Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Random Name Generator”

As I write about in Wilcopedia (releasing 9/17; pre-order here), for a good part of the last decade, I was the “Wilco Examiner” for Examiner.com. It was a content farm that paid by the clicks, so I tried to spruce up my material, but as I mainly covered set-lists and linked to other content, it was pretty hard to make any kind of mark.

At one point though I started a series called Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight and it became a little more fun. Examiner.com may be gone (they folded in 2016), but you can still find some of my content as it was stolen by many sites, like here.

Anyway, I am resurrecting Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight and starting off with “Random Name Generator,” from Wilco’s ninth studio release Star Wars, which was a surprise release in the summer of 2015.

“Random Name Generator” (Jeff Tweedy)

With its revved-up hooky groove, and its playful lyrical conceit, “Random Name Generator,” which Tweedy said had grown out of the sessions for the side project Tweedy’s 2014 album Sukierae, was Star Wars’ obvious single. The cover of the 7-inch, which features a photo by Zoran Orlic, is at the top of this post.

“‘Random Name Generator’ is just such an incredibly fun one. I don’t know if there has ever been a song more fun to play live for the band than that song. There’s just something about the relentlessness of it. I feel like my heels grow to platform boots and my pants widen to bell bottoms during the course of that song, like a shapeshifter or something.”
-Jeff Tweedy in an interview with Josh Terry, Chicago Tribune (2016)

“Low voices rumble and guitars agitate on ‘Random Name Generator,’ all dense and menacing.” - Greg Kott, The Chicago Tribune (2015)

Since its live debut with the rest of the songs from Star Wars at the Pitchfork Music Festival at Chicago’s Union Park on July 17, 2015, the day after the album first became available online, the incredibly fun rocker, “Random Name Generator,” has been performed by Wilco way over 100 times. It is the most performed song off of Star Wars, with the “The Joke Explained” coming in at a close second.

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When Wilco wailed on Tom Petty’s “The Waiting”

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Wilcopedia: A Comprehensive Guide To The Music Of America's Best Band (available on Sept. 17; pre-order it here):

The night after it was announced that the legendary rock and roll artist, Tom Petty, had passed away, Wilco paid tribute by performing Petty and his long-time band, the Heartbreakers’ 1981 hit “The Waiting” from the band’s fourth studio album, Hard Promises. The song kicked off Wilco’s first encore at their gig at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving, Texas, on October 3, 2017, and was greeted with major enthusiasm by the audience who loudly sang along to the power pop anthem (watch a clip of it here).

Arguably one of Petty’s best songs, the Byrds-style guitar structure of “The Waiting” fits Wilco like a glove. In Jeff Tweedy and company’s catalog of covers it joins Petty’s 1978 single “Listen to Her Heart,” which Wilco covered frequently during their first tour in support of their debut album, A.M.

Petty claimed “The Waiting” was inspired by an interview with Janis Joplin in which she said “I love being onstage, and everything else is waiting.” Wilco’s choice of a tribute cover also struck a nerve in that Petty’s death wasn’t confirmed for most of the previous day after it had been announced that he had been taken to the hospital after being found unconscious after a cardiac arrest. As a fan who was hanging on hoping for good news about his recovery, the waiting truly was the hardest part.

Wilco’s live debut of the cover was only marred by Tweedy flubbing a few lines in the first verse. Later, between songs during the second encore, Tweedy told the audience, “I’m really sorry about the first verse of ‘The Waiting.’ I wanted to make sure that I didn’t mess it up so I so I had the lyrics here, and the second the song started they blew over. Thanks Tom!’ 

Tweedy was able to correct his lyrical mistake as Wilco included “The Waiting” in their encores for four more of the remaining dates on the last leg of their 2017 tour.

While Nels Cline is Wilco's lead guitarist, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone completely crushes on Mike Campbell’s soaring guitar soloing on all five versions of the classic.

Here’s a video from the performance of the song that I saw at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville, N.C., on October 9, 2017:

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Wilco video of the week: “Outtasite (Outta Mind)”

As my book Wilcopedia is coming out in a few weeks (pre-order it here), I want to highlight the various sidelines throughout the band’s career. One notable strand is the group of videos that they produced from “Box Full of Letters” from A.M. in 1995 to “Someone to Lose” from Schmilco in 2016.

