, 1985

In the mid-1980s every legacy artist seemed to cut at least one record in the dominant, big beat with synthesizer production style of the time. These albums have tended not to age well. Bruce Springsteen may have cracked it with Tunnel of Love, but Neil Young's atrocious Landing on Water was more typical. On this record Thompson incorporated some of that sound, but managed to do it mostly on his terms. From the first bars you can hear the big beat and extra reverb, but Thompson also injects some needed toughness to his sound. "You Don't Say" sounds almost new wave, but he manages not to come across as derivative. While the 80s sound dominates too much in places, Thompson also gives his guitar a little extra jangle, too, coming across best on "Walking Through a Wasted Land." This is not a great album but definitely a good one, especially considering the challenge of not letting the 80s production style ruin everything. 

Rating: Four Richards

Daring Adventures, 1986

Now we are back to albums you can't stream (I have this one on vinyl.) On the cover RT looks like a threatening tough guy in an alleyway. It's indicative of the harder sound on this record, courtesy of Mitchell Froom. Thompson's guitar definitely hits harder, there's just not enough good songs to put this record over the top. It's also a shame that the best riff comes on the very regrettably titled "Bone Through Her Nose." Nevertheless, this is a a solid effort and a sign that Thompson was beginning to find a more effective sound for his songs. 

Rating: Four Richards 

Amnesia, 1988

I'd avoided this one for awhile because the cover looked really silly and very 80s. Turns out I was wrong because Thompson sounds more confident than he has in awhile. This is also his first record with Capitol after being dropped by Polydor. After knocking about for so long he seemed to have found a label that could appreciate what he had to offer. With Mitchell Froom he also found a producer able to update his sound and give it more depth. On "Turning on the Tide" Thompson's tone is like sugar. Thompson is one of the more atypical guitar heroes in his restraint, but on this record he gives himself more license to actually shred. There's a harder energy on songs like "Jerusalem on the Jukebox" that had been missing from much of his 80s work. Amnesia was a sign that Thompson was about the make a great leap forward after some good but not overwhelming efforts. 

Rating: Four and a half Richards

Richard Thompson Autumn Part Three: Reneging

After their glorious trilogy of mid-70s albums, Richard and Linda Thompson opted for commune living and practicing Sufism. When they came back they still made good music, but would not match their earlier material until their last, gut-wrenching album together. 

First Light, 1978

After being away for three years Richard and Linda sound decidedly less folky. It's reflected in the backing of studio musicians, rather than their old Fairport-adjacent stalwarts. While I like the sound of his record a lot, it just does not have any songs on the level of what they used to put out. Nevertheless, it's a pleasant album to listen to. This is also, yet again, an album you can't stream on Spotify. 

Rating: Four Richards (out of five) 

Sunnyvista, 1979

Speaking of not being able to stream on Spotify, you can't stream this one either! It's a modern-day reflection of the issues the Thompsons had at the time in getting their music out. They switched labels before cutting this record, then were dropped afterward, unable to get a deal anywhere. It's not that this or First Light are bad, it's just that they are not commercial albums in any way. This was also a time in the late 70s when folk-inflected singer-songwriter music, which had dominated the early 70s, was on its way out. Consequently, while the folky backing musicians are back, some of the songs have a more "now" feel in the production. The barn-burning opener "Civilisation" is pretty catchy, too. This album is also a departure in that it has a concept. The cover is made to look like a mock-up cover for a fictional summer resort, and the songs touch more explicitly on the nature of modern life. I also like the cover as kind of a joke about the Thompsons' typically morose outlook. The second side is not as strong as the first, but it's still worth a listen. 

Rating: Four Richards

Strict Tempo, 1981

This is the first new listen for me in Thompson's catalog as part of this project. While Richard and Linda searched for a major label, Richard cut this set of instrumentals for his own imprint. While your mileage may vary with instrumental records, this one is enjoyable. It's a fun little trifle that also shows off Thompson's creativity as a guitar player. By not having lyrics his instrument is in the lead and he does a lot of interesting stuff with it. This is hardly an essential album, but I bet I will be listening to it while I grade tests and papers this school year. 

Rating: Four Richards 

Shoot Out the Lights, 1982

This is the album that made me a fan, and one with a tangled story behind it. The Thompsons had recorded the songs earlier in the hopes of getting a deal, and failed. They recorded them again with Fairport producer Joe Boyd and ended up with their most critically and commercially successful album. By that time their marriage was over, leading to what was called the Tour From Hell. In what appears to be an unfortunate pattern in his life, Richard was not being faithful. The songs are some of the most powerful ever written about relationships in turmoil, and then Linda had to perform them onstage with her philandering husband. (No wonder she would kick him in the shins onstage during his solos!) Beyond the exceptional quality of the songs, the sound stands out, too. The accordion and other folky touches are absent (except for "Back Street Slide") and Richard cuts loose on guitar, especially on the stunning title track. It all sounds very au courrant for the college radio sound of the early 80s, and it's hardly a mistake that REM would play "Wall of Death" live and record their third album with Boyd. The reverby guitar does not just plant this in the early 80s, it declares that Thompson has finally escaped the gravitational field of Planet Folk. If you want to get someone into Thompson, play them this record. 

