wilco

not sure about 'california stars' being the most well-known thing, but i do agree it's a definite catalogue highlight.

that's an interesting thought though: what will be wilco's legacy tune?

("california stars" the current #2 on their spotify most-played; "jesus, etc." in the top spot by quite a ways)

Smooth jazz drummer

*percussionist

I think when Bob Seger covered this it kinda cemented it as a standard. Tune-wise it's a very Seger song - seemed inevitable that he'd hit it up at some point. Or maybe Seger has a way of making every song he covers (Busload of Faith, etc.) sound like a Seger song.

lol bob seger sux

Like a fuckin’ rock

"California Stars" walked so "Wagon Wheel" could run.

In all seriousness, "California Stars" was the song that got me into Wilco, a band I was aware of, but hadn't actually heard yet. I heard it one afternoon after school on our local Pacifica station, made sure I heard the DJ announce it, and then put Mermaid Avenue on my Xmas list, which Santa delivered. A few months later, Summerteeth dropped, which I picked up week of release (at Borders!) and then worked backwards.

The thing that nobody talks about but really makes the Mermaid Ave. take of "California Stars" work is the absolutely Gorgeous steel part by Corey Harris. I'd bet that's where a lot of people my age (almost 40) fell in love with steel guitar.

lol bob seger sux

maybe your parents like Bob Seger?

I’ve been digging “she don’t have to see you” though the chorus makes no sense
Golden smog stuff is fun

two

The thing that nobody talks about but really makes the Mermaid Ave. take of "California Stars" work is the absolutely Gorgeous steel part by Corey Harris. I'd bet that's where a lot of people my age (almost 40) fell in love with steel guitar.

― Precious, Grace, Hill & Beard LTD. (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, January 8, 2022 2:47 PM

this is definitely in line with things for me.

also, maybe i just have a very small attention span but i always felt like "california stars" was an outlier in the mermaid ave stuff - because it's so much better.

yeah can’t lie I wasn’t bowled over by either disc, outside maybe 3-4 tunes

still a cool project tho

Bill Callahan looks real comfortable in that clip, lol

lol he sure does

and the "flamenco dancer"!

had a moment with “summer teeth” the song recently. always had a soft spot for their sentimental country-ish ones

there's something incredibly depressing about that austin city limits clip, haha! i think it might be the looming shadow of bill callahan just standing on the side while everyone does little dances and claps

"California Stars" has a special place in my heart as the song that feels like the purest possible distillation of loss and grief, so much so that listening to it feels cathartic, like this cleansing tide of world-sorrow washes through me every time I hear it.

It's partly the lyrics: that sense of loss and nostalgia for an unreachable past, that sense of wanting desperately to go home, is already quite beautiful and moving. But then the Wilco interpretation brings something else to it, I think: the perspective of someone who knows that Woody Guthrie died of a horrible protracted illness in a hospital a long way from California, and so it becomes not just a song by Woody Guthrie but also, and in parallel, a song of grief for Woody Guthrie and the way his life ended. And the longing in the lyrics and the sense of grief and compassion in the music blend together into a song that I find almost too painful to listen to.

"California Stars" has a special place in my heart as the song that feels like the purest possible distillation of loss and grief...I find almost too painful to listen to.

This is how I feel about "Remember the Mountain Bed".

I believe the flamenco dancer is Robert Rodriguez's sister Patricia Vonne, who was singing backup with Alejandro Escovedo during his set and who has been putting out Flamenco-y Spanish Rock & Rockabilly records for like 20 years now.

And the longing in the lyrics and the sense of grief and compassion in the music blend together into a song that I find almost too painful to listen to.

― Lily Dale, Sunday, January 9, 2022 12:18 PM

this is an interesting thought and appropriate for this thread: i remember an interview that jeff tweedy did in the ghost is born/kicking television era where he voiced a similar sentiment. he talked about how there were records and performances that he loved so much that it became almost painful for him to listen to them because they resonated so deeply. i wish i could remember what publication it was for, but i remember his use of (a variation on) the phrase "hitting too close for comfort" changed my mind about what he was trying to convey. i remember reading the conversation and thinking, up until he said that, "what a dork, if you like the music, jam it!" idk what it was about him putting it that way, but it immediately changed my mind because i got it.

anyway, yes i totally get that vibe from "california stars." i always just assumed that the narrator has never actually seen the stars from california.

California Starts

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/cancun-concerts-wilco-dmb-omicron-1281187/

Ha, yeah, that's been a problem for bands doing these Mexico event festivals. Dead & Co's turned into an absolute shitshow. They wouldn't offer refunds for the longest time but, finally, as Omicron cases climbed they relented and offered refunds. Then about a week before the festival, Billy Kreutzmann pulled out for health reasons (he really had trouble at the end of their last tour, so it wasn't terribly surprising). Then a couple days before the festival, John Mayer came up positive for Covid and two days later his replacement also came up positive. They ended up finally canceling the whole thing the day before it was supposed to start, but after a lot of people had already flown down to Mexico. There were rumors of people who showed up to check in to their hotel and told they couldn't, since it was a package deal and the cancellation also impacted the lodging. Apparently they ended up making it right, a little, by honoring the stays of those who had traveled and refunding completely for the others. Don't know why they didn't just pull the plug earlier.

