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Following Indiana's decision to legalise homophobia providing you can pretend it's because of your conscience, Wilco have pulled their Indianapolis gig:
We're canceling our 5/7 show in Indianapolis. “Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act” feels like thinly disguised legal discrimination.
— WILCO (@Wilco) March 30, 2015
How to mark this, the 30,000th post on No Rock And Roll Fun?
With a song with an appropriate title - Wilco's My Thirty Thousand - and a song which captures how music can be hugely important, and make a difference, and be a focus and a rallying point for good:
Thanks for reading, commenting and suggesting stuff.
Helping out with Haiti disaster relief fund-raising tonight is Wilco - two gigs for download in return for a donation. It's on the honours system, so don't be an arse.
The Illinois coroner has issued his report into the death of Jay Bennett, blaming an overdose of Fentanyl. The death is being treated as accidental.
Former Wilco member and solo artist Jay Bennett has died at the cruelly young age of 45.
Bennett died in his hometown of Champaign, Illinois. He churned through a number of local bands, including Titanic Love Affair, with whom he recorded three albums, but was working in an electronics repair shop when he joined Wilco. Although not a founder member of the group, he quickly set about making himself a key part, contributing songs as well as bringing multiple instrumental skills and helping steer the band down a route that took it from alt-country to a wider alt-rock audience.
Relations with the rest of the group soured during the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and Bennett found himself an ex-Wilco in 2001. The breach never healed; last month, Bennett was suing Jeff Tweedy over claims of unpaid royalties from the Yankee making-of movie I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.
Bennett went on to record a number of solo records; he was in the middle of working on a new collection at the time of his death. He died in his sleep over the weekend.
Over on That Truncheon Thing, demos from Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions. It's part of a week of Wilco rarity sharing from the blog.
Having seen little reward for its efforts in other ways, the RIAA is apparently trying a new tack: coming via the hosting companies to attack mp3 bloggers.
Idolator reports that Side One Track One, Country Pinball Machine and Shameless Complacency have all been kicked into touch by their hosting companies following their distribution of Kaiser Chief, Avril Lavigne and Wilco mp3s respectively. If we were a website hosting a copy of Brianstorm by the Arctic Monkeys ripped from the Zane Lowe show, we'd be treading very carefully right now...
Wilco have announced a world tour, which - thanks to All Tomorrows Parties - includes a stop-off at Butlins:
04-16 Brisbane, Australia - Tivoli
04-18 Melbourne, Australia - Palais Theatre
04-21 Sydney, Australia - Enmore Theatre
04-22 Perth, Australia - Metropolis Freemantle
05-19 Somerset, England - Butlins Minehead (ATP vs. the Fans)
05-20 London, England - Shepherds Bush Empire
05-23 Cologne, Germany - Live Music Hall
05-24 Berlin, Germany - Kesselhaus
05-25 Hamburg, Germany - Grosse Freiheit
05-26 Dresden, Germany - Alter Schlachthof
05-28 Frankfurt, Germany - Mousonturm
05-29 Paris, France - Bataclan
05-30 Ghent, Belgium - De Vooruit
05-31 Amsterdam, the Netherlands - Paradiso
06-02 Barcelona, Spain - Primavera Sound
06-14-17 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo
Or, Becky goes out and rogers Wilco:
I'm trying to write about the wilco shows but my thoughts and phrases keep scattering when I remember the joy of the audience and both bands all singing along during 'california sky' while the disco ball threw constellations of glittering light all over the room and I felt my chest almost bursting open from the sheer perfection of that moment.
I need some distance.
but distance brings the dry facts and these shows weren't about facts. they weren't about set lists or instrumentation or the musicians. they were about the moments... the blue maracas in ken stringfellow's back pocket.. the computer guy from wilco sitting in a spotlight next to the drumset and getting a haircut while the minus 5 rocked out without acknowleging the gag.. wilco brilliantly reinventing old favorites by seeing them through a new yankee hotel foxtrot lens.. anne counting 44 "nothings" and me counting 38 the next night during 'misunderstood'... that word over and over again until that was all there was - tweedy and his microphone and that word echoing in your head, his worn-out, lived-in voice wrapping around you like a favorite scratchy blanket you'll never get tired of.. it was about scott mccaughey's gold brocade jacket with the black velvet lapels and ken singing 'holocaust' in a voice so lost that I wanted to cry.
I have notes. pages and pages of little things that struck me as memorable or funny or noteworthy. and I wish I was a talented enough writer to accurately convey to you all the atmosphere of beauty and happiness and companionship that I was a part of for those two nights.
this wasn't about lust (although I'm now officially admitting my crush on ken stringfellow) and it wasn't about being cool or hip or indie. YHF may top the year end polls, it may not. but what wilco did was make music so good that I forgot my feet hurt and I forgot I needed sleep or food or air. I think that's enough.