Rating: Five Richards 

Richard Thompson Autumn Part Two: Beginning of the Rainbow

After putting out five albums with Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson struck out on his own for an album before beginning his decade-long musical and romantic partnership with Linda Peters (soon to be Thompson.) This is the era where he really distinguished himself as an artist in his own right and produced some of his best music. This era would end with a religious conversion to Sufist Islam and a hiatus spent in commune living. 

Henry the Human Fly, 1972

Not only is this RT's first solo album, it's the first example of one you can't stream on Spotify, and not the last. I have it on LP and CD, but if you're less elegant you can listen to it on YouTube, too. It was an inauspicious start for Thompson, who claims at one time it was the lowest-selling album in the label's history. While it is beloved by many, I much prefer his next three records with Linda. The growing pains are in evidence here, and not all the songs cohere as they should. At times, like the opening "Roll Over Vaughn Williams," the guitar work is breathtaking. One issue on this album and on a lot of Thompson's work of this era is too much accordion. I know it's treason as a German-American to say this, but the overuse of this instrument crowds out Thompson's guitar playing, which is why most listeners pay to get in the door. While "The Poor Ditching Boy" foregrounds the violin over the guitar, it is indeed a lovely song. "Shaky Nancy" is similar, but has too much damn penny whistle. I find it all kind of perverse, like if Led Zeppelin cut an album where John Bonham only plays the drums with brushes. 

Rating: Three and a half Richards (out of five) 

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, 1974

I really cannot say too much about this record. It is one of my favorites of all time, like top twenty level favorite. Thompson found his voice as a writer of songs about the aching dread of life as a human being, and Linda gave these songs a deeper voice and feeling than he could have provided. Every single one of these dark songs is a masterpiece as far as I'm concerned. There is no more devastating song about the tragedy of being thrown into existence than "End of the Rainbow." "Withered and Died" and "Down Where the Drunkards Roll" embody hopelessness like nothing else. This record also just sounds amazing. The accordion I complained about actually sounds good here as texture on songs like "We Sing Hallelujah." There's an eerie, spare feel to the real tear-jerkers like "The Great Valerio." If I am ever feeling sad on a gray winter day this is my go-to album for transcendence via wallowing. 

Rating: Five Richards 

Hokey Pokey, 1975

After the sad sack tone of the last record, this one starts off with the playful, joyous title track. Linda rarely sounded better and the double-entendre makes for some cheeky fun. Don't worry folks, Richard and Linda don't forget to make it sad. "A Heart Needs a Home" embodies lonely longing like few other songs ever have. This album is almost as good as its predecessor, except that "Old Man Inside the Young Man" is a clunky dirge whereas the prior album was perfect in every way. Nevertheless, this is one I still spin on the regular. 

Rating: Four and a half Richards 

Pour Down Like Silver, 1975

Yet another classic RT album not available on Spotify. I have this one on a CD box called Hard Luck Stories that collects all of the albums from 1972 to 1982 (except for Strict Tempo). There is...sigh...a lot of accordion on this record. All the same, it can't overpower something as fantastic as "For the Shame of Doing Wrong," which gives us Linda at her smokiest. The way she sings "I wish I was a fool for you" is just spine-tingling. In general she is someone who deserves vastly more adulation than she gets. Hearing these records after Henry the Human Fly is proof that Richard Thompson needed her to add the feeling he was missing. At the same time, RT takes "Beat the Retreat" himself and gives it some true world-weariness. While "Night Comes In" is dark, nothing tops "Dimming of the Day" for that literal twilight feeling. It is the sound of my soul on a cold winter day watching the feeble sun dip below the horizon far too early. After this the Thompsons would go on a hiatus and despite putting out some excellent music, they never topped their mid-70s trilogy. 

Rating: Five Richards

Richard Thompson Autumn Part One: Come All You Roving Minstrels

Periodizing Thompson's career at the outset is pretty easy, since he spent significant time in Fairport Convention before rolling on into his long solo career. Fairport is the most popular and significant band to come out of Britain's folk rock scene of the 1960s. It's also no mistake that they recorded some of Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes material before it ever saw an official release. Like that project, Fairport Convention were looking for innovative ways to incorporate far older musical traditions into rock in ways that weren't just imitation or archeology. Like The Band's similar material in that era, this is essential listening. 

Fairport Convention, 1968

Rarely is a band's first album a complete outlier the way this one is. Instead of folk rock it's psychedelic music that sounds straight out of Haight-Asbury, not the wind-battered shores of Albion. It's also the only album with Judy Dyble singing. She would give way to Sandy Denny, whose presence really brought Fairport Convention into their own. This is by no means a bad album, it's just not what the principals involved do best, like if Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cut a thrash metal record. I like late 60s San Francisco psychedelic rock, and Thompson and company come at it with creativity and verve. Thankfully they managed to find something more original on their next album.