(forgive me if that's all covered later in that article, but I hit a paywall)

Who is John mayers replacement ?

Well, just for the festival it was going to be Tom Hamilton from Joe Russo's Almost Dead.

they should revive jerry's corpse for John M.'s replacement and blow minds

They should replace him with smooth jazz sax man Najee. I saw Prince once, in a small club, and they were doing a smoking version of I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man, and when it came to the solo Prince goes "Ladies and gentlemen ... Najee."

And Najee killed....

... te song.

Najee was a big reason why I skipped out on seeing Prince for so long even though I had become a huge fan. That guy just blows. (Figuratively. And literally I guess.)

Unless it's to a city where I already have friends or family I want to see, I would never travel for a concert much less a festival. Granted I live in a major city so I have the luxury of waiting for a tour to come through, but I've been burned for similar reasons in the past with traveling.

re:that RS article, it sucks when an event like that doesnt offer a full refund or any flexibility, but tbh i cant find a ton of sympathy for people who booked something like that and didn't realize it was a gamble, even pre-omicron. and then i got to this:Catching a mild case now and getting a doctor’s note stating he recovered and is no longer infectious is, he claims, the most sure-fire way to guarantee he can go to Mexico and come back freely [...] "I’m hoping to get this disease to avoid getting stuck in a foreign county or I lose thousands of dollars[...] plus if we get sick I don’t want to be stuck at a hospital in Latin America." a father who hopes to intentionally catch covid so that he can go see wilco in cancun without taking extra time off work, seems like a very cool guy, i certainly hope he doesnt get brutally dragged on twitter about this.

Replacing Mayer (or even Jerry for that matter) with a non white noodley guitar guy is a great idea. Maybe it wouldn’t fly with the heads tho

Wait are you saying you want that person to be of the non-white but still noodley variety? Or non-white and non-noodley? IMO you need the noodles.

xpost - I don't think the heads would have an issue with it at all, they embraced Oteil Burbridge replacing Phil Lesh enthusiastically enough.

Hiram Bullock hologram

yeah i like to razz deadheads but i really don't think they would have a problem with a non-white killer guitar player

They should replace him with Buckethead.

Bucketdead and Co.
Would listen

Grateful for this revive, I had never heard "California Stars"... glad to have learned of it!

Despite the gentle weirdness of that ACL clip, I think I even prefer that take to the one on the album... the song works great as a sing-along.

I read Tweedy's autobiography over the weekend and liked it very much, sort of despite myself. By way of an explanation, I've always thought Tweedy has had to fight against a perceived notion of being an everyman, someone who, without closer examination, seems to be one of those monolithic musicians who are a fixture by default - the de facto white guy with a guitar for a generation.

And the first few chapters are a perfect illustration: workmanlike, unfussy - telling the American rockstar origin story we've all heard a hundred times. I'm tempted to say that section was Tweedy leaning into his (lack of) status, deliberately painting an ordinary background as if to say 'yes, it's all true'. But as the book opens out, the gentle (ordinary) wisdom that suffuses his music slowly bleeds through the prose and it becomes a kind of celebration of the quotidian. Not in the Springsteen register - bombastic, sentimental, semi-deifying - but droller, resigned, making a virtue of keeping going and how he's worked his arse off to stay where he is.

Unreliable narrator caveats aside, he seems honest about the Tupelo stuff; it's not Lanegan, but he's candid about his addictive personality and where it's led him. Some of the score-settling is kind of ugly, inevitable but ugly (particular score-settling with Jay Bennett, a dead guy).

I guess it's kind of weird that he's become the songwriting self-help guy over the last few years but the sections of the book where he discusses his song and lyric writing processes are fascinating. Fwiw, I think he's a brilliant (and terminally underrated) lyricist. I'm off to steal Emily Dickinson verbs. For the next 5 days at least, I'll feel like I can write again.

You should read his follow-up book How to Write One Song, it's full of exercises to stimulate lyrical inspiration.

Self xp - christ, that reads like a man discovering what has been up-front and centre with Wilco for about 20 years. Worse, it reads as an apologia for a shy conservative. Eck.

Moments when you feel you're going mad (and possibly the last to know. Again.): when you play Star Wars on Spotify, the time bar is a lightsaber.

“Charlie’s fixin’ his band with the left-arm tan”
Jeff’s note to self to get a better drummer

hmm, I thought it was "van?"

Doh

Or is it “fixin’ Japan”

he's fixing his van, which he drives with the window down and his left arm hanging out ... getting tan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhmMb5jKItY

new album cousin out sep 29

i guess this is supposed to be the 'experimental' album they were working on around the same time as cruel country? i don't really hear that in the single, it's pretty restrained

produced by cate le bon? huh

Has the fandom affectionately nicknamed this album “Cos” yet

Pretty great cover image.