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“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” (Wilco Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

It’s no secret that I’ve been going through a Wilco phase recently.  And, by phase, I mean that I wasn’t really familiar with the band until a couple months ago.  I had read about the band a bit in music magazines, and I had read quotes by band frontman Jeff Tweedy, which I generally found interesting.  So, I finally found a copy of their critically acclaimed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album and decided to give it a spin.

And instantly loved it.

Ever since, I’ve been listening to alot of other music, but I’ve gone back to Wilco every time.  In the past two months, I’ve gone on an odyssey to discover as much about them as possible.  This has involved reading Wikipedia posts, skimming music magazines, and browsing through numerous CD store racks and used album bins.  In the process, I’ve found affordable copies of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot‘s predecessor, Summerteeth (which is the origin of the song I just added to the members-only section, which you should definitely check out soon!), and their first album, A.M.

Now, it’s not that Wilco is my new favorite band of all-time, by any means.  But there is a certain excitement that accompanies fresh territory, striking out into a land that is unusual and can present unexpected ideas, sounds, etc.  For instance, I learned all about Uncle Tupelo — a band I had heard OF but had never actually HEARD — because Uncle Tupelo, minus one member, became the first incarnation of Wilco.

But, I guess that’s a story for another time.

Suffice it to say that Uncle Tupelo is credited with founding the “alt-country” genre that I didn’t even know existed until recently.  As Tweedy progressed, he became more and more experimental with his music, particularly after the first couple Wilco albums.  He seems like an interesting musical figure to me, as he embodies that rock songwriter ideal; he has made some great music, and from many reports, he can be a bit of a jerk.  For instance, members of Wilco have been essentially summarily dismissed to make way for new musicians with new sounds to bring to the process.  While this may not make for pleasant interpersonal relationships, it has certainly made for some interesting musical variations and evolution in the band.

When I think of this song and this album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, in particular, I am reminded, to a degree, of some of the classic albums that have initially been criticized or even rejected by record company executives.  In this case, the hype surrounding the making of the album seems to have only aided and increased its eventual popularity.  Essentially, as Wilco recorded this album, but the powers-that-be needed to make some cuts at the label, so they released the band.  There are several conflicting stories, but the end result is that Wilco got to keep the recordings and rights to the then-new material, going on to another division of Warner Bros. to officially produce and release the album.  This caused a bit of a stir in the record industry at the time — particularly the public perception of the label’s treatment of this fairly longstanding act — and even though I wasn’t nearly as interested in music industry news as I am now, I remember something about this at the time.

The track I chose for tonight is the opening song, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.”  For better or worse, my version does not do justice to the studio version, which you should definitely listen to; for that matter, you should definitely listen to the album!  But, when I discovered that Jeff Tweedy does an acoustic version of this song in his acoustic sets, I couldn’t resist.  It’s a great song that sets the tone remarkably well for the album to follow.

I hope you enjoy my version and that you hurry back in the next couple days for Jeff and Jim.

See you next session!



“Crayons Can Melt On Us For All I Care” (Relient K Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

This session pretty much speaks for itself.

A Weekend Review Special Edition – Pearl Jam Live in Concert: Sat., May 15, 2010 at the XL Center

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Click HERE to view the set list!

By Chris Moore:

It is far too easy to sit down the day after a concert experience and glorify the memory of the past night.

What follows is, to the best of my ability, devoid of exaggeration.

Band of Horses opened the night with a solid forty-five minute set.  I enjoyed listening to their songs; it was all Band-style rock and vocals, if a little less rough-shod than Robertson, Helm, and company would have preferred.  Ben Bridwell and his band sufficiently caught my interest for their new album, Infinite Arms, which will be released this coming Tuesday.

This all being acknowledged, they are no Pearl Jam.

The majority of ticket-holders apparently agreed, as more than three quarters of the seats went unfilled until about ten minutes before the headliners came onstage.  By the time Matt Cameron, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, and Eddie Vedder took the stage, nearly every seat in the house was filled, including the majority of seats to the side of and behind the stage.

And when a band can fill seats with people willing to stare at their backs for most of the concert, that’s saying something.

Even from my vantage point at Vedder’s nine o’clock high up in the second to last row of the XL (nee Civic) Center in Hartford, CT, the show was a phenomenal experience, although it didn’t begin that way.  For some reason, the sound was softer and muddier than it should have been for the first several songs.

I had a nightmarish vision of having to listen to thousands of half-drunken Pearl Jam fans sing the hits while one of the greatest rock bands of all time labored away below me, in my vision but outside my hearing.  For the first four songs or so, this fear was realized as I had to struggle to hear Vedder’s baritone amidst shouting fans who clearly knew the words every bit as well as he did — and wanted to lend their vocals.  Even McCready and Gossard’s guitar work was buried, only Ament’s bass and Cameron’s stellar drumming standing out clearly the entire evening.  In between songs, Vedder sounded like he was speaking into a drive-thru speaker in a foreign language.