Rating: Three Richards (out of five)

What We Did On Our Holidays, 1969

Right off the top with "Fotheringay" Fairport's evolution is manifest. Sandy Denny's haunting voice and the medieval ballad feel call upon something far more mysterious than a Sixties "happening." Whereas the debut album has 1968 stamped all over it, this song sounds like it could have been written yesterday or a thousand years ago. Also striking is the incorporation of blues and slide guitar on other songs, showing that this band was not just sticking to folk orthodoxy. They also had good taste in covers, doing Dylan's "I'll Keep It With Mine," a song left on the cutting room floor during the Blonde on Blonde sessions. Not every song is a banger, but the good ones are stunning, none more so than "Meet on the Ledge." It's one on my funeral playlist, and I've recently discovered that even Thompson's own mum wanted him to play it at hers. On its face it's a song about friends growing up, but it sounds like the yearning for transcendence after death. Thompson wrote it at the age of 17, a sign of his growing ability. His talents would be even more manifest on coming Fairport records.

Rating: Four and a half Richards 

Unhalfbricking, 1969

On the second of three (!) albums released in 1969, Fairport more fully realized their folk sound. Yet again they show excellent taste in picking Dylan songs, going with multiple unreleased songs, including some of the Basement Tapes material. On "Si Tu Dois Partir" they even have a lark by translating "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" into French. The lightheartedness of this and the Basement Tapes fun of "Million Dollar Bash" is tempered by some heavier material befitting the fact that original drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn died in a crash as the band was returning from a show. Though it was written before, Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" is a haunting meditation on mortality. The long workout of "A Sailor's Life" also gives that song a melancholy air of the type that Thompson would milk in the 1970s as a solo artist. Speaking of, Thompson's "Genesis Hall" shows his continuing power as a songwriter. 

Liege and Lief, 1969

On their third album of 1969 and the last with Denny, Fairport Convention managed to craft the apotheosis of the whole British folk movement. Like The Band's self-titled album of the same year, it masterfully blended traditional forms of music with a rock sensibility with results that are spookily effective. In Fairport's case they drew on medieval English folk traditions, giving these songs a timeless quality even though Thompson shreds on electric guitar when he needs to. Dave Mattacks' rolling drums give the music a renewed drive and Dave Swarbrick's virtuoso fiddle playing (present as a session musician before) bring Fairport's music to an entirely higher level. The songs here are almost all traditional, but are played in such innovative, creative ways that I never get tired of listening to them. It's a shame that Denny would soon leave the band. 

Rating: Five Richards

Full House, 1970

This is the band's last album with Thompson as a full time member, and the first after Sandy Denny's departure. It's a real shame because the drums and guitars have never sounded better. Unfortunately, the loss of Denny's voice is apparent. For example, a BBC sessions version of "Sir Patrick Spens" with Denny on vocals is one of my favorite Fairport songs, but this studio version without her sounds kinda flat. Neverthless, it's still good, with an emphasis on longer instrumental breakdowns. Thompson's virtuosity is more apparent and songs like "Flowers of the Forest" are just gorgeous. Special shoutout to "Now Be Thankful," a non-album single I bust out every Thanksgiving. 

Rating: Four Richards 

Introducing Richard Thompson Autumn

I've really enjoyed writing my "listen throughs" of different legacy artists: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Wilco and my readers (there are TENS of you out there!) like them too, so I am going with a new one this fall. There's also the fact that the school year has started and I am at a new job, so the brainspace I would use to come up with things to write about is pretty limited. It's better in these moments to go with a series.

I tend to listen to music seasonally. There are albums and artists I listen to heavily in some parts of the year and little in others. Richard Thompson has been in my autumn heavy rotation for a long time now, and now that he's come out with a new record I figured he was the perfect choice for this particular moment. 

Beyond that, Thompson is interesting because he is one of those legacy artists with a large following and massive catalog who still records and plays yet is practically unknown to most people. I do not think I have ever heard a single song of his on Top 40, classic rock, or "oldies" radio. Freeform radio, community radio, or public radio? You betcha! There are plenty of artists beloved by the real heads and ignored by the public (Big Star, Townes Van Zandt, Captain Beefheart, etc.) but none with a catalog as extensive as Thompson's, which makes him ideal for my purposes. He's also one of those artists who has some of his stuff tied up in rights issues, but I happen to have all of those things on physical media, so I am in a unique position to complete the mission. 

The first installment will be just about his years in Fairport Convention. After that I will have some fun with periodization. 

The Whole Wilco Part Four: Many Rivers to Cross

After Schmilco, Wilco took another recording hiatus, waiting three years to put out a new record. In the interim Jeff Tweedy was busy with his own solo work, which would inform the work that followed with Wilco. The band's last three records, in keeping with precedent, sound little like each other. From writing these retrospectives on legacy artists I've come to expect a really fallow period. Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Bob Dylan all hit some epic low points in the 80s that lasted for years. Even Bruce Springsteen spent the first half of the 1990s in the wilderness. Wilco has avoided this so far. Perhaps this is the result of record companies no longer expecting fresh product every year and thus allowing Tweedy and co to have more time to craft their work. In any case, it's rare for a group that's been around almost 30 years to keep making new music I listen to out of excitement, rather than obligation. 

