Wilco Beats the Bootleggers

No big surprise here. Over on eBay, you can buy recent concert bootlegs ranging from the current Ryan Adams tour to Bruce Springsteen's Devils & Dust tour. Often within moments of the concert's conclusion. The Rocky Mountain News columnist Mark Brown covers the unsurprising phenomenon.

But here's the interesting part. Bands like Wilco that allow audiences to tape their shows have virtually zero bootlegs for sale on eBay.

The theory is that Wilco has flooded the market with concert streams and allowing fans to plug into the soundboard and trade freely. Says Wilco's Jeff Tweedy:

"What I've gathered is our audience polices that themselves. They're afraid that if they don't police it, it's going to be taken away. So that's what they do. The fan sites are all being watchdogs on eBay. Anybody starts selling our stuff, they swoop down on them pretty fast. They appreciate the good will we've given them."

"We do keep an eye on it," said Wilco manager Tony Margherita. "We have no problem with people recording, trading, etc., but we do not sanction selling. You really have to be on top of it. And frankly, it happens less when you're giving stuff away. We can beat their price, because it's free."

Via Large Hearted Boy.

Another explanation or "Why music geeks obsess over Wilco?" from the HoustonChronicle.com By ANDREW DANSBY:

"Last year's Ghost shows Tweedy's ongoing development. After leaving Tupelo, his guitar duties were limited to some acoustic and electric rhythm duty. But on Ghost's first two tracks -- At Least That's What You Said and Hell Is Chrome -- he twists sounds from his guitar like Neil Young and Danny Whitten wrestling over one instrument. It's hardly virtuosic, but it's undeniably passionate and cathartic and sloppily gorgeous. On Hummingbirds, his confident voice flutters to loungy places it's never been before."

More Wilco and Neil Young's Influence on Wilco's A Ghost Is Born.

Novillero's Aim Right for the Holes in Their Lives

Over on *Sixeyes, a Canadian MP3 Blog, a Winnipeg band called Novillero is featured with a few MP3 downloads.

Sixeyes' blog editor Alan hears the influence of Style Council and wonders why the band hasn't been a hit with the indie press? A couple of tracks from the recent release Aim Right for the Holes in Their Lives are worth checking out.

More on the Winnipeg music scene.

The Decemberists - Phoenix, Toronto, May 21, 2005

photo by Frank on Chromewaves

Chromewaves Blog covers the The Decemberists and Rebecca Gates at the Phoenix, Toronto on May 21, 2005. Frank has some photos and a review and blogs:

"The Decemberists were once again splendid. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a band that's as much fun to see perform. Sporting temporary Canadian flag tattoos (they do love Canada), all six of them played with such joyous abandon, you couldn't help but be caught up in it. Of course, when you're performing songs with as unusual lyrical content as they do, irony really isn't an option.

It's hard to pick highlights but besides the set and encore closers (more on those in a bit), "July! July!", "The Bagman's Gambit" and "Sixteen Military Wives" were real standouts for me. Meloy opened the encore in solo acoustic mode and actually acquiesed to an audience request for Morrissey's "Every Day Is Like Sunday". I'm a little curious about what he'd originally intended to play, but I can't imagine it'd have gotten a better response than the Moz cover."

More of review and photos on Chromewaves.

U2's Bono and The Rock Critic

It's U2 versus the Chicago Tribune's critic Greg Kot.

Kot has written at length about U2's career slide which culminated in a negative review of the first concert in U2's four-night sold-out run at Chicago's United Center. The criticisms prompted a call from Bono and an interview.

Kot writes in Chicago Tribune article 'We need to talk':

"My review focused on the tired set list. U2 played some new songs early in the two-hour performance, but instead of building a case for the new album and possibly redeeming it, the quartet reserved all the big-bang moments for its greatest hits, songs that had been in the set list for a decade or more. They sounded more than ever like the bands they once arose to replace, the dinosaur acts of the '60s.

All of this is part of what should be the relationship among the artist, the critic and even the audience, which at the United Center was wildly cheering (as they always do) every note. Critics, on the other hand, are not cheerleaders. They are paid to honestly and passionately react to what the artist does -- for better or worse. When it's the latter, audiences are often more vocal in their defense than the artists. But Bono was different."

Bono is less than pleased with Kot's criticisms, which in the end admits to being well placed.

Bono:"Some of what is going around as a result of your article is not just unhelpful to our group and our relationship to our audience, but just really problematic for what in the broad sense you might call rock music. The things you think are wrong with it, and the things that I think are wrong with rock music, are polar opposite. Your vision of rock and mine are 180 degrees apart. And that's why I need to talk to you."

Kot challenges Bono on U2's "sellout" moves such as the Super Bowl halftime show and the iPod commercial. Bono fires back.

