WILCO
''ALPHA MIKE FOXTROT: RARE TRACKS 1994-2014, DISC ONE''
NOVEMBER 17 2014
277:23
DISC ONE (70:11)
1 Childlike and Evergreen (Jeff Tweedy) 3:04
2 Someone Else's Song (Demo) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:49
3 Passenger Side (Demo) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:28
4 Promising (Jeff Tweedy) 3:01
5 The T.B. Is Whipping Me (Featuring Syd Straw) (Attributed to Ernest Tubb in tribute to Jimmie Rodgers) 3:41
6 I Must Be High (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:59
7 Casino Queen (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:53
8 Who Were You Thinking Of (Live) (Jim Glaser/Paul Gaubin/Cathie Pelletier) 2:35
9 I Am Not Willing (Featuring Syd Straw) (Peter Lewis) 3:52
10 Burned (Neil Young) 2:32
11 Blasting Fonda (Jeff Tweedy) 4:16
12 Thirteen (Alex Chilton/Chris Bell) 3:24
13 Don't You Honey Me (Jeff Tweedy) 3:17
14 The Lonely 1 (White Hen Version) (Jeff Tweedy) 4:18
15 No More Poetry (Jeff Tweedy) 3:31
16 Box Full of Letters (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 4:20
17 Red-Eyed and Blue (Live) (Wilco) 2:40
18 Forget the Flowers (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:10
19 Sunken Treasure (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 7:17
20 Monday (Demo) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:21
DISC TWO (67:00)
1 Passenger Side (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 1:53
2 Outtasite (Outta Mind) (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:39
3 I Got You at the End of the Century (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:03
4 Outta Mind (Outta Site) (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:48
5 James Alley Blues (Featuring Roger McGuinn) (Live) (Richard Brown) 3:21
6 At My Window Sad and Lonely (Jeff Tweedy Solo) (Words: Woody Guthrie/Music: Jeff Tweedy) 2:44
7 California Stars (Words: Woody Guthrie/Music: Jay Bennett/Jeff Tweedy) 3:45
8 One Hundred Years from Now (Gram Parsons) 2:50
9 A Shot in the Arm (Remix) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett/John Stirratt) 3:54
10 ELT (King Size Demo) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 3:38
11 Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway (Again) (David Kahne Remix) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett/John Stirratt) 3:19
12 She's a Jar (Austin Demo) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 4:38
13 Tried and True (Jeff Tweedy) 2:47
14 Student Loan Stereo (Jeff Tweedy) 1:45
15 True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston) 3:51
16 I'm Always in Love (Solo Live) (Wilco) 3:32
17 Via Chicago (Demo) (Wilco) 5:28
18 Can't Stand It (Live) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 3:56
19 Airline to Heaven (Alternate) (Words: Woody Guthrie/Music: Jay Bennett/Jeff Tweedy) 3:21
20 Any Major Dude Will Tell You (Walter Becker/Donald Fagen) 3:06
DISC THREE (68:56)
1 I'm the Man Who Loves You (Live) (Words: Jeff Tweedy/Music: Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 3:36
2 The Good Part (Jeff Tweedy) 2:47
3 Cars Can't Escape (Jay Bennett) 3:26
4 Camera (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 3:43
5 Handshake Drugs (First Version) (Jeff Tweedy) 5:07
6 A Magazine Called Sunset (Jeff Tweedy) 2:38
7 Bob Dylan's 49th Beard (Jeff Tweedy) 2:20
8 Woodgrain (Jeff Tweedy) 1:42
9 More Like the Moon (Jeff Tweedy) 6:05
10 Let Me Come Home (Jeff Tweedy) 2:30
11 Old Maid (Jeff Tweedy) 2:44
12 Hummingbird (Alternate) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:55
13 Spiders (Kidsmoke) (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 10:00
14 Hell Is Chrome (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 4:27
15 At Least That's What You Said (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 5:51
16 The Late Greats (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:39
17 Just a Kid (Featuring The Blisters) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:51
18 Kicking Television (Jeff Tweedy) 2:47
DISC FOUR (71:16)
1 Panthers (Jeff Tweedy/Mikael Jorgensen/John Stirratt/Glenn Kotche/Leroy Bach) 3:49
2 Theologians (Live) (Words: Jeff Tweedy/Music: Jeff Tweedy/Mikael Jorgensen/Chris Girard) 3:32
3 Another Man's Done Gone (Live) (Lyrics: Woody Guthrie/Music: Billy Bragg) 1:42
4 I'm a Wheel (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:40