Ode to Joy, 2019

This is probably the Wilco album I've listened to the least, and for reasons not entirely reflective of the quality of the record. By the time this album came out my listening habits had fully assimilated to streaming. I listen to full albums less than I used to, and am more likely to throw on a playlist Frankensteined together from the songs I am currently digging. I streamed this album when it came out, but didn't buy it (a first for for a Wilco album), listened a couple of times, and then forgot about it. In the age of streaming this is a common experience for me. It comes from not having the impetus to play full albums over and over again, but also from having so many options. Unlike other sad middle-aged dads, I listen to lots of new stuff, and I almost consider it a duty not to lean on listening to my favorite old artists all the time. 

Like Schmilco, this is an understated affair with some crankiness in the lyrics. It makes me think the album title is some kind of deadpan joke. Wilco has really scaled down the musical pyrotechnics, to the point that it sounds like are intentionally holding back. I felt that with Schmilco and I am feeling it even more with Ode to Joy. Both are definitely vibes albums with the whole worth more than the parts. Nevertheless, I really dig "Love is Everywhere (Beware)" and "Before Us." 

A friend pointed out to me that Ode to Joy came after Tweedy's Warm and Warmer albums. His creativity is getting spread out, and the jury's out to me whether this is giving Tweedy artistic inspiration for Wilco or whether it's watering down his Wilco work. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

Cruel Country, 2022

When I heard that Wilco was going to put out a double-album of more country-inflected music I have to say I was pretty excited. It wasn't because I have been yearing for a return to "Casino Queen" and "Passenger Side," but more because it would means getting to hear something radically different from them. I was not disappointed, and this album broke through my streaming-era allergy to listening to albums in full. I spun it throughout the summer of 2022. The song "Cruel Country" in particular spoke to me, as I listened to it in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision and a mass shooting at a 4th of July parade in suburban Chicago.

To get back to my rivers theory of rock music, Wilco drew more from the roots river on this album than they had since Being There. Listening to it again, however, I noticed that despite the album's title, the music is still mostly grounded in their work since Schmilco. There's the same intimacy, personal approach, and emphasis on mood over hook. There also just happen to be some steel guitars.

I listened to it for this project as I did a bunch of household chores and gardening on a Sunday, which was the perfect accompaniment. Like a lot of Tweedy's recent music, this is unabashadly the work of a middle-aged dad who gets stuck in reflection and worried about the future. Let's just say....I get it. I'm a teacher, which means the summer can be a time of paralyzing mental anguish because my brain is running overtime with less to distract it. I can get into a doom spiral, and two summers ago the gorgeous instrumental coda to "Many Worlds" would snap me out of it. 

I will fully admit that my love of this album is highly subjective. I love country music and am a worried dad so this is catnip to me. It's also a great example of how a non-country band can cut a country album without it being forced, corny, or subpar (Elvis Costello, I'm looking at you!) Like all double albums it has its peaks and valleys, but that's how I like them.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

Cousin, 2024

When I heard Wilco's newest had been produced by Cate Le Bon my ears perked up. She cut my favorite album of 2022 (Pompeii) and promised to bring something fresh to the table. Wilco had also been making all of their records themselves, and while artistic control is a good thing, sometimes big artists need someone else to step in and call them on their bullshit. Knowing her work and Wilco's I also knew it would be a good match.

I really like this album, and like Cruel Country I listened to it a lot as an album instead of just cherry-picking my favorite tracks for playlists. For awhile this year it was my morning train commute listening, so I associate it with that uncanny moment of stress and relaxation before the day truly begins. Based on the lyrical themes, that's appropriate. There is a lot of mental anguish here, including a straightforward discussion of whether to continue taking depression medication. The worry about the future of the world evident in the last two albums is pronounced here as well, especially on the harrowing "Ten Dead." 

A big difference here from the albums that preceded Cruel Country is that, like The Whole Love, pop singcraft is higher in the mix along with the experimentation. "Evicted," for example, is a shimmery song with catchy hooks that I've been listening to a lot. "A Bowl and a Pudding" has the repetitive, Jim O"Rourke repeating patterns reminiscent of Wilco's early 2000s apex. The welcome warmth (pun intended) of "Soldier Child" and punkiness of "Cousin" make them favorites on this album as well. 

It's defintely worth your time, and I can't wait to hear these songs live tonight.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

So that's it for The Whole Wilco, but I think I saw they have an EP coming. I'm sure I will listen to it the day it comes out. 

The Whole Wilco Part Three: New Beginnings

After Wilco's miracle run of albums from 1996 to 2004 they waited three years before releasing another studio recording. It came with a new lineup and new sounds, but never would Wilco scale the heights it had once occupied. That's the thing I used to focus on, at least. Nowadays I am more able to appreciate the experimentation and capacity for change here. 

Sky Blue Sky, 2007

This is the first studio album with the lineup of Tweedy, Stirrat, Kotche, Jourgenson, Sansone, and Cline, the same lineup the band has today. I had seen and enjoyed this lineup live, and probably set my expectations for this record too high. Their last two albums had become almost a part of me, and while I thought this was a good record, I didn't think it came close to pantheon status. Is that a ridiculous standard? Probably.