Then, like someone flipped a switch, Vedder’s voice suddenly came through loud and clear and the instruments all fell into place into the mix.  From this point on, the concert was pure energy and utter perfection.

This was a concert to compete with the best concert experiences of my lifetime (and admittedly limited experience).  There was all the instrumental prowess of Bob Dylan’s band with an ability to translate studio tracks to live performances that rivals — and perhaps surpasses — that of bands like America and Wilco.  The set list was among the most well-balanced I’ve seen, up there with Brian Wilson’s recent concerts which regularly and beautifully draw from throughout his storied career.  My only complaint concerning the set list — and I am most certainly going to be alone on this one — is its dismissal of Binaural (2000) and Riot Act (2002), which boast some of my favorite tracks in their catalog.

In the course of more than two hours of pure rock fury, the band played the first seven tracks of last year’s Backspacer, folding these new songs into their repetoire like they’ve been playing them for a decade.  I’m at a loss to name just one that stood out — I think “Got Some” first because I love it, but “The Fixer” was heart-pounding, catchy madness, and by the time “Johnny Guitar” rolled out, it was like Vedder and company had been unleashed.  In the first encore, they played a breath-taking version of the ninth track, “Speed of Sound,” noting that they hadn’t really played it before, at least not to their liking.  Gossard’s acoustic work was just right, and I can honestly assert that this was better than the album version.

This is not to say that the veteran Pearl Jam fans went unappeased, as Ten (1991), Vs. (1993), and Vitalogy (1994) were all well-represented.  Hits like “Even Flow,” “Alive,” and “Jeremy” were received as full-audience sing-a-longs, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear my favorite deep track on Ten, “Porch,” in all its angry glory.  “Daughter” and, less predictably, “Dissident” were played, but it wasn’t until their transcendent take on “Indifference” that I was blown away.  This was their second to last performance of the evening, with the lights up and the audience clapping for the entire song.  I’m proud to say I was one of the few that didn’t taper off in the middle, and even though I questioned if I was supposed to stop and my arms were screaming for me to relax, I wouldn’t have for the world.

Although Vitalogy is among my least favorite albums in the Pearl Jam catalog, it certainly has some of the best material they have ever released.  When they kicked off “Corduroy,” the crowd responded with the same sort of energetic approval I’ve rarely seen, the same as when Dylan finally reaches for a harmonica these days.  I was again pleasantly surprised to hear them roll into my favorite Vitalogy deep track, “Satan’s Bed.”  There’s something poignant about the in-your-face defiance of typical American indicators of success and image in this song, heard most clearly in the vocals and instrumental stop on the line “I’ll never suck Satan’s dick.”  Before “Nothingman,” Vedder dedicated the song to a young couple holding hands that he had seen on a street corner before the show, noting how profound that sort of affection is, as though it’s all they need in the world for all their days to come.  He referred to “Nothingman” as a cautionary tale to those who would forgo or forget the importance of love.

Another of my favorites, Yield (1998) alum “Do the Evolution,” was played, but it was admittedly overshadowed by their beautiful delivery of “Low Light,” one of my girlfriend Nicole’s favorites (her night was complete, as she had been hoping for “Johnny Guitar” and this one).

The night all wrapped up with a second encore closing cover of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” a la Hendrix, a song and an arrangement that Dylan uses often in his own encores to this day.

The music was brilliantly performed, the energy in the filled-to-capacity XL Center was unsurpassed, and even from the nosebleeds, it was clear that this was a concert that I will always remember as one of the best I’ve ever seen.  That I almost considered saving the money and not going to see Pearl Jam is beyond embarrassing; two decades later, they are one of the most impressive live bands going, most likely due the the fact that they are truly a band.  As much as Vedder’s personality and stage presence drives their image, each member of the band contributes to the writing of the songs and has an integral part of their sound.

As if to remind us of the fact that he prefers to share the spotlight, Vedder rode out the instrumental portion of “Porch” by using the reflection from his electric guitar, held above his head, to shine a beacon on each and every portion of the stadium, momentarily blinding each fan with brilliance — a literal gesture, and a fitting metaphor for the evening.

Reflections on Rock Music: "Alternative" to What? (Part One in a Series of Articles)

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PART ONE: “Alternative” to What?

By Chris Moore:

Classifying and categorizing, partitioning and labeling.  As humans, we love to take hold of vast, mysterious expanses and sort through them, putting neat little tags on each of the pieces and placing — sometimes forcing — them together into nicely packaged puzzles.  We call it “studying” and academia has often been dominated by experts who take pleasure in putting their knowledge to good use.