5 How to Fight Loneliess (Live) (Words: Woody Guthrie/Music: Jeff Tweedy) 4:38
6 One True Vine (Jeff Tweedy) 2:10
7 The Thanks I Get (Jeff Tweedy) 3:32
8 Let's Not Get Carried Away (Jeff Tweedy/Glenn Kotche) 4:10
9 Hate It Here (Live) (Jeff Tweedy/Wilco) 4:31
10 Impossible Germany (Live) (Jeff Tweedy/Wilco) 6:06
11 I Shall Be Released (Featuring Fleet Foxes) (Live) (Bob Dylan) 3:33
12 What Light (Jeff Tweedy) 3:05
13 Jesus, etc. (Featuring Andrew Bird) (Live/Soundtrack) (Words: Jeff Tweedy/Music: Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 4:01
14 Glad It's Over (Jeff Tweedy) 4:17
15 Dark Neon (Jeff Tweedy) 4:23
16 The Jolly Banker (Woodie Guthrie) 3:27
17 Unlikely Japan (Jeff Tweedy/Mikael Jorgensen/Chris Girard) 5:14
18 You and I (with Feist) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:16
19 I Love My Label (Nick Lowe/Profile) 3:26
REVIEW
by Mark Deming (AllMusic)
In the book that accompanies Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014, a four-disc collection of rare and non-LP recordings by Wilco, former Reprise Records publicist Bill Bentley admits that no less a legend than Doug Sahm thought he was making a mistake when, after Uncle Tupelo abruptly and acrimoniously broke up, Bentley opted to work with Jeff Tweedy's new band rather than Son Volt, Jar Farrar's post-UT project. "Come on, Bentley, you gotta go with the other guy," Sahm said, "he's gonna happen." Which was certainly the conventional wisdom when Wilco and Son Volt launched in 1994 -- most fans seemed certain that Farrar was going to go on to a brilliant career on his own, and Tweedy's band would be a fine but lesser commodity. But those bets were off after Wilco released their ambitious, game-changing second album, Being There, in 1996, and in the years that followed, it became clear that Tweedy was a stronger songwriter, a more imaginative sonic visionary, and a keener judge of collaborators than he'd had the chance to show in Uncle Tupelo. Two decades on from their debut, Wilco have created a large and impressively diverse body of work, and Alpha Mike Foxtrot is a massive odds-and-sods collection, bringing together 77 tracks from singles, promo releases, movie soundtracks, bonus discs, and downloads from Wilco's website. Alpha Mike Foxtrot plays like an alternate history of Wilco, and most of what's here is every bit as satisfying as what the band delivered on its first eight studio albums, if more idiosyncratic; it traces the evolution of the band from early solo cassette demos Tweedy cut in his living room to extended workouts from the lineup that solidified after the release of A Ghost Is Born, as Wilco grew from a spirited alt-country combo to a rock band as adventurous and eager to innovate as it was engaging and tuneful (Tweedy's simple but powerful way with a melody is the surest unifying factor that holds these songs together). And the plentiful live tracks here demonstrate how willing Tweedy and his bandmates have been to give their songs new shapes on-stage (a ten-minute live recording of "Spiders [Kidsmoke]" is a tremendous showcase for Nels Cline's stellar guitar work), and there's a fistful of studio tracks that didn't fit on an album but sound splendid in this context, especially the Replacements-styled "Student Loan Stereo," the soulful "The Thanks I Get," and the faux-live pop/rocker "The Good Part." In the strictest sense, nothing on Alpha Mike Foxtrot is unreleased, but there's a lot here that's never been available for general public consumption, and while the sheer bulk of this set means it's most likely to be heard by hardcore fans, anyone with a genuine interest in Wilco will find a lot of great music that fell between the cracks on this set, as well as a fascinating map of the many roads Wilco did and didn't take.
MORE REVIEW
By Ryan Dombal, Pitchfork.com
Near the start of Alpha Mike Foxtrot, a 77-track collection of rarities, alternate takes, and live tracks from across Wilco’s 20-year career, Jeff Tweedy can be heard worrying about whether he has a place in the long line of great singer/songwriters that came before him. "You already know the story, the chords are just the same," he sings, accompanied by strums and warbling cassette ambience. "You already know I love you, now I sound like what's-his-name."