In the ensuing years I've mostly isolated some of my favorite tracks to throw onto playlists. In fact, "Impossible Germany" may be my favorite Wilco song ever. It certainly highlights the virtuosic flair that Nels Cline brings to the proceedings. Listening to this whole album in one go for the first time in years, I am struck by how great his playing is throughout. Sky Blue Sky sounds like the best 70s art rock album I'd never heard before. I still would not put this in the pantheon, but I'm realizing I was far too critical back then.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

Wilco, 2009

Releasing a self-titled album this far into a band's career is a real choice. It struck me kinda funny (to quote Bob Dylan) at the time, but now I think I get it. The "new" Wilco lineup is back for this album, but over the passage of time that "new" version has become the band for the majority of its life. The title seems to be saying "This is what Wilco is now, take it or leave it." The album even starts with a song called "Wilco" about the band, pledging to be a shoulder to cry on for the listener. It feels both serious and a tongue-in-cheek joke and I love it. 

When this album came out I played it a lot and it lived in my car for some time. For that reason I was shocked on this relisten to not know as many of the songs as I assumed I would. At the time I thought of this album as a return to songs over musicianship, something I thought the new lineup had unbalanced. It might be that in the interim that I have been listening to more Zappa, jazz, prog rock, and Beefheart, but I missed the musical flourishes of Sky Blue Sky listening to this one. 

When the songs hit, however, they are great. "I Will Fight" is a Wilco fave, along with the title song. When they miss, the misses are more noticeable. "You Never Know" has a slight stab at politics and reassuring the younger generation, but the last nine years make this song sound quaint, and even a wee bit insulting. Even at the time I thought it was a little clunky. 

Nevertheless, it's still a good album. Wilco's never put out a bad one, not something I can say about the other legacy artists I've covered. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

The Whole Love, 2011

This album did not grab me at all when I first heard it, and is probably tied with Ode to Joy for the least listened-to Wilco album for me. Today hearing the opening song again I wondered why my 2011 self had shit for brains. "Art of Almost" kicks things off in an experimental mode, departing from the more straight-ahead sounds of the self-titled album. The 70s art rock touches from Sky Blue Sky are evident here, as well as the new dimensions Nels Cline brings. 

When I first heard this one I definitely gravitated to "The Whole Love" as a favorite song. It has a bright boldness to it, bursting with joy in a way few songs do for a band so studied in the moods of melancholy. On my relisten I enjoyed the song even more. I also found myself connecting with songs I'd overlooked before, like "One Sunday Morning (A Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" which reminds my favorably of "Muzzle of Bees," and the brooding "Rising Red Lung." I enjoyed "Standing O" back in 2011, and find myself liking it even more now. 

All of this raises a question: why are my evaluations of this set of albums so wildly different than what they were at the time? Some of it has to do with my expectations, which were silly in their demands. Wilco's four albums before these literally changed my life, but that wasn't just about the music. It also had to do with my stage in life. Youth brings emotions to everything, especially music. Wilco was there for me in a transitional time, and it was something I shared with my close friends at the time. As I moved away from that world physically and emotionally, there was no way another Wilco record could ever mean what it once did. Once you hit 30, a part of your soul dies. You start to feel less, which is both a blessing and a curse. Now that I am pushing fifty I can hear this album and really dig it.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

A Little Mini-period

So when I was putting this series together, I had a hard time periodizing the records from Wilco's current lineup. I realized after consultation with a friend that the their records fit into three periods, but one of those periods is really short and I didn't feel like inflicting three separate posts on you. SO: I will put two albums together as a kind of middle bridge to Wilco's last period, a caesura if you will. What's a caesura? It's a really fancy word I heard a pompous British academic use at a conference once. Look it up, I know I had to.

Star Wars, 2015

When Wilco released this one digitally I got excited and confused in equal measure. What the hell is going on with that title? Why is it so short?  I was glad to be getting new music after a long four year hiatus at least. (I was unaware of Jeff Tweedy's personal challenges at the time, which would have made me understand things better.) 

When I heard the wild guitar sound at the start I got interested. Remember, in the ensuing years I had become a fan of Zappa and Beefheart and prog and I was ready for it to get weird. This album feels unmoored, a trip into space, both inner and outer. When the album hits "Random Name Generator" there's killer riffs, too. That song is the one I keep going back to the most. 

While your mileage may vary with Star Wars, it does represent an admirable quest for change and new directions. So many musical artists get stuck in a rut, but so far Wilco has refused to merely repeat its past. The Whole Love could've provided an easy template for the band's future work, but Tweedy and gang refused to stick to it, to their credit. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

Schmilco, 2016

I group this album together with Star Wars because they were recorded at the same sessions at Wilco's studio in Chicago. Both albums also feel like detours and digressions from the main road meant to explore different directions without forging a brand new path. While Star Wars is not one of my favorite albums of Wilco's, it revived the interest I had been losing. For that reason I was on top of Schmilco when it came out as if I was back in 2004 again. 

