I have been a Wilco fan for many years. I could say I have been a fan since they began. As I mentioned in 2019 Being There is their best. In 2021 I have to say this, it's the album that once in a while an album flips with Being There as their best. It's too close to call but Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is so very close to that top spot. I have to say seeing Wilco over twenty-five times and the songs off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are pulled off with perfection. You don't me to tell you about the mystique about this album and the controversy and the story with their record label. You can go to Wiki for that. My curiosity is why the record label did not seem happy with this album? It's odd I give you that, but it's Wilco. If you did not see that coming then you just gave YHF a casual listen.
When this started streaming a week after 9/11 I had to get it. I even asked my tech savvy friends to see if they can rip the stream of the album for me. No one could help me, but I had this going for me. I could come back from class (I was back at school at the time) and turn on my computer and listen again and again. I would tell my friends to go stream this awesome album. I would bug my radio station colleagues that if anything came by the station that has Wilco on it to hand over to me. Nothing came and I had to wait and wait.
Wilco in my book back then could do no wrong. They already made me love them more with
Being There an album of a right and left punch that knocked you out in the first round. They had so much creativity that they made it a double album in tribute to all the other great double albums in Rock Music. Two come to mind
Exile on Main Street by the Stones and
Blonde on Blonde by Dylan. Some of my personal favorites.
It was after Being There they put out two other albums one with Billy Bragg a tribute to Woody Guthrie and one on their own called Summerteeth. Both great albums but I was still spinning on Being There. They were getting a little experimental and I was excited to see if they would continue that with future albums. The eventual two albums they did with Billy Bragg they did not explore those ideas. When it came to Summerteeth, they did a little but not as much as Being There had. So while waiting for YHF I needed to hear something.
Then a breakthrough by accident happen. While waiting for Wilco I stumbled upon other music that I wanted to hear. After about a week of files burned to countless CD-R's Wilco appeared on this guys server. As I grabbed all I could Wilco related the
YHF files came in one by one. I was doing an afternoon radio show when a friend came to visit and I showed him the CD-R. With it I had a piece of paper with the corresponding track names for each song. We pieced them together and I even played a few songs on my radio show. These songs were sounding nothing like their previous material it did sound quite daring and fascinating to hear.
Around that time I started reading articles on-line about what this long wait was all about. If you know the story and even if you don't the wiki page about YHF will give you new or renewed interest about the band and their troubles and their creative differences within the band and with the record label. There is also a DVD called I'am Trying to Break Your Heart that tells the story then I can in this short little post. Allmusic.com mentioned that their music became more complex over this time and still continue to do so and that this is pretty rare and they did it very well for any kind of music. They even dropped their so called Alt-Country edge and made music that was more and more exciting. I cannot agree more. This was awesome stuff.
When Wilco finally gave this to us for purchase I was excited to get it. When I saw that Nonesuch was putting it out, I was even more excited. Nonesuch is a record label that likes music that is daring and even challenging to from the simplest ear to the one who loves and listens to music with curiosity and great interest like myself. When I played the whole album back at my place I realized they did make something that was challenging and made it a habit to repeat again and again.
If you are a Wilco fan such as I am and a huge one at that. I've seen them over twenty-five times and each time is sight and sound to be hold. They don't hold back either and with new a new line up that is far different from the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot era we finally see some of those unique and great ideas come up with better results. Live or in the studio Wilco is an amazing part of American music. I only wish with the line-up they have now if they could pull of an album such as this. My guess I think they would have done a lot more with a band ready to do the challenge that YHF did and more. Check it out and really enjoy this album. It's a start of a unique path they created and the first steps are right here for all of us to enjoy.
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