TheAgitator.com
Excuse Me If I’m Trying To Break Your Heart
Thursday, October 17th, 2002Joanne McNeil went to the Wilco show in D.C. and wasn’t all that impressed. I actually had tickets (and I too was excited about seeing the Shins), but, believe it or not, my friend who bought them and I actually forgot what night the concert was on. I’ll have to excerpt from Joanne, as she uses blogging software unfriendly to permalinks:
Last night I went to see Wilco — correction, I went to see The Shins, who unbenownst to me had cancelled their appearance as the opening act — and it was pretty boring. Not since I was dragged to a “Sex and the City” party over the summer had I been crowded by less desirable company.Wilco’s good but not a terribly inventive lo-fi band like the Kingsbury Manx is, or Luna was before they had a video on VH-1. Their fanbase appropriately reflects this: mostly passionless yuppies who want all the hip without the edge.
It’s hard to formulate an opinion on people like that because by definition they are vapid. They like things that are good, like Wilco and Nick Hornby; but not the kinds of things that are great.
Hmm. I guess I’ll have to confess to being a “good, not great” consumer of music. I’m a longtime Wilco fan, though I do think the band’s two best albums were the Mermaid Avenue collaborations, where they and Billy Bragg set old Woody Guthrie lyrics to new music. Jeff Tweedy has also done some great stuff with the Jayhawks and with Golden Smog.
Perhaps I’ll better endear myself to Joanne if I add that in the Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown vs. Jeff Tweedy/Wilco debate, I’ve always stood firmly and proudly in the Ryan Adams camp.
Speaking of Adams, a friend sends this disturbing item from a show he did recently in Nashville.
Yikes. Okay, so maybe he overreacted a little. But can you blame him? It’s gotta’ be frustrating to be a talented songwriter and singer attempting to forge a solo career — and all the while never quite escaping the fact that your name is but one letter away from “Everything I Do, I Do It For You.”
I don’t understand your hostility towards permalink-free blogger applications. Every web-browser has “Find Item” prominantly on the toolbar (Opera even has it on the interface.)
True concern for one’s readers’ time and peace of mind, might manifest in the form of targeted (target=_blank) links
Geez, Jo, what’s with the indier-than-thou kick… anyone who doesn’t share your “great” musical taste is, ipso facto, “vapid”?
Not everyone’s famliar with the “find item” feature.
It’s also just much easier to reference and link to an item when you’re confident a click will take readers directly to it. Merely clears up any potential confusion.
On this site, for example, there are probably a few dozen posts on the front page — many of them about the same topic. I’m guessing that if you referenced one of them and merely linked to my home page, your readers would be a little confused about which item you were citing.
You don’t *have* to install permalinks. I’m just saying it’s makes things easier for people who might cite your posts — and it makes them more likely to do so.
If you aren’t much interested in links and traffic and such (and that’s a perfectly acceptable opinion to have), then there’s no problem.
Of course that’s exactly my view, Julian, only written much more succinctly.
One can tell something about a band from its fanbase. It may not be deliberate, but it’s not arbitrary either (ie I can safely surmise Wilford Brimley doesn’t listen to Christina Augilera.) So maybe boring people and boring music go together like peanut butter and jelly? And maybe the rest of us try for something better?
As for Ryan Adams, I think you’d get a kick out of this, Radley: (scroll down)
http://www.washcp.com/indc/candy/candy.html
vapid? without edge? I cannot think of a single band that challenges the listener more with each new record. I’ll admit, the band’s live show is not what it once was since the departure of Jay Bennett, but I suspect that they will eventually add a new guitarist and go back to full-out rocking.
If Joanne really believes them to be without edge, I suggest she check out the I am trying to break your heart documentry. Apart from the whole thing about the record label dropping them because they would not change a record the company found to be not commercial enough, the first 1/3 of the movie shows what a truly creative band they are. Writing songs only to tear them apart and reconstruct them in an entirely new way.
Well, I’m done defending a band the most serious music listern realize is one of the best rock bands in America today. You know Joanne, just because a band has a video on Mtv does not mean they are boring, and just because no one has heard of them does not mean they are good. Keep your Shins and Kingsbury Manx, I’ll take Wilco.
I’ll admit that I liked the movie more than the new CD by Wilco– call it a matter or principle– I like what they are trying to stand for, but the sound isn’t my favorite. Radley is right about the collaboration with Billy Bragg and the Jayhawks– stellar, their best. I just don’t want them to go the way of Phish– a little too much of the same old same old.
As for the fan base, well, some Wilco fans are better than others. This is true for all bands and it surpised me that the Shins were touring with Wilco because I would expect their fan base to be very different. In the end, the music is what matters.
Like almost any argument I’ve ever heard about music this is a mess. I can’t totally disagree with Joanne because she’s gotten me into more good music than I can shake a stick at, (especially The Shins - nine months and I’m still listening to that album obsessively) but your language is probably much stronger than what I would use to describe anyone’s taste. (vapid?)
I think I have to mostly agree with Alina - I don’t really care about fanbases; good music for me is either what makes me want to get my groove on, or more importantly gives me goosebumps in the middle of the night.
Ryan Adams is an asshole. He should learn to take a joke. Gold sucked. Jeff Tweedy has done more for contemporary music and more for Ryan Adams than Adams has done for anybody or anything ever. Heartbreaker was a masterpiece. The rest has been hype — including Pneumonia which was fucking awful. But he does look good in those Gap ads.
Whoa, Sam!
I can’t let that stand. Gold was outstanding. You didn’t hear the early Dylan/Morrison/Elton John/Small Faces in those cuts? New York, New York was a pre-9/11 anthem. La Cienega Just Smiled I could hear on “repeat” for nights on end. Rescue Blues has V.M. written all over it. Nobody Girl, Harder Now That It’s Over, When the Stars Go Blue, Touch, Feel & Love?