I noticed right away that things were much more personal and stripped-down. The album art implies this is Tweedy exposing his pain to make music his kids can groove to, and maybe it is. The tone is hushed and stripped down, the electric guitars here more for texture than pyrotechnics. Some of the songs don't quite take off, but I consider this one more of a vibes record. It's not exceptional, but it's still worth listening to. "Cry All Day" and "We Aren't the World (Safety Girl)" really grabbed me on this listen. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

After three albums of the new lineup they hit their mark with The Whole Love. After that, they spent some time on the backroads. As we will see in the last installment, Wilco will leave this time of experimentation by boldly shooting off into new directions. 

The Whole Wilco Part Two: The Only Band That Matters

Historically few rock bands underwent a transformation like Wilco's. Starting with Summerteeth they fully moved on from their early sound and entered a realm of daring experimentation. Their fight with their record company made them a cause celebre all while the group was torn apart by personal and creative tension. Out of this maelstrom emerged some of my favorite music ever. 

Now might be the time to explain my "rivers theory" of rock music. The fertile valley of rock music, like Mesopotamia, lies between two mighty rivers. The first river has its sources in the older forms of American music: blues, country, R&B, jazz, and folk. Lots of music floats on this river, including the whole classic rock tradition. The second river has its origins in the Velvet Underground (this is not an exaggeration) and is the river of punk, new wave, and "modern rock." When Wilco began they were very much in the first river, but in this era of the late 90s and early 2000s, they jumped over into the second river (although they had plenty of traces of it already.) Lots of bands change their sound, but they almost never jump rivers. That's part of what made this music so thrilling. 

Summerteeth, 1999

This is the only Wilco album I did not listen to at the time of release. I had really liked Being There, but at this time I was fully immersed in the second river of rock, and had little time for the first. I had no clue that Wilco had migrated over with me. I picked it up after a year of obsessively listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and was immediately struck by its uniqueness in the band's oeuvre. More than any other, this is Jay Bennett's record. It turned out that the ass-kicking guitar player also knew his way around a mellotron. (At the time I had a joke based on the SNL "more cowbell" bit where I imagined Bennett in the studio yelling "I have a fever, and the only prescription is more mellotron!) 

I also must admit, this album scared me a bit. "Via Chicago" and "She's A Jar" reference domestic violence in disturbing ways. Those songs and "How to Fight Loneliness" and others were much too accurate evocations of deep depression, something I was fighting at the time. I would save this album for my moments of depression when I could cope by wallowing deeper. I have a clear memory of a really bad day walking under a gray Midwestern sky in winter, listening to "She's a Jar" and feeling like I wasn't alone. 

Listening to it again today I was reminded that there are also plenty of upbeat songs, like "Candyfloss" and "I'm Always in Love." In a subversive mood the album begins with "I Can't Stand It," which melds gorgeously bright pop melodies and sheen with lyrics of existential despair ("No love is random as God's love," "Your prayers will never be answered again," etc.) This song and others have Beach Boys Pet Sounds touches. Wilco was now swimming in rock's second river, but also sidetracking into the tributary of pure pop music. 

Because I first heard this album after I had heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and after Jay Bennett left the band, it always makes me wonder what the band would've sounded like had he stayed. Now is maybe the time to mention that I had a chance to meet and have dinner with Jay Bennett. He was the close friend and musical collaborator of one of my friends and was living in the same area at the time. I must admit I was a bit star struck to be in the same room as him. but he was very friendly with me. Not only that, he was hilarious and a great storyteller. I still remember the tale he told me of Ian McLagen trying to get his organ back from Rod Stewart. I could see how someone with such a dominating presence might be seen as a threat if he joined a band with a different leader. In any case, I am sad that he is gone. 

This record still takes my breath away, I just wish it was a little bit shorter.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, 2002

This is less an album than a totem of my existence as a human being on this planet. That's not a florid exaggeration, it's how much this record means to me. I put it on like I would put on an old sweater. Every note is lodged in my memory and every one speaks to me. 

What's strange is that I was intimately familiar with it already before its official release. The music press kept reporting on how Warner Brothers, Wilco's label, refused to release it for not being mainstream enough. After that, the band put their album out online, quite a new thing to do in 2001. A friend burned it onto a CD (remember doing that?) and I bought the official release the minute it hit the stores out of solidarity with the band giving the corporate music biz the middle finger. Even if the music had not been as great as it was, it was still thrilling to be part of what felt like a rebellion against the overwhelming trend of cultural homogenization. 

From the first bars things are different, and special. Original drummer Ken Coomer had been pushed out for Glenn Kotche, whose innovative rhythm patterns immediately make themselves known. They let you know that this is going to be an experimential album, but "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" also lets you know that this isn't just self-indulgent noodling, there are SONGS here. The drums, droning sounds, and opening lyrics "I am an Americian aquarium drinker/ I assassin down the avenue" combine to form one of the most striking and confident albums openings ever. 

YHF's context matters, too. While the songs were written and recorded before 9/11, the vibe and lyrics spoke to me about the country's situation, especially "Jesus Etc" and "Ashes of American Flags." They got at my feelings of melancholy, confusion, and anxiety in that rotten, awful time. Much like Radiohead's early 2000s records, Wilco had already put their finger on a growing sense of dread about the modern world that the post 9/11 environment would confirm.