When he recorded the demo of "Someone Else’s Song", Tweedy was entering a scary new phase of his musical—and personal—life after the dissolution of alt-country heroes Uncle Tupelo, in which he mostly played second fiddle to fellow frontman Jay Farrar. And in 1995, the same year the demo was originally released, the then-28-year-old became a new husband and father, with little name recognition and no discernible life skills other than writing and singing songs. But even on that imperfect artifact, a lot of what would later define Tweedy as an artist was apparent: the casualness, the anxiety, the almost-uncomfortable sincerity. Meanwhile, the randomness of the recorded-over cassette’s pops and hisses could be heard as an accidental precursor to the unplanned abstractions that would later elevate Wilco to the realm of America’s most innovative rock bands. So just as the early take on "Someone Else’s Song" catches a vulnerable songwriter at an especially vulnerable moment, its overall message is resolute, with Tweedy spinning his referential concerns into confidence: "You can't stop me, I want you to know/ I know it sounds like someone else's song, from a long time ago."
Both Alpha Mike Foxtrot and the 38-song What’s Your 20? best-of compilation offer compelling timelines of Wilco’s unlikely evolution from somewhat-generic roots rockers, to quasi-pop studio mad men, to soothsaying rock’n’roll deconstructionists, to spasmodic guitar adventurers, to epiphanic jammers, to a comfortable, if less exciting, combination of all those previous guises. What’s Your 20? is for the neophytes—it’s a very reasonable place to start for future generations facing down Wilco’s full catalog on Spotify. Alpha is for the die-hards, the ones who may have a yellowing ticket stub from the band’s fall 2001 tour in a drawer somewhere, who know all the words without thinking, who want to live through this band once again, but in a skewed, newish way.
Every track isn’t some kind of lost classic, and not just because every track has already been released in some form, whether as a B-side, on a soundtrack, or via the band’s website. Even Tweedy himself acknowledges some of the lesser moments here with off-the-cuff, generally-on-point track-by-track liner notes: He describes a scattershot remix of Summerteeth’s "A Shot in the Arm" by David Kahne (aka the guy who rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and dropped Wilco from Reprise Records) as "a dated mess [that] doesn’t have anything to do with the feeling that I had about the song," and confesses that the horny, cringe-worthy "Old Maid" is drummer "Glenn Kotche’s least favorite song in the entire Wilco oeuvre." Running nearly five hours, Alpha plays like a clearinghouse more than a finely-edited set but, largely thanks to its bevy of well-chosen live tracks, its sidelong view of Wilco is worth a peek.
Though Tweedy first gained attention as an acolyte of classic country and folk, it’s his penchant for upending convention that has proven to be most enduring. This restlessness was there from the beginning; though Uncle Tupelo were known for their reverence to songwriting tradition, they also weren’t afraid to bust out a blitzing punk version of "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door"—or a country take on the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog". Alpha highlights this rip-‘em-up aesthetic early on with two versions of the small-town ode "Passenger Side", from Wilco’s 1995 debut, A.M.; the first jangles and twangs tastefully while the second turns the song into a pop-punk screecher in the Replacements mold.
This contrarian strategy—taking a quiet song and exploding it live, or vice versa—offered a way for Wilco to make their early songs, along with the band itself, more slippery and less susceptible to pigeonholing. Another great example of this from Alpha is an aching guitar-and-piano take on A.M.’s "Box of Letters", which reveals the hurt underneath the kiss-off’s biting album version while reminding us of the warmth of Tweedy’s determined shrug of a voice. Eventually, the band figured out how to combine its multiple musical personalities within one song as Tweedy delved further into himself to tease-out a fresh kind of indirect writing based on improvisation and subconscious connection.
"For a long time, I thought if I wrote a song that anybody could sing, I'd succeeded," he told The Chicago Reader in 2004. “Then I started losing interest in that and started feeling like I wanted to write stuff that only makes sense if I sing it." A watershed example of this approach is Summerteeth’s "Via Chicago", which morphs from a downtrodden ballad to a tumbling feedback squall while Tweedy nonchalantly dreams of murder. It's not a Bob Dylan song, or a Neil Young song, or a Tom Petty song. It is a Jeff Tweedy song, a Wilco song. The track is rightly included in What’s Your 20?, though the early demo of it featured on Alpha is just a static, stepping-stone take that Tweedy himself calls "sad and miserable."