Gold’s stocked with gems.
I like Pnuemonia, too. Jacksonville Skyline and Listen to the Rain in particular. And, probably not surprisingly, Heartbreaker is my least favorite R.A. LP.
And if you start dogging “Stranger’s Almanac,” I’m going to have to permanently ban your IP address from the Comments section.
Kidding.
Sort of.
Radley, you hit on the only real problem I have with Adams. He wears his influences on his sleeve. the guitar on “To Be Young” sound like it was sampled straight from Highway 61 Revisited. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Dylan and I even love the Adams song, but when choosing up sides - if I have to - I am going to go with guy who pushes the envelope a little further, Tweedy, as opposed to the guy who writes kick-ass songs under the same formula.
We’ve had this discussion before though.
An Open Letter to Joanne McNeil:
I think Wilco takes a particular band out on the road with them that they like to listen to, as opposed to a band the record company is trying to push. I’ve seen some incredible, virtually unknown bands open for them this year (The Boas and Preston School of Industry come to mind, and a band that I absolutely couldn’t stand, Grand Ulena), and I thought it was great that Wilco wants to expand their fans’ musical horizons. If The Shins are as good as Joanne McNeil says they are, and if liking The Shins makes you ‘cool’ and ‘with it’, then wouldn’t it stand to reason that since Tweedy and Wilco invited them to open, Wilco is, in fact, cool and with it?
C’mon, Joanne, Tweedy has the same taste in musicans you, apparently; how can you call him and his fans “uncool” or “vapid”? There are hundreds of music acts every year that are left swinging in the winds of obscurity. Some of those bands might deserve even less attention than they aren’t getting already (Grand Ulena, in my case, comes to mind). You, Joanne, are under the misconception that once a band has some sort of following, they are no longer worth listening to; I say, if they are talented, they deserve a following. If they’re not talented, let Carson Daley shill for them. But determining that a band has no edge because other people have heard of them and (gasp) actually appreciate their music makes you sound like a narrow-minded idiot. Keep on being a champion for obscure music that only you and your indie-snob friend know about, Joanne (I’m assuming that you’re so cool that you only let one person at a time bask in your glory)… Meanwhile, me and the rest of the beige people you disdain so much will go on listening to Wilco and reading Nick Hornby, and living our sad little lives, regretting the fact that we can’t be within the inner circle of cool.
Bryan, really, since when is wearing your heart on your sleeve a bad thing for a musician? How old are you? And what are you afraid of? If you want some good technical music, you can’t beat King Crimson. But look, when you purchase a Ryan Adams album, expect some heart.
I think you misunderstood my post Alina. I never said the problem with Ryan Adams is that he wears his heart on his sleeve. I said he wears his influences on his sleeve.
As I explained, alot of his songs sound a lot like other bands who he obviously likes. It does not mean that they are bad songs or that I dislike them, hell Jeff Tweedy was even guilty of the same crime back around the time of Being There (so much so that he recorded the tonge in cheek “Someone Else’s Song” about how everything has been done before).
My only point was that I think Tweedy and the rest of Wilco have progressed past the point of writing songs that sound “in the vain” of someone else. Listen to Summerteeth and especially Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and you will notice, whether you like those records or not, they don’t sound like anything else. I don’t think the same can be said for Adams.
I’m not sure what my age has to do with any of this discussion or for that matter, that I ever implied I was afraid of something. Radley choose the Adams camp and I made my pitch for the Tweedy one. I’m not sure the two need to be forced into a steel-cage grudge match, but if the fight’s going on, I’m going to stick up for my guy.
For the record, I love bands and artist who wear their hearts on their sleeve. Bight Eyes is one of best things I have heard in a long time and I think it is nearly impossible to listen to that guy with out wanting to break down and cry. Spirtualized is another I love that extremely emotionally charged. As for technical playing I’ve been trying for months to get Radley to pick up a Built to Spill CD, and just saw Doug Martsch solo last week. I think he does a great job of mixing technical guitar skill with some “heart.”
Well, now I feel like I’ve put up some kinda music resume so I’m going to stop. I’m really not trying to band name drop here. I’ll leave that to Joanne. Hopefully, though, this will clear up an obvious misunderstand that we had on the nature of my post.
Let’s see. Jeff Tweedy always had a partner in crime for crafting tunes:
Jay Farrar, Jay Bennett, Jim O’Rourke.
Is it me or does Jeff Tweedy always needs a partner??? So with that, I wonder how long his collaboration with Jim O’Rourke is going to last.
Oh and I strongly believe that Leroy Bach should leave the band for his own good; he has way too much talent.
Also, I think Ryan Adams is a joke. He’s less of a rocker and more of a Britney Spears. Moreover, anybody who uses the same song writing technique as Fred Durst should focus on being entertainers, not a musician. His albums are basically recordings of a “Variety Show”. His music forces you to go the mall to buy the latest “vintage” wear and construction boots.
Oh and as for Grand Ulena. Let’s face it. They’re at least making attempts to take steps forward from where Can and Silver Apples left off. Props to them.
hot lesbian “We don’t have to take this shit off assholes like him.”
free lesbian porn xxx It felt absolutely divine.
lesbian web xxx And I’ll admit my heart jumped a little in excitement when I found out it was him.
lesbian licking nipples top A long thought was cut short by Janelle’s realization about what could happen.
lesbian picture post site x For a moment Janelle was stunned, until Melissa laughed and ran into the kitchen.
viagra online ViaT8898111-01-01-22