But it's not all sad dirges, either. "War on War" has a melancholy cast, but its up-tempo admonition that "You've got to learn how to die/ If you want to be alive" became a kind of personal mantra at this time. I emerged through a pretty dark tunnel of depression between YHF and A Ghost Is Born, and I came to the realization that I really and truly wanted to embrace life, but always with the knowledge it was going to end someday. 

Maybe this album wasn't part of your voyage of personal discovery, but it was for me. Plus, "Heavy Metal Drummer" is the best song ever written about nostalgia. 

Rating: Five Tweedys

A Ghost is Born, 2004

As much as I love Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, sometimes I wonder if I like Ghost even more. From a personnel standpoint, it's a strange record. Jay Bennett is gone, Mikael Jorgensen is in, but Pat Sansone and Nels Cline were not part of the recording. I saw that expanded lineup live the summer this album came out, and it seemed to make Ghost a kind of artifact.

The Krautrock touches via producer Jim O'Rourke are even more pronounced here. I can hear the ghosts of Can and Neu!, especially on "Spiders, Kidsmoke" and "Muzzle of Bees." Those songs, along with "Hummingbird" and "Handshake Drugs" make for a formidable core to this album. Around this solid center there are diversions, like the Neil Young guitar of "At Least That's What You Said" and the drone noise experiment that closes out "Less Than You Think." When the straightforward, anthemic "Late Greats" emerges from the tinny feedback to end the album it's a bit of a shock, albeit a pleasant one. This song, about the great musicians who never make it big, always felt like a bit of a self-commentary. Was this album Wilco's embrace of obscurity? After all, their biggest selling record was one rejected by the label for being too obscure. 

This album also came out right around the time Jeff Tweedy went to rehab. Some songs, like "Hell is Chrome" and "Company in My Back" explore what Neil Young termed a "bad fog of loneliness" in the raw way of Summerteeth. Then again, "Company in My Back" rolls into the exuberant "I'm a Wheel," and "Handshake Drugs" has always radiated a vibe of contentedness to me. Tweedy's line delivery of "If I ever was myself I wasn't that night" is still one of my favorites. 

On the eve of the album's release I wondered if Wilco could sustain its artistic high after Bennett's departure. Turns out they could, and even explore new horizons in the process. 

Rating: Five Tweedys

Kicking Television, 2005

Live its musical ancestors, Wilco was required by the law of rock to release of double live album at some point. They indulged us with some live shows in their native Chicago. It would also be the first album featuring Pat Sansone and Nels Cline and first after Leroy Bach's departure. A Ghost Is Born would be the one Wilco album since AM without a hotshot guitarist in the band. 

I had seen this lineup live in Milwaukee in the summer of 2004, so this album was not much of a revelation to me. That live show really blew me away, and I could see right away the difference Cline's playing brought to the table. I'm periodizing this album with Wilco's trinity of breakthrough records because it's a sort of victory lap, and those songs constitute the bulk of the setlist. 

It's an objectively good album, but I know in my heart I've seen Wilco put on live shows more electrifying than what's here. I had already seen the new lineup before this one came out, so that was not a selling point. Nevertheless, it's worth a listen if you haven't had to privilege to see Wilco in the flesh. 

Rating: Five Tweedys

The Whole Wilco Part One: Out of the Ashes

[Editor's Note: I have enjoyed writing these series where I listen to a legacy artist's music album by album and write about them. The readers I care about the most (my friends who for some reason tolerate me) are into them too and so I will keep writing them!]

So far in my catalog-spanning collection of series on different music artists I have been sticking to the Boomers: Dylan, Springsteen, and McCartney. I wasn't going to write another one for awhile, but Wilco is coming to town and I want to see them again. That got me in the mood to relisten to their catalog. There are only a couple of other bands that have ever meant as much to me personally, and since I was there at the start of their career (unlike the other artists I've covered), this will also be an exercise memoir/shameless autobiography. Also, unlike those other series, I have listened to all of their albums already, many many times. This will be less a voyage of discovery and more a look into what one of my favorite acts means to me and why. I know that as a white, educated Gen X dad from the Midwest I am pretty much a walking stereotype when it comes to Wilco fandom, but I really think it's about more than that. 

Also, a quick note: I will only be covering albums with the Wilco name on them. I am planning a couple of appendices, one on Uncle Tupelo, the other consisting of solo and side projects. My reasons are less than scientific; I just wanna hear all of their main records before I see the show and I've only got a week!

Alright, on with the show.

A.M., 1995

Before there was Wilco, there was Uncle Tupelo. I became a fan right at the end when I picked up Anondyne after reading an article about them in Request magazine. Here were a bunch of guys from the small town Midwest who loved both punk and roots music and had decidedly progressive politics. I knew right away that these were my people. I played Anondyne to death, and to this day it takes me right back to the spring of 1994 and my last weeks of high school. 

When Uncle Tupelo broke up and Wilco emerged with Jeff Tweedy and Son Volt under Jay Farrar, the comparisons were inevitable. I bought this album and Son Volt's Trace on the same visit to the record store (in this case a Best Buy in Omaha), and immediately preferred the Son Volt record. I had liked Farrar's songs in Uncle Tupelo better, and still to this day "Tear Stained Eye" from Trace is one of my pantheon songs. 