A huge factor going into Wilco’s ever-changing sound throughout their first decade was the band’s ever-changing lineup. For instance, the change from Summerteeth’s maximalism to the focused austerity of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot can in part be attributed to the band recruiting known experimenter Jim O’Rourke to mix Foxtrot at the same time as they were losing touch with multi-instrumentalist, producer, and overdub impresario Jay Bennett. Later on, Bennett’s ouster would lead Tweedy to flex his lead-guitar muscle on the brilliant A Ghost Is Born. And it’s this middle period filled with personnel switches and personal tumult—Summerteeth, Foxtrot, and Ghost—that still stands as their greatest work.
Considering Foxtrot’s lofty status within the history of Wilco—along with its sign-of-the-times label drama, it’s still their best-selling album by a wide margin—it is somewhat underrepresented on Alpha. The box set boasts a few relatively well-known outtakes, but in light of Foxtrot’s painstaking gestation, which had the band trying songs out in many different styles to see what stuck, it would have been interesting to hear a few previously unreleased attempts at those beloved tracks.
The material culled from Wilco’s ambitious and fruitful time making and playing Ghost is more substantial, peaking with three consecutive 2004 live tracks featuring their fleshed-out six-man incarnation, which remains intact to this day: 10-minute motorik blast "Spiders (Kidsmoke)", eerie deal-with-the-devil update "Hell Is Chrome", and the monolithic and bipolar "At Least That’s What You Said" all spotlight Tweedy’s stunning distorted guitar work—oddly one of the band’s most underutilized assets—which combines the majesty of Television’s Marquee Moon with the spontaneity of free jazz great Albert Ayler. The sheer emotional audacity of these solos cannot be overstated; 21st-century rock guitar does not get better than this. After figuring out how to get the most out of abstracting his lyrics and arrangements on Foxtrot, Tweedy did himself one better by eliminating language altogether on large swaths of Ghost, replacing it with six-string bursts that said just as much, if not more.
Whereas material from the first five Wilco albums make up the lion’s share of Alpha, the band’s last three records are only represented by about a dozen tracks, which seems about right. Because while those albums, especially 2007’s earthy Sky Blue Sky, contain great individual songs, they don’t coalesce the way Wilco’s best albums do. Perhaps the stability of their lineup has made it harder for them to make exciting left turns, or maybe Tweedy grew tired of constantly pushing himself and his audience to uncomfortable places. Even the singer himself recently admitted that their last record, 2011’s The Whole Love, "was taken for granted a little bit, not necessarily by critics, maybe by ourselves." After 20 years of Wilco, Tweedy is seemingly no longer vexed by the prospect of overcoming someone else’s song—though surpassing his own is only getting tougher.
BIOGRAPHY
by Jason Ankeny (AllMusic)
Wilco rose from the ashes of the seminal roots rock band Uncle Tupelo, which disbanded in 1994. While Jay Farrar, one of the group's two singer/songwriters, went on to form Son Volt, his ex-partner Jeff Tweedy established Wilco along with the remaining members of Tupelo's final incarnation, which included drummer Ken Coomer as well as part-time bandmates John Stirratt (bass) and Max Johnston (mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and lap steel). Guitarist Jay Bennett rounded out the group, which in 1995 issued its debut album, A.M., a collection of spry country-rock tunes that followed the course established in Tweedy's earlier work.
Wilco's sophomore effort, 1996's two-disc set Being There, marked a radical transformation in the group's sound; while remaining steeped in the style that earned Tweedy his reputation, the songs took unexpected detours into psychedelia, power pop, and soul, complete with orchestral touches and R&B horn flourishes. Shortly after the release of Being There, which most critics judged to be among the year's best releases, Johnston left the group to play with his sister, singer Michelle Shocked, and was replaced by guitarist Bob Egan of the band Freakwater. At the same time, while remaining full-time members of Wilco, Stirratt, Bennett, and Coomer also began performing together in the pop side project Courtesy Move. In 1998, Wilco collaborated with singer/songwriter Billy Bragg on Mermaid Avenue, a collection of performances based on unreleased material originally written by Woody Guthrie.