Bono: "There's this poverty of ambition, in terms of what rock people will do to promote their work. That's a critical issue to me. The excitement of punk rock, in the Irish and UK scene when we were coming up, was seeing our favorite band on "Top of the Pops," right next to the "enemy." That would be exciting. We did talk shows, TV shows, back then. The great moments of rock 'n' roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto. I don't like that kind of thinking. I know some of it exists, and some of our best friends are part of it. It's not for me. Progressive rock was the enemy in 1976. And it still is. And it has many, many faces. This beast is lurking everywhere. It can describe itself as indie rock. It's the same [blanking] thing. It's misery. I have seen so many great minds struck down by it. . . . When you suggest we're betraying ourselves by doing TV shows and promotional stuff, to me the Super Bowl was our Ed Sullivan moment. It just came 25 years later. I didn't expect it. But it is one of the moments I'm most proud of in my life."

It's a fascinating interview which Mansion On The Hill has some interview highlights and Jukebox Graduate writes that "Even if you truly don't like U2, this is mandatory reading if you care about rock and roll at all."

RYAN ADAMS & THE CARDINALS "Cold Roses" on Lost Highway

Ryan Adams new CD "Cold Roses" with his band the Cardinals is reviewed in the Washington Post by Geoffrey Himes and Neil Young's influence prevails again:

"Since he broke up the acclaimed North Carolina alt-country band Whiskeytown in 2000, Ryan Adams has released six solo albums, all of which were interesting and none of which lived up to the great things predicted for the handsome, talented singer. Now he has returned to the comradeship of a working band, forming Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, and giving his four bandmates co-writing credits for the 18 songs on the new two-CD set, "Cold Roses." The results suggest what Whiskeytown might have sounded like if its brand of alt-country had absorbed the influences of Neil Young and the Grateful Dead and had replaced its fiddle with steel guitar."

And Neil Young's influence again in Shannon Zimmerman's review:

"The set's best bet, though, is its opener. "Magnolia Mountain" could be the sequel to Neil Young's melancholy coming-of-age classic "Sugar Mountain" -- albeit one sung from the point of view of a world-weary adult. "We burned the cotton fields down in the valley and ended up with nothing but scars," Adams sings as his band throbs in the background. "The scars became the lessons that we gave to our children after the war."

In another review over on Jukebox Graduate by Caryn, whi is a huge Ryan Adams fan:

"After the perversion of Love Is Hell (where are those New Orleans sessions, damn you), chopping it up into bits and then releasing the whole shebang six months later (forcing us to buy the damn thing two or three times, especially if you wanted that beautiful 10" vinyl edition), Lost Highway is going to let Ryan release what he wants, how he wants it. Finally! We will be able to feast upon Ryan Adams' True Creative Genius.

What we got, instead, is an unfocused, meandering double album that seems just the tiniest bit self-indulgent. It would be easier for me, I think, if I could just say "I fucking hate this record, it's the worst thing he's ever done, it SUCKS!" But I can't. Cold Roses doesn't even piss me off; it's just -- blah. Which is, I think, probably the worst crime an artist can commit. Not bad, not mediocre, not disgusting, but to be so bland as to not cause any reaction of note, any emotion, nothing. Probably the biggest crime an artist can ever commit is to be boring."

Rilo Kiley, Nada Surf, & The Brunettes: Opera House, Toronto, May 19, 2005

photo by Frank on Chromewaves

Chromewaves Blog covers the Rilo Kiley, Nada Surf, & The Brunettes concert at the Opera House, Toronto on May 19, 2005. Frank has some photos and a review and blogs:

"Rilo Kiley has gotten much tighter and more confident - there was a swagger in their performance that certainly wasn't there before and they took full advantage of the additional onstage real estate. That they seemed to really be enjoying themselves this time around probably helped the mood of the show as well. The set list was an almost perfectly-paced mix of numbers from More Adventurous and Execution Of All Things (as well as one new song)."

More on Rilo Kiley, Nada Surf, & The Brunettes.

Mansion On The Hill Updates Blog Format

One of my favorite internet radio stations -- Mansion On The Hill, has updated its look and feel with a new blog format.

Recent updates include items on Ween Finishing Up Rarities Album, Wilco Ready to Dance, Neil Young, Rap Star?, and Sam Prekop Prefers Painting Sonic Pictures.

So go feed your head on the hill ... Mansion On The Hill that is.

Bruce Springsteen: Patriot Center, Fairfax, VA - May 14 , 2005

photo by Kevin Clark
We caught Bruce Springsteen's Saturday night concert at George Mason University's Patriot Center in Fairfax, VA and were mesmerized by the unplugged and stripped down evening.

The last time we saw Bruce unplugged was on the Ghost of Tom Joad tour back in 1995 and it was definitely one of the most memorable Bruce concerts ever. Say what you will about the E St. Band, seeing an artist alone onstage from a few rows back is such an intimate experience that one can never capture during the stadium mob scenes.

On this night, Bruce performed on no less than 3 types of keyboards, 4 guitars, and several harmonicas. While the new Devils & Dust CD was the primary source selection, songs from 1990's The River and Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad were lovingly drawn from during the 2 1/2 hour, 25-song performance.

The concert included two tour premieres: "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "Dry Lightning". Also a rare performance of "Wreck on the Highway," performed on electric piano; "Wreck" was last performed with John Wesley Harding in 1994 and before that in 1985 in Australia.

The audience was as reverential as one could ever hope for with virtually zero song requests between songs and shouts of "Bruuuce". Hard to believe for a Saturday night.

From a review in The Washington Post by Joe Heim:

"Reason to Believe" from 1982's "Nebraska" was recast as some sort of foot-stomping, Gothic, Delta blues exorcism. The rendition, sung through a tricked-up microphone and accompanied only by Springsteen's howling-cat harmonica, was so incomprehensible that even the signer for the hearing-impaired sat that one out."

For the intro for "Matamoros Banks," writes Heim, a song about the death of a Mexican migrant worker that could be a 21st-century version of Woody Guthrie's "Deportees," Springsteen said, "We don't really need vigilantes along the border. What we need is a humane immigration policy."

Some interesting comments before "Part Man, Part Monkey." Bruce said:

"Evolution is in doubt right here in Washington. If it's in doubt right here, what the hell are they thinking other places? Of course, I personally think the president believes in evolution, but he can't say so. He's been around the block enough; he's doing what he has to so he can do what he wants to. A lot of folks do that.... But out in Kansas, they're taking this shit serious!... They're following the leader."

The highlight of the evening was a performance of "The River" which had an extensive introduction where Bruce reminisced about his mother's love of radio love songs.

The final encore was a cover of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" with Bruce walking off stage for the night while singing the chorus as the house lights went up.

A great solo evening.

More reviews and setlist details on Backstreets.

Mountain Goats: Lee's Palace, Toronto, May 11, 2005

The Mountain Goats and Shearwater played a gig at Lee's Palace in Toronto on Thursday, May 11. Frank over on Chromewaves has the full concert report and great upclose photos. Here's a clip from the review:

"Thanks to the stripped-down arrangement and super-clean mix, Darnielle's frantic guitar playing and high, nasal vocals were loud and clear and well complimented by Hughes' loping, melodic bass playing and backing vocals. Although it was just the two of them, it never sounded thin or musically lacking. Three-quarters of the way through they brought out members of Shearwater to fill out the sound for the remainder of the main set, but even their contributions were kept relatively sparse. All in all it sounded great, and hearing the songs performed live only reinforces the fact that Darnielle is one of the best songwriters around. His writing ranges from joyous, depressing, poignant, angry and wickedly funny - sometimes all in the same verse, let alone the same song."

More of the review and photos of Mountain Goats & Shearwater concert on Chromewaves.net.

Starbucks Rejects New Bruce Springsteen CD

Starbucks tunes out the Boss' new CD Devils & Dust.

Starbucks said in a statement:

"While we agreed that the lyrics to 'Reno' did warrant an advisory, a variety of factors contributed to our decision not to carry the album in all of our retail locations."

The coffee retailer has become a major force in new music releases very quickly filling a void left by the demise of independent music retail outlets.

And here's a clip of a review in The Guardian by Alexis Petridis:

"Maria's Bed and Silver Palomino are fine songs, but the listener is distracted from their qualities by Springsteen's nasal impersonation of Bob Dylan. More perplexing still is All I'm Thinking About, which seems to be either a homage to or parody of Neil Young. It features a rough approximation of Young's wobbly falsetto and lyrical references to his doomy 1970s track Don't Let It Bring You Down, allied to the sort of carefree Chuck Berry chug that the perennially troubled Young couldn't muster if you put a gun to his head. You end up wondering if Springsteen is taking the mickey. You also end up wondering who he's going to do next. Tom Waits? Frank Spencer?"

More on Bruce Springsteen new songs from Devils & Dust. Also more on Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young.

Americana UK 's Blog of the Month

Here's some nice recognition for Thrasher's Blog.

Over on Americana UK, Thrasher's Blog is the Blog of the Month. Pretty cool kudos from the leading website on alt.country/Americana from a European perspective. Isn't it interesting that one has to travel so far to get news on music in our backyard over here State-side?

Always lots of good stuff on A-UK. An interview with Danny George Wilson, Simon Alpin and Josh Hillman is featured here.

"In the heady days of the late sixties and early seventies, the combination of musical talent of Grand Drive’s Danny Wilson and Willard Grant co-Conspirators Simon Alpin and Josh Hillman would have been called, without a trace of irony, a “Supergroup”. Although the term may now be a bit passé, the sentiment is still valid, and will undoubtedly be seen as genuinely appropriate by those lucky enough to see them play on their recent UK tour. Barry Jones played the support slot for their excellent Americana UK house gig, and changed hats the following week to interview them on their brief return to Liverpool."

Thanks Americana UK!