Once I stopped comparing those two records, and my Wilco fandom deepened with later releases, I returned to A.M. and realized I had missed a lot. It's more uneven than the records that follow, but the gems are truly glittering. "Casino Queen" is a barnstorming, foot-stomping rocker that I had the pleasure of hearing live back in the early 2000s. "Box Full of Letters" shows off Tweedy's punky roots with some gleefully crunchy guitars. "Passenger Side" hits on a traditional country theme (drunk driving) with both humor and melancholy. (When grad school friends get together and play guitars and sing it always gets featured.) There are some lovely ballads too, like John Stirrat's "Just That Simple" and Tweedy's "Blue Eyed Soul." Admittedly, there are also clunkers like "I Thought I Held You." 

Listening to this album in 1995 I figured that Wilco were going to be one of many bands in the alt-country scene, carrying on where Uncle Tupelo left off. At the time my music tastes were starting to move away from roots more into the Bowie-Velvets-punk side and I put the CD aside after a few initial listens, unaware of what was coming next. After their next record no one would be making Son Volt comparisons ever again. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

Being There, 1996

I hadn't given Wilco much thought but bought this CD after 1. seeing the video for "Outtasite (Outta Mind)" and 2. noticing that it sold at a discount because it was a double album priced as a single. I know I sound like Grandpa Simpson right now, but in those pre-streaming days these were real considerations. 

The first seven songs on this album really throw down the gauntlet and announce that the band has grown a lot since their debut. I noticed right away with "Misunderstood" that Wilco's music still had rooty vibes, but was also sounding more experimental. "Far Far Away" gets more country, but has similar themes of small town isolation. In my 20s and 30s when I moved around a lot I would listen to this song as a newcomer in a strange town and feel a little comfort. All of a sudden from this relaxed, contemplative vibe we get two stone cold rockers, "Monday" and the aforementioned "Outtasite (Outta Mind.)" "Monday" sounds like a lost track from early Skynyrd (a big compliment in my book) and "Outtasite" brings in the punky feel of Uncle Tupelo's loudest bangers. After that we get a detour back to the country, and a good one, in "Forget the Flowers." Then comes "Red Eyed and Blue" backed with "I Got You," long a mainstay of the band's live shows and probably the highlight the first time I saw them back in 2002. The first song starts mellow, a rumination ont the rock and roll life that seems to ask if all of the effort and pain is worth it. (Yes, this is a Gen X band in the 90s, folks!) After that laconic reflection comes the stomping of "I Got You," as the band has decided that, nope, getting to rock is worth it! Awake, Lazarus!

The songs that close out the first disc aren't as thrilling, but they are still good. It's important to remember that this album was first envisioned and released as a double, with each disc having a different feel. For the longest time, I listened a lot to the first disc, and far less to the second. At a party in grad school a friend put the second disc on, saying it was his favorite, and I started listening to it differently after. (I will avoid the old man rant about how physical media allows us these moments of discovery.) 

"Sunken Treasure" starts things off on a somber note similar to "Misunderstood" and like it a comment on being "out of tune" with the world. "Kingpin" is a hand-clapping, foot-stomping country trash classic, and one of the rare rockers on the second disc. If the first disc is the interstate, this one is more the backroads. It ends with "Dreamer of My Dreams," a raucous hoedown but also the last full-on country fried song the band would put out under their own name for twenty-five years. 

Although the grunge explosion had happened, by 1996 it was fading and rock music's place in the pop music scene was well on its road to decline. I sometimes listen to this album as the last truly great classic rock record. As "I Got You" reminds us, it was the end of the century.

Rating: Five Tweedys

Mermaid Avenue, 1998 (with Billy Bragg)

I wasn't sure whether to include the Mermaid Avenue albums in this series or not, but I am because they are a kind of swan song for Wilco as a band that could be described as "alt-country." In case you don't know, on these albums Wilco partnered with Brit singer Billy Bragg to craft versions of unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs. In many respects it was a throwback to Uncle Tupelo and Jay Farrar's interest in the politics of the Popular Front era. The combination of Bragg, Wilco, and these Woody lyrics works incredibly well, which made this record a critical darling of the time. "California Stars" became a mainstay of Wilco's live shows and "I Guess I Planted" and "Way Down Yonder in a Minor Key" have become big favorites for me. The irony with this album is that artists often put out covers albums to familiarize themselves with the music that influenced them. In this case Wilco is giving it the old country try one more time before taking on far different musical adventures. 

Rating: Four and a Half Tweedys

Mermaid Avenue Volume 2, 2000 (with Billy Bragg)

This album comes chronologically after Summerteeth, but it was recorded at the time of the first effort with Billy Bragg and fits this era of Wilco's development. (Sometimes the proper chronology is not a literal one when it comes to writing history!) It feels more like a helping of leftovers, but anyone who's eaten their Thanksgiving meal over and over again for a few days after knows that leftovers can be pretty damn good. There are not as many classics here, but I really enjoy "Airline to Heaven." 

Of course, in between the first and second of these albums with Bragg, Wilco took a radical turn. More on that in my next installment.

Rating: Three and a half Tweedys