Now, the age of music videos has long past with MTV and VH1 barely ever showing them, and bands, in the years since, making videos mainly for the internet in hopes that they go viral. Wilco hasn’t made that many videos (which used to be called promotional films), so this series of videos of the week most likely won’t last very long (unless I dig up some real rarities).

No matter, there’s some great ones to cover and this week we start with one of their best from 1996: “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” from Wilco's second album, Being There:

The video involves the then line-up of Wilco (Jeff Tweedy, Jay Bennett, John Stirratt, and Ken Coomer) skydiving in California’s Paris Valley while lip-synching, and miming the song with instruments in mid-air. The parachuting footage wasn’t faked in a studio - they impressively had to go up 29 times to get all the necessary footage.

But while most of the footage is authentic, some shots were faked as this picture, taken by Stirratt, attests *.

The enormously fun video resembles something out of the Beatles’ 1965 classic comedy musical film “Help!” but it didn’t get a lot of airplay on MTV or VH1.

That’s a shame because it’s a rocking, and winningingly signifier of the Being There era, where Wilco were finding their footing while learning when it’s alright to be silly. So to say, they were in mind, and in sight. Things could only go up from there.

* This photo was included in the booklet for the essential 4 CD collection, Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014.

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Happy Birthday Jeff Tweedy from Wilcopedia (The Blog)

Wilcopedia (The Blog) wishes Wilco founder/front man Jeff Tweedy a Happy 52nd Birthday! In his honor, here's one of my favorite performances of one of his signature songs:

This was from The Modern School of Film's series, Film Acoustic, which went down in Durham on May 23, 2015. Tweedy screened and discussed Chris Smith's 1999 cult favorite documentary AMERICAN MOVIE with moderator Robert Milazzo.

You can read more about the event (and see more videos of songs he played there) here at Film Babble Blog.

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Wilco's first 10-inch: All Over the Place (1997)

One of the reasons I wrote Wilcopedia: A Comprehensive Guide To The Music Of America’s Best Band (releasing 9/17; pre-order here), was to highlight some of their lesser known works. All Over the Place, a 10-inch that came out during the Being There era, certainly fits the bill. Interestingly enough, as Jay Bennett and Jeff Tweedy are pictured, it’s one of the only releases that features members of the band on the cover.

So here's my entry from Wikipedia on All Over the Place:

This promotional 10-inch, released as part of the Soil Samples series, #26, contains four live tracks from the tour for Being There. First up, there’s “Someone Else’s Song,” taken from the Wilco’s show at the Snow Job Festival at Marble Mountain Resort in Newfoundland on March 18, 1997. That’s followed by “Kingpin” recorded during Wilco’s soundcheck on March 31, 97 for 2 Metre Sessions, VARA Radio, Netherlands.

Side two of the record kicks off with “I Got You” from a live performance recorded at Lounge Ax, Chicago on July 9, 1997. The uncredited liner notes say that the track is ‘Affectionately known as the Shakey’s Pizza version.’ The rendition heavily resembles the version that Wilco recorded for Judd Apatow’s 2012 comedy “This is 40.”

The last live song on All Over the Place is the punk version “Passenger Side” from Wilco’s show at the Fillmore in San Francisco on May 10, 1997. This revved-up live rendition also appeared on the WKQX compilation, Local 101.Volume 1.

Two of these live versions - “I Got You,” and “Passenger Side” - were later included on the 4 CD box, Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994–2014. But sadly, “Someone Else’s Song,” and “Kingpin” didn’t make the cut.

For fans who want to get a copy of All Over the Place, expect to pay around $50 for it if you can find it online. That’s the average price for it on Discogs and Ebay anyway.

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That time Wilco crushed it on their cover of Television’s “Marquee Moon”

As my upcoming book, Wilcopedia: A Comprehensive Guide To The Music Of America's Best Band (pre-order it here!), contains a lot of material about the covers Wilco has played over the years, I thought I’d feature an excerpt about one of the coolest covers they’ve ever done.