Now, this is certainly not all bad, but it’s certainly not all good.  On the one hand, we need labels to help us understand relevance and form connections across time periods and genres.  It is vital to understand that romantic writers are different from realist writers for a very specific set of reasons, a very specific set of beliefs about human nature and life itself.  This being said, on the other hand, we sometimes get to a point in certain subjects when the labels, tags, and titles become cumbersome.

Rock music, I assert, has become one of those subjects.

If you are a fan of any band and have done any research online, then it should not shock you to learn just how many different genres of music there are.  Indeed, it is not so much that there are too many genres, yet it seems there are too many categories or sub-genres.  I understand there is a clear and necessary distinction between classical music and pop/rock music.  I even understand the need for titles such as “Neo-Classical” and others that serve the purpose of tracking music over a number of decades, even centuries.  However, rock music, for all intents and purposes, has only been around since the 1950s.  In less than sixty years, music critics and rock historians have managed to accumulate quite the catalog of titles by which to…um, catalog…rock music.

Tonight, I’ll tackle the term “alternative” rock.

I love alternative rock.  And, having said that, I must admit that I’m not sure at times what alternative rock actually means or includes.  For instance, the term alternative rock — or alternative music or alt-rock — has come to be used as an umbrella term for a wide range of acts in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond.  Alternative rock has branched out and flowered into dozens and dozens of subgroups.  There’s punk rock, grunge, new wave, and post-punk just to name a few.  I like to think that I’ve done my research and I’ve listened to a wide range of rock music, and yet I have little to no idea of the specific criteria that separate one sub-group from the next.

What I find most interesting — and what I’d like to focus on in the remainder of this article — is the idea of “alternative” rock.  We all know that rock essentially began in the 1950s and 1960s, starting with its roots in folk and country and blues.  (This could, of course, be fodder for an entirely different article!)  After the age of classic performers like Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry passed, the age of songwriter performers was ushered in by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and many others.  The seventies unfolded another series of events in rock music history, probably most notably the beginning of the unraveling of the relationship between pop and rock.

Then came the 1980s.  With the eighties came the popularization of technology in music, which we all recognize today in the signature synthesized sounds of many if not most popular eighties singles.  In retrospect, many look back on this and laugh.  The eighties have been the breeding grounds for some hilarious parodies and comedies in the 1990s and even more recently.

That being said, there were some bands in the eighties that wanted to play rock music, and yet they did not seem to fit in to any particular mold.  Take R.E.M. for example.  R.E.M.’s debut album, Murmur, sounds nothing like the popular music of 1983.  Still, as Mitch Easter points out in the liner notes to the re-release of the album, they didn’t necessarily sound like anything that had come before, either.  This is interesting because this alternative rock band chose to play the same instruments that rock musicians had been playing for decades — guitar, bass, and drums.  The basics.  R.E.M. may play the classic instruments, but the overall sound was drastically different from other rock music.  In addition to Peter Buck’s guitar sound, Michael Stipe’s vocals are characteristically difficult to understand on their early work.  This is quite a departure from the multi-layered harmonies and lyric-centered rock of previous decades.  Although they would go on to develop and mature in their style, that first album seems to have set a tone that many look back to as an early marker in the alternative rock music movement.

Since the eighties, more and more bands have sought to create an “alternative” to the norm.  Some bands keep more of the traditional elements than others, and some have more of a respect for the rock of old than others.  This idea of “alternative” really does appeal to me, as I believe it appealed to a great many avid listeners in the 1980s and 1990s.  I came of age in the late nineties, just as alternative music’s hold on the national attention was waning.  Nirvana had come and gone.  Somewhere along the way, “alternative” rock seems to have been born, risen to popularity, and then receded into the background.  I hear some remnants of alt rock in some of the indie and the punk/emo music being made now.  And yet, it feels fractured and insignificant to me.  It truly feels as if I am a man out of time — if only I could have appreciated the music that was being created, recorded, and performed when I was a toddler!

As I scroll through the Wikipedia post on alternative rock music, I find the range of subgenres to be daunting.  There’s Britpop, college, rock, geek rock, gothic rock, noise pop, post-rock, twee pop, alternative metal, industrial rock, and so much more.  I’ll have to check out math rock — that’s one I’d never even heard of!

In my relatively brief time as a consumer of all things rock, I have felt a more and more profound splintering of the genre of rock.  Particularly in the alternative rock category, it feels as if any semblance of unity has been abandoned to a vast multitude of record labels, genre titles, and music magazines.  I wonder if there ever actually was a more unified feel to the alternative music of the 1980s and 1990s, or even of the classic rock of the 1950s and 1960s, but I suppose I’ll never know.

I suppose I can only continue to thumb through the used CD racks and fill in the gaps one album — one song — at a time.