Their stunningly lush third album, Summerteeth, followed in 1999 and met with critical acclaim but only average sales, initiating tensions with their label, Warner Bros. Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 2, which featured more selections from the band's collaborations with Bragg on Woody Guthrie's unfinished songs, was issued in 2000. Following this release, longtime drummer Ken Coomer decided to amicably leave the band and was replaced by the Chicago-based Glenn Kotche. Wilco then focused on recording their fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which ultimately led to the departure of guitarist Jay Bennett and further tensions with their label. Unwilling to change the album to make it more "commercially viable," Wilco bought the finished studio tapes from Warner/Reprise for a reported $50,000 and left the label altogether.
Leaked tracks from the album surfaced on the Internet in late 2001, and the stripped-down lineup of Tweedy, Kotche, Stirratt, and multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach embarked on a small tour to support -- or drum up support for -- the unreleased record. Nonesuch Records picked up the album and officially released it in early 2002 to widespread critical acclaim. Meanwhile, an independent film documenting the drama surrounding the album (I Am Trying to Break Your Heart) followed in the fall of 2002. During the down time after the album was recorded, Tweedy composed and recorded the film score to the Ethan Hawke film Chelsea Walls, which ended up being released around the same time as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Wilco toured extensively following the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and in 2003 began work on their next album, A Ghost Is Born. While sessions went smoothly compared to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, after the album was finished Leroy Bach left the band in a split that was described as mutual and amicable; guitarist Nels Cline, keyboardist Mike Jorgensen, and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone joined Wilco for their subsequent tour. Shortly before the album's release, Tweedy surprised many fans by announcing he had entered a drug rehabilitation facility to treat a dependency on painkillers, prescribed to treat a long history of migraine headaches aggravated by panic disorder. Tweedy discussed his health problems in depth, along with the often tangled history of Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, in Wilco: Learning How to Die, a biography of the group written by rock journalist Greg Kot, published to coincide with A Ghost Is Born's release in the spring of 2004.
The following year, the group released Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, a 23-track collection recorded in the Windy City's Vic Theater, an album that was later deemed one of the Top 20 best live albums by Q Magazine. In 2007 Wilco's sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, hit shelves. Less experimental than its predecessors, Sky Blue Sky peaked at number five on the U.S. album charts and made a strong showing internationally. Wilco's seventh album, the breezy and laid-back Wilco (The Album), was released on June 30, 2009, one month after the death of former bandmember Jay Bennett, who passed away in his home in Urbana, Illinois after accidentally overdosing on the prescription painkiller fentanyl.
At the end of touring that album, Wilco took a break for much of 2010 (their longest break since formation) and resurfaced in 2011 with their own label, dBpm Records, and the release of The Whole Love. Wilco toured extensively in support of the album, including a string of dates with Nick Lowe, and stayed busy on the road in 2013, taking part in the Americanarama Festival of Music, a package tour that found Wilco sharing the bill with Bob Dylan, Richard Thompson, and My Morning Jacket. In 2014, John Stirratt's side project the Autumn Defense released a new album, Fifth, and Jeff Tweedy inaugurated a new project, Tweedy, that found him collaborating with his teenage son Spencer, who played drums and percussion. The family band released their first album, Sukierae, in September 2014, with the combo touring in support. 2014 also marked Wilco's 20th Anniversary, and the group celebrated the event with a pair of archival releases -- What's Your Twenty? Essential Tracks 1994-2104, a two-disc set that collected the band's best and most popular tunes, and Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014, a four-disc set of obscure and unreleased material. Wilco also celebrated their first two decades with a series of multi-night stands in several cities, including a six-night residency at the Riviera Theater in Chicago.