That would be:

“Marquee Moon” (Tom Verlaine)

Because of their penchant for lengthy, arty jams, many critics have labeled the New York band Television, ‘the punk Grateful Dead.’ That analogy is best displayed in Television’s 10-minute guitar epic, “Marquee Moon,” from their 1977 album of the same name.

Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy, a big fan of the band, was given by his wife, Sue, the gift of a guitar lesson from Television’s former member, Richard Lloyd on his thirty-fourth birthday in 2001. The lesson helped Tweedy, who was the sole guitarist in Wilco after the ousting of Jay Bennett, to gain more confidence on the instrument. 

The comparisons to Television grew after guitarist Nels Cline joined Wilco in 2004, along with multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone. Cline, who took over as lead guitarist, had experience playing Television songs like “See No Evil” and “Little Johnny Jewel” during his stint in bassist Mike Watt’s band, and the influence was strongly felt on his first album with Wilco, 2006’s Sky Blue Sky.

In reviews of Sky Blue Sky, Rolling Stone’s Robb Sheffield, wrote that Cline was ‘reinventing Television circa Adventure [their second album]’ on ‘Impossible Germany,’ The Observer’s Graeme Thomson said that the same track ‘sounds like a duel between Thin Lizzy and Television,’ and the Guardian’s Dorian Lynsky noted about the album’s ‘flaring guitar passages redolent of Neil Young or Television.’ 

So it made a lot of sense that fans would request for Wilco to cover a Television song at the all request covers show at Solid Sound in 2013 * (where they also covered Thin Lizzy and Neil Young), and “Marquee Moon” was the obvious but glorious choice for the event.

The Solid Sound version of “Marquee Moon” was given a three guitar attack as Cline, Sansone, and Tweedy dueled on the intertwined, chiming riffs that took the audience on a nearly 14 minute sonic journey. 

Listen to it here:

In an interview with Jim Beaugez posted on guitarplayer.com (Nels Cline’s Musical Life in Five Riffs, January 17, 2018), Nels Cline offered that “‘Marquee Moon’ is a veritable feast of memorable and influential guitar riffs. Tom Verlaine’s long guitar solo ends in one of the most memorable examples of a mixolydian scale in its most rudimentary form, and it sounds like absolute poetry. Then, there’s this beautiful, John Cipollina-influenced thing he plays with his finger, but I do it with the bar. That’s where I get my penchant for the wiggle - which I use all over songs like Wilco’s ‘Impossible Germany.’”

So far, “Marquee Moon” has only been played by Wilco once for a special occasion, but such a feast, as Cline called it, is much too tasty to be just a one-off. Here’s hoping they’ll serve it up again someday.

In contrast, check out the most recent version of Television play “Marquee Moon” at the Hopscotch Festival in 2016:

It's pretty good until it sloppily breaks down in its second half. The Wilco take crushes it better than the original artists' for sure.

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“A Magazine Called Sunset” and some magazines not called sunset

Welcome to the second entry of Wilcopedia (The Blog), the blog that concerns the upcoming book, Wilcopedia, releasing on September 17 (pre-order it here). 

This time we’re going to look at one of Wilco’s greatest rarities as well some magazines that helped to formulate their image.

First up, the great Wilco non album track that is:

“A Magazine Called Sunset” (Jeff Tweedy)

An outtake from the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions, “A Magazine Called Sunset” first appeared on a bonus disc on the Australian edition of the 2002 album. In 2003, the bonus disc was released as an EP in 2003 entitled More like the Moon, which also goes by the titles Bridge and Australian EP. 

Jeff Tweedy’s exclusion of the upbeat, poppy song, which boasts some of the most playful lyrics Jeff Tweedy has ever written, from the original track listing of Wilco’s 2001 breakthrough irked Jay Bennett who told Greg Kot, “I was disappointed that Magazine Called Sunset’ and Cars Can’t Escape’ weren’t on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. As far as I’m concerned melody is king, and those songs as hugely melodic, hugely catchy.”

In the song’s 2014 release on the 4-disc Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014, Tweedy is listed as the song’s sole writer, but Bennett is recognized by ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ) as being the co-writer of the composition.

In the booklet for Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Tweedy writes that “A Magazine Called Sunset” is “another heavily requested song for Wilco live and another mysterious omission from an official recorded output. A real attempt at pop music - full on pop music and not the kind of pop music that’s popular apparently.”

Many fans most likely first heard the song when it was featured in Sam Jones’ 2002 documentary about the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco,” but it was well known to the hardcore as it was included on the well circulated bootlegs of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos. 

Like with many of Tweedy’s songs that are seemingly derived from refrigerator magnet poetry it’s abstract yet catchy with a soaring chorus that really takes flight in live performances.

Tweedy first performed “A Magazine Called Sunset” solo acoustically at Park West, Chicago on September 13th, 2000. A full Wilco band version wouldn’t come until they opened their show at the Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View, California with it on September 6th, 2003. Since then, they have played song close to 70 times.

A free download of the song was offered to those who pre-ordered Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014 in the weeks leading up to its release on November 17th, 2014.

Then there are the magazines not called sunset: 

When researching Wilcopedia, I utilized these publications often. Some of their material could be found online; some could not. It’s interesting to note that while Wilco adorned the cover of many major rock publications, one they never scored was the cover of Rolling Stone…in this country.

In the German edition of the iconic mag, a 2011 cover featured a goofy shot of Tweedy’s mug with one eye closed. 

Yeah, that's the stuff. Okay, so that’s enough Wilco magazine madness for now.

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Welcome to Wilcopedia (The Blog) with an “Airline to Heaven”

Welcome to Wilcopedia (The Blog)! This is a blog centered around my first book, Wilcopedia: A Comprehensive Guide To The Music Of America’s Best Band, which is releasing next month via Jawbone Press, on September 17 (pre-order it here). In this space, I’ll feature excerpts, stuff that was cut, coverage of my minor book tour, and all kinds of material related to Wilcopedia, Wilco (The Band), and whatnot that I deem worthy for this blog.

I’ll start off with an excerpt from Wilcopedia: the entry for “Airline to Heaven,” the first track on Mermaid Avenue Vol. II, Wilco's 2000 collaboration with Billy Bragg. 

“Airline to Heaven” (Woody Guthrie, Jay Bennett, and Jeff Tweedy)

Jay Bennett: 12-string acoustic slide guitars, backing vocal, shakers, saw, claps
John Stirratt: backing vocal, claps
Jeff Tweedy: vocal, acoustic guitar, mellotrons, claps

This rapture-ready, energetically strummed, folk rocker kicks off Mermaid Avenue Vol. II with great gusto. It's a superb choice of opener as it features full rich verses, and an elevated chorus, all in service of spiritual words Guthrie wrote in 1939. Performed by the stripped down trio of Bennett, Stirratt, and Tweedy, the drum-less, head bopping faux-gospel cut oddly recalls Led Zeppelin at their folkiest (think “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp”).

“Rawness rules on ‘Airline to Heaven,’ a rambunctious hootenanny groove over which Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy slags off money-grubbing messiahs in a sly drawl.” - Greg Kot, Rolling Stone (2000) 

An alternate take of the song appeared on the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack of Alison Maclean’s 1999 drama “Jesus’ Son,” and was re-issued in 2014 on Alpha Mike Foxtrot. And a live version recorded in May 2005 at the Vic Theatre in Chicago appeared on Wilco’s 2005 live release, Kicking Television: Live in Chicago.

The extras for the 2009 DVD Wilco Live: Ashes of American Flags feature Wilco performing “Airline to Heaven” at Cain’s Ballroom, in Tulsa, Oklahoma on March 8, 2008.

But one of the best live versions of “Airline to Heaven” took place at Farm Aid in 2005 at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, Illinois. The performance, which was broadcast on The Nashville Network (TNN), was largely notable because Wilco were introduced by then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama. 

After speaking about giving advocacy and support to America’s farms, Obama told the audience, ‘My main job is to introduce to all of you a homegrown band, a Chicago band, they’ve won Grammys, they’ve had gold records, and they’re back home to support the families of America – I want everybody to give it up for Wilco!’

This live rendition of “Airline to Heaven,” with Obama’s intro, appears on the 2008 DVD release of the Farm Aid 2005: 20th Anniversary Concert.

Thanks for checking out the first post of Wilcopedia (The Blog)!

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