Fuzzy Lion

I have been a fan of Wilco since their debut album A.M. In a time when mainstream alternative country was still in its embryonic stage, Wilco was playing by their own rules. With the exception of the first single off A.M., “Box Full of Letters,” just about every track would never find airplay outside the college realm. The music was too country for rock stations, and not country enough for the country stations.

The band’s second release, the valiant double-album effort Being There continues to be one of my favorite records of the 90’s and helped put the band on the map. From the opening track “Misunderstood” to the closer “Dreamer In My Dreams,” there is not one track that I can classify as filler.

It wasn’t until Wilco’s third album Summerteeth that they really earned the respect of the mainstream press. The songs were more of a departure from the country feel that A.M. had, but still stood apart from the rest of the music on the radio and TV at the time. This inability to be pigeonholed into a specific genre really earned them the love of college radio DJs around the country and led to the inevitable comparisons to R.E.M. and their situation in the early 1980’s.

Rather than explain the whole story behind the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot fiasco, I urge anyone with even a slight interest in Wilco to check out the brilliant documentary “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.” It details the drama in the rejection by their label of what turned out to be their most successful album and the process leading up to their signing with Nonesuch.

Ask anybody that has had the fortune to see Wilco live and they will tell you the same thing: it is an amazing event. The musicianship the band displays on stage exceeds even that on the record. Jeff Tweedy is a very charming, shy but charismatic frontman that pours his heart and soul into every word.

Blasting Fonda is an unofficial compilation of live and unreleased Wilco tracks that showcase some of this onstage brilliance as well as some very rare gems, such as their cover of Big Star’s “Thirteen,” one of my all-time favorite songs. (Many bands have covered “Thirteen,” but none as good as Wilco.) The tracklist for Blasting Fonda is as follows:

1. I Got You
2. Someone Else’s Song
3. I Must Be High
4. Passenger Side
5. Forget The Flowers
6. That’s Not The Issue
7. Madrid
8. Hotel Arizona
9. Kingpin
10. Outtasite (Outta Mind)
11. Should Have Been In Love
12. Box Full of Letters
13. Passenger Side
14. Gun
15. Thirteen
16. Blasting Fonda

TRACKS 1-10: Deer Creek Music Center, Indiana 8-9-97
TRACKS 11-14: Acoustic Show, 5-97
TRACKS 15: Studio Outtake (Big Star cover)
TRACKS 16: From “Feeling Minnesota” soundtrack

Download Blasting Fonda here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 9th, 2006 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Downloads, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.