Ghost in the Machine is released today, Chris Rhodes gives his take on it…..
And some of the funniest stuff on Jack!
oh, and Greg Kot was on 848 giving an interesting review of his new book on Wilco–and the predecessors. I’m not happy with Farrar–he just endorsed the wrong Smith in the MO-3 race.
– Kot Drank the Wilco Kool-Aid –
Kot: “Wilco fired its lead guitarist…”
No, Jeff Tweedy fired Jay Bennett.
Kot: “Wilco is a band although people love to see it as a Jeff Tweedy band.”
Just because he writes the (co-)music, plays (many of) the instruments and determines the band’s line-up?
Kot: “He is not a dictator”
Of course not, it’s just *his* band. I’m not the “dictator” of my laptop either. But it is *my* laptop and I do have sole ownership of it.
Kot: “Some folks just drop by the wayside because they are not interested in going to that next level — that next plateau — that Tweedy wants to explore.”
Or they are fired… see Bennett, Jay (long-time guitarist/multi-nstrumentalist) and Coomer, Ken (original drummer).
I love Wilco and Jeff Tweedy’s music (YHF was one of the best albums of my lifetime), but I just don’t understand the apparent need to pretend that 1) Wilco is not Jeff and vice versa, and that 2) Jeff doesn’t utterly control the band. I don’t get it.
Al is Ministry, Billy was the Pumpkins, John was CCR, Paul was Wings… There is nothing wrong with a band being the sole vision of a single artist. There is nothing wrong with being an artistic bastard to produce great albums.
Why do Jeff and Greg (a great writer, btw) insist that it is otherwise?
Yeah, that is kind of weird. Jeff is the genius and that is why he and Jay could never last together–they had different visions and neither would be as great as they are now together.