BIOGRAPHY (WIKIPEDIA)
OFFICIAL SITE
''ALPHA MIKE FOXTROT: RARE TRACKS 1994-2014, DISC ONE''
NOVEMBER 17 2014
277:23
DISC ONE (70:11)
1 Childlike and Evergreen (Jeff Tweedy) 3:04
2 Someone Else's Song (Demo) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:49
3 Passenger Side (Demo) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:28
4 Promising (Jeff Tweedy) 3:01
5 The T.B. Is Whipping Me (Featuring Syd Straw) (Attributed to Ernest Tubb in tribute to Jimmie Rodgers) 3:41
6 I Must Be High (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:59
7 Casino Queen (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:53
8 Who Were You Thinking Of (Live) (Jim Glaser/Paul Gaubin/Cathie Pelletier) 2:35
9 I Am Not Willing (Featuring Syd Straw) (Peter Lewis) 3:52
10 Burned (Neil Young) 2:32
11 Blasting Fonda (Jeff Tweedy) 4:16
12 Thirteen (Alex Chilton/Chris Bell) 3:24
13 Don't You Honey Me (Jeff Tweedy) 3:17
14 The Lonely 1 (White Hen Version) (Jeff Tweedy) 4:18
15 No More Poetry (Jeff Tweedy) 3:31
16 Box Full of Letters (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 4:20
17 Red-Eyed and Blue (Live) (Wilco) 2:40
18 Forget the Flowers (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:10
19 Sunken Treasure (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 7:17
20 Monday (Demo) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:21
DISC TWO (67:00)
1 Passenger Side (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 1:53
2 Outtasite (Outta Mind) (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:39
3 I Got You at the End of the Century (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:03
4 Outta Mind (Outta Site) (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:48
5 James Alley Blues (Featuring Roger McGuinn) (Live) (Richard Brown) 3:21
6 At My Window Sad and Lonely (Jeff Tweedy Solo) (Words: Woody Guthrie/Music: Jeff Tweedy) 2:44
7 California Stars (Words: Woody Guthrie/Music: Jay Bennett/Jeff Tweedy) 3:45
8 One Hundred Years from Now (Gram Parsons) 2:50
9 A Shot in the Arm (Remix) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett/John Stirratt) 3:54
10 ELT (King Size Demo) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 3:38
11 Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway (Again) (David Kahne Remix) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett/John Stirratt) 3:19
12 She's a Jar (Austin Demo) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 4:38
13 Tried and True (Jeff Tweedy) 2:47
14 Student Loan Stereo (Jeff Tweedy) 1:45
15 True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston) 3:51
16 I'm Always in Love (Solo Live) (Wilco) 3:32
17 Via Chicago (Demo) (Wilco) 5:28
18 Can't Stand It (Live) (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 3:56
19 Airline to Heaven (Alternate) (Words: Woody Guthrie/Music: Jay Bennett/Jeff Tweedy) 3:21
20 Any Major Dude Will Tell You (Walter Becker/Donald Fagen) 3:06
DISC THREE (68:56)
1 I'm the Man Who Loves You (Live) (Words: Jeff Tweedy/Music: Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 3:36
2 The Good Part (Jeff Tweedy) 2:47
3 Cars Can't Escape (Jay Bennett) 3:26
4 Camera (Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 3:43
5 Handshake Drugs (First Version) (Jeff Tweedy) 5:07
6 A Magazine Called Sunset (Jeff Tweedy) 2:38
7 Bob Dylan's 49th Beard (Jeff Tweedy) 2:20
8 Woodgrain (Jeff Tweedy) 1:42
9 More Like the Moon (Jeff Tweedy) 6:05
10 Let Me Come Home (Jeff Tweedy) 2:30
11 Old Maid (Jeff Tweedy) 2:44
12 Hummingbird (Alternate) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:55
13 Spiders (Kidsmoke) (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 10:00
14 Hell Is Chrome (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 4:27
15 At Least That's What You Said (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 5:51
16 The Late Greats (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:39
17 Just a Kid (Featuring The Blisters) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:51
18 Kicking Television (Jeff Tweedy) 2:47
DISC FOUR (71:16)
1 Panthers (Jeff Tweedy/Mikael Jorgensen/John Stirratt/Glenn Kotche/Leroy Bach) 3:49
2 Theologians (Live) (Words: Jeff Tweedy/Music: Jeff Tweedy/Mikael Jorgensen/Chris Girard) 3:32
3 Another Man's Done Gone (Live) (Lyrics: Woody Guthrie/Music: Billy Bragg) 1:42
4 I'm a Wheel (Live) (Jeff Tweedy) 2:40
5 How to Fight Loneliess (Live) (Words: Woody Guthrie/Music: Jeff Tweedy) 4:38
6 One True Vine (Jeff Tweedy) 2:10
7 The Thanks I Get (Jeff Tweedy) 3:32
8 Let's Not Get Carried Away (Jeff Tweedy/