Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on filesharing

[tiddles]

an interesting read for anyone not sick of the subject yet :wink:

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65688,00.html

[skahound]

Thanks for the link tiddles. Some of my favorite quotes:

What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them.

Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.

A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that's it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it's just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.

[Steve Graham]

sick of it , no

frustrated about it , yes

but.. it is good to see a rational opinion about it for once.

[leitmotif]

holy shit, how do you guys know Wilco
i <3 them
they just recently broadcasted live from the Fillmore in SF
an article:

Wilco seizes cyberspace for the blue states

On Monday night Wilco paid a visit to the Fillmore in San Francisco, and like
just about everyone else these days, singer Jeff Tweedy had politics all over
the brain. "Thanks for all the requests," he said to an electrified crowd after
the band rocked through a couple opening numbers. "We'll probably play 73
percent of them. And that's not an exit poll. That's an exact count."

The veteran Chicago band played at least that much of "A Ghost is Born" -- one
of the year's best rock albums, in a year that forgot just about everything else
but the presidential race. The new recording is a tour de force, on par with the
band's 1996 offering "Being There." In the last eight years, Wilco's recordings
often detoured into a little too much noise-for-noise's-sake, leaving you
wanting to peel back the frustrating layers of grit and snatch the melodic gems
buried underneath. You could forgive them, because Tweedy clearly was fed up
with the late '90s alt-country zeitgeist that sprouted a few too many shaggy
haircuts and Fender Telees in the urban clubs. There were some definite
highlights on "Mermaid Avenue" and "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," but in flying the
precarious banner of experimentalism, the band let its country-rock roots fade
far in the rear view mirror.

Now they've found their way back onto the road, picking up some serious Beatles
(especially Sgt. Pepper's-esque piano clusters) and Sonic Youth (swirling
guitars, scattershot cymbals) along the way. "Ghost" is muscular and imperfect
and has plenty of edge, and while Tweedy's divergent lyrics have never been
particularly political, the new music seemed made for the moment at hand.

As did the technology. "You guys are being cast on the Internets," Tweedy
grinned at one point, reminding the crowd of the concert's Webcast. "Say hello
to the folks in cyberspace." The crowd roared its approval. "Cyberspace is
definitely a blue state," he added.

There was also Tweedy's preamble to "War on war" from "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot."
"So when's this war gonna end?" he asked. "It's just gonna keep going and going
and going, isn't it. Only if we don't speak up.

"Don't mourn," he said, managing not to sound too preachy to the Bay Area choir.
"Organize."

A bit later in the evening, following a blistering version of "Monday," Tweedy
let loose some more red-state, blue-state riffage. Noting that it was getting
late, he pointed out how the San Francisco crowd was a bona fide example of
America's current cultural divide. "See, in blue states this is what we do. We
dance and sing on a Monday night. That's one difference, anyway."

As the two-hour-plus show throttled to a close (one guy behind me exclaimed,
"They don't have any songs left!") the minor psychedelia of lights playing
against the stage backdrop morphed into a few seconds of dark footage -- the big
bad fella himself. There he was, in all his smirking glory, Dubya. And sure
enough, he was firing off that infamous one-fingered victory salute.

Bush's mug, of course, set up what was perhaps the best political barb of the
evening. The band proceeded to bid farewell by laying into Blue Oyster Cult's
"Don't Fear the Reaper."

That signature, snarling guitar line never sounded quite so good.

[skahound]

holy shit, how do you guys know Wilco
i <3 them

Yeah, it's amazing, huh? When our [ms] mother ship landed a few months ago from the planet Digweedooine we were greeted by a man claiming to be Jeff Tweedy. I didn't think much of it at first until he started humming some old Uncle Tupelo tracks. It was at that precise moment that I realized we were being introduced to a sound that none of us were accustomed to...something other than 'thump..thump..thump..thump..thump..' So, we decided to stay and proceed with global domination of this place you call Earth.

[leitmotif]

haha. i know they made it big this year, but i've been around a few EDM sites and this is the first time i've seen them mentioned anywhere, really, besides wilco fansites/forums.
i'm obsessed

[skahound]

i'm obsessed

No worries, they make medication now to control that! Anyway, yeah good stuff. I really dig Uncle Tupelo though.

[tiddles]

i heart wilco too :P
*passes out copies of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot*