Just curious if anyone listens to these guys. I have one of their
songs on a tribute album and listened to a few live songs on You
Tube. Just looking for any suggestions on albums to purchase
and opinions from others. I couldn't figure out who they really
compare to from the few songs that I have heard (Phish?). Is this band
worthwhile getting into and picking up some of their music?

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

They're alright. I will listen to their album Evil Urges every once in a while.

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I have It Still Moves. It's just okay. Sounds like a band that kinda digs Neil Young.

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Burned out on The Band. Looking for something similar. Via Pandora I have found a few
others that my ear likes. MGMT, Band of Horses, Cold War Kids and a few others are
itching the scratch. Wilco is not bad either.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Wilco is fantastic. You're only now getting around to them, you mean to say?

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Yeah I am way behind the curve on a few things including music. Better late than
never I guess, right? I was kind of stuck in a time warp there for a while. The good thing about
ignoring current music for 10 years or so is that it is all new now for me.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

motherfucker stole my name

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

Flew out to New York at the end of the year to catch My Morning Jacket play three shows at Capitol Theatre in Port Chester. My Morning Jacket does this cool thing called Spontaneous Curation, where they won't repeat songs during events like this, so no song was played twice over the course of the three shows- we were treated to roughly seventy songs over the course of these three nights.

12/27
Heartbreakin Man
X-Mas Curtain
Outta My System
Evelyn Is Not Real
Octoplasm
The Way That He Sings
Off The Record
Steam Engine
Sooner
Thank You Too!
You Wanna Freak Out
Nashville to Kentucky
Strangulation!
Smokin From Shootin
Tyrone (Erykah Badu cover)
It's About Twilight Now
Mahgeetah

Encore:
Butch Cassidy
Bermuda Highway
Welcome Home
The Day Is Coming
Cobra
Gideon

12/28
Wonderful (The Way I Feel)
Golden
Tonite I Want To Celebrate With You
The Dark
It Beats For You
First Light
The Bear
Rocket Man (Elton John cover)
Lowdown
I'm Amazed
Old September Blues
Carried Away (Carl Broemel song)
It Makes No Difference (The Band cover)
Dondante
Librarian
I Think I'm Going to Hell
Phone Went West

Encore:
At Dawn
Highly Suspicious
Dancefloors
Holdin On To Black Metal
Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2

12/29
Circuital
Evil Urges
Lay Low
Anytime
War Begun
I Will Sing You Songs
Honest Man
Aluminum Park
Slow Slow Tune
Where to Begin
I Will Be There When You Die
Master Plan
O Is the One That Is Real
What A Wonderful Man
Easy Morning
Run Thru
Movin Away

Encore:
I Will Be There When You Die
Victory Dance
Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 1
Wordless Chorus
All Night Long (Lionel Richie cover)
One Big Holiday

Too many highlights to choose from- they're such a great band to see live. I think it might have been the 25 minute long version of Dodante during the second show if I had to choose. They have a knack for stretching songs out live- something I'm usually not a fan of- but it works nicely for them. Coming into 2012 I had no idea about this band. I had heard of them, but not their material. I went to go see them at Pritzker Pavilion back in August, so I made an attempt to familiarize myself with their material leading up to that show. I was surprised, because it was nothing like what I was expecting it to be. I would say they're among my favorites at this point. If you haven't given them a listen yet, I suggest The Tennessee Fire, At Dawn, and It Still Moves as starting points. I don't think there is one filler song between those three albums.
Lowlight of the three nights was the Lionel Richie cover towards the end of night three- it's a fucking terrible song and Lionel Richie is a terrible person. I left my seat to position myself closer to an exit for the finale as this was going on.

Lastly, Capitol Theatre was a really cool venue. Awesomely enough, we were told that the barcodes on the ticket can be redeemed for soundboard recording of all three shows.

Lay Low - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVwcy_B--kU
War Begun/I Will Sing You Songs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6x0lWMsI9I

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fock this club. I should manayer.

Yo, T-Bone, how's Wilco?

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I finally got my head out of my ass and have the following now...

Summerteeth
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
A Ghost Is Born
Kicking TV
Sky Blue Sky
Wilco
The Whole Love

Favorites are likely Sky Blue Sky, Summerteeth and Wilco but it is all good. My musical tastes have kind of
been all over the board since I posted that. I have found a lot of stuff to like. Glad I finally came back to music.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Swingandalong..... Those shows sound awesome. I know Jim James has a solo album coming out early this year.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

My quick review on Wilco:

They built to an apex with Summerteeth which is a pop masterpiece to rival Pet Sounds (of which it is highly derivative). Their subsequent work was increasingly more self-indulgent up until The Whole Love,which marked a return to a more accessible style and is their best record since Summerteeth.

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Don't take it personally.

I agree that there's a lot of self-indulgence to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad. The former is one of my favorite albums ever.

However, Sky Blue Sky is much closer to The Whole Love and Summerteeth than it is to those two. The worst you can saythere is that Nels Cline gets a long guitar solo on "Impossible Germany," but he does great things with it, so who can complain? Also, Wilco (The Album) nominally happened, which is too meandering and half-assed to be self-indulgent.

I do like The Whole Love very much!

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I don't meet many who like Wilco (the album) very much. It strikes a chord with me for some reason, although
I haven't given it a spin in quite a while. I just put Summerteeth in my Jeep a few days ago after flipping through
my cd books and remembering what a great disc it was.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

"Bull Black Nova" does the motorik tribute better than "Spiders/Kidsmoke," and there are about three songs that feel like they grew out of "On and On and On," which is a good thing (those would be "Deeper Down," "One Wing," and most obviously "I'll Fight"), but the rest of it leaves me feeling empty Even the Feist duet doesn't do anything for me, and I love Feist!

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+1

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

There are many bands that play different set lists each night. Phish just played four nights at MSG, and didn't play the same song twice.

MMJ is one of the best live acts going.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

Get the 'At Dawn' demos disc. Probably can pinch hit off a torrent or other music sharing site.

Came with the double vinyl back when it was first released on--of all labels--twee-as-fuck Darla records

They played Schuba's on that tour, 2001? and were crazy effed up. They kept making stupid jokes like 'My Morning Crack-kit' and cracking themselves up, not unlike Dr Hook in the 'Cover of the Rolling Stone' youtube clip.

MMJ are amazing live. Seriously entertaining and they just flat-out jam.

First saw them in 2005 @ Metro - Jim James had a plastic parrot on his shoulder. At Dawn and It Still Moves are definitely the place to start.

If you're a fan of alt-country, check out the Avett Bros.

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Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

They were in Bloomington last year. Still mad I didn't go.

I like my rock and roll to connect in a very emotional or visceral way. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is far more complicated than A.M., but I would argue that it isn't better. Tweedy's gift is his voice and his ability to use it to connect to an audience on an emotional level. For my money, a lot of the gimmickry from the Cline/Kotche era gets in the way of accomplishing that.

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Don't take it personally.

I don't think Sky Blue Sky was gimmicky at all. In fact, that's what pissed off the Pitchfork people and made them call it "dad rock." No Jay Bennett twaddle, just guys playing. I mean yeah, Cline could get showy on guitar, but I'll put "On and On and On" or "Hate It Here" up there in terms of raw emotion, in their own way.

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One song stretched over four nights isn't quite the same.

I admit that I don't have a deep familiarity with Sky Blue Sky, but I was really talking about YHF and A Ghost Is Born. I can't understand why YHF is widely considered Tweedy's masterpiece rather than Summerteeth. I would guess because Summerteeth obviously owes so much to a particular brand of pop, i.e. Pet Sounds era Beach Boys. But to me, YHF comes off as a bad homage to Sister Lovers. There are a lot of sounds for their own sake. Obviously there are songs lurking beneath the noise somewhere. A mediocre bar band like J.C. Brooks and the Uptown Sound found one. I considered Bennett important because he protected Tweedy from his own worst instincts. I think if you edited Being There down to a single disc, it too would be greater than YHF.

Are you familiar with the Chamber Strings? It's really just my friend Kevin and whoever he can find that isn't so angry that they refuse to play with him at any given time. Kevin learned rock and roll at my right elbow, but he would deny me now, as Simon Peter denied Jesus.

He wrote this one with John Stirratt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yOOvDeNQ3c

I think this is probably his best song though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAk-I2qd-0M

The thing is, Kevin is a record collector and there is something familiar about every thing he writes. It's all sort of like Big Star, Dusty Does Memphis, and Pet Sounds rolled together and sung by a slightly inferior vocalist. Enjoy!

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Don't take it personally.

Well, they didn't do that either.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

Guess this proves I am gay. Those guys are good. Probably closer to bluegrass-folk than alt-country.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Yeah, I should probably not try to affix genre to the music I like. I have a tendency to refer to most British bands I like as Brit Pop.

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Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

There is one band that is the undisputed king of the alt-country genre, and it really isn't even close.

But the Avett Bros are good. Really dig some of there songs.
And I agree with JORR about Wilco. They (he) peaked with Summerteeth, and the summit wasn't that high. Wilco is severely over-rated in the Chicagoland area. Tweedy should be thankful every single day that he/they originated in a major metropolitan area that was willing to consume his shit. If he started his band in Billings, Montana he'd be HUGE on the rodeo circuit in that state.

Hussra's comment about Phish playing one song stretched over 4 nights was kinda , you gotta admit it Chus.

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