Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne Poll

But back to Jay, I also thought Sebastopol was a record that got very little acclaim. His backing band was Steven Drozde & Jon Wurster, and had Gillian Welch sing harmony on a duet that begins with the line "Anyone caught speaking Esperanto was thought crazy or headed for jail..." (need to post that to the best first lines thread).

Wilco is really big...there are so many Wilco fans that probably have no idea Uncle Tupelo existed

That RS oral history is great, Coomer's story about Wilco listening to "Trace" is amazing.

Also: Jay said the words that mattered. He said, “The only person I’m sick of in this room is you,” and pointed at Jeff.

Ahh band meetings where everyone lays it on the line, fun!

haha, yeah, brutal.

a UT reunion still seems super unlikely — there would have to be major effort on Farrar's part, I think, and that probably isn't going to happen. I could see some kinda random one-off, like the benefit that mould and hart played, but that's it.

would have to listen to it again, but yeah, i remember liking Sebastopol quite a bit at the time

yeah i guess i never listened to anodyne in the context of the later stories that came out

What the hell were we thinking
Before the fire burned out?
I can't find you now
And I didn't know you then

Watch it separate in two
Whatever the day wants it to
Finding out that the worst is true
Finding out that it can escape you
Slings and arrows completes the score
Always leaving, wanting more
And I try to throw it away

damn

Thanks for posting the oral history link, Tarfumes The Escape Goat.

You're welcome!

(with a few exceptions like "Blind Hope" off Wide Swing Tremelo)

god this is a good song. i always forget about it

I loved that first Son Volt album. Saw them on that tour and they were excellent. A year or two later I saw them again just before they released the 2nd album. What a difference. It was as if the entire band had taken valium. Every song was done at a crawling pace, with no energy or enthusiasm at all.

At one point, they played the song Ten Second News from Trace which is exceedingly down tempo. When they finished, my buddy turned to me and said, "Somehow they managed to slow that one down."

The album came out and any buzz they had was gone forever. That 2nd album still stands as one of the great momentum killing records.

I hadn't thought about this album in ages until my mom texted me a photo the cassette case of a mix I made for her* that had 3 UT songs on it. I remembered how obsessed my friends and I were with this album -- so obsessed that I wanted to share this band with my mom!

*that had been inside her car's trunk since the mid-'90s

I thought this was a pretty great song but I could never get through the whole album
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_6nx7zZzj8I

RE “Ten Second News” oddly enough that was one of the more interesting performances when he played the entire album at the show I saw. They had two pedal steel players going at the same time, creating a wall of sound behind his voice and guitar. Pretty cool. The rest of the show, as you might expect, stuck very close to the best. Closed it with a cover of Rainy Day Women that just seemed a bit dull and out of place.

How great would it be to hear Farrar have to sit through an hour-long Maron interview

UT on Early Conan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy3WkIfgkSQ

all-time great band

somehow never seen this thread

i'm a Jeff over Jay guy 100 times out of 100, but this thread underrates Straightaways, imo. lots of good songs on that one, as well as Wide Swing Tremolo.

agree that it's steeply downhill after that, tho. the "country" record he made (Honky Tonk) wasn't bad. and the New Multitudes record he made with Jim James, Will Johnson and Anders Parker was pretty good.

looking back, it's crazy that he agreed to make a record where he worked with other musicians to put unused Woody Guthrie lyrics a decade after Jeff did the same thing.

anyway, i just wrote a review of Cruel Country and it's not bad ... Jeff is still cool ... but holy moly, his output from 1991 to 2001 was pretty untouchable.

I remember the Melody Maker review of 16-20 1992. I used to adore Farrar's vocals and saw him as the natural "star".

Jeff kinda looking/grinning like Kim Deal in that Conan clip, imo.

Might be the best album of the 90s tbh

“Looking back, it's crazy that he agreed to make a record where he worked with other musicians to put unused Woody Guthrie lyrics a decade after Jeff did the same thing.”

Always thought the same thing. What a weird love. There’s a video on YouTube wherein he goes through a bunch of guitars he put up for sale on Reverb. So interesting to hear him talk for once. Dude is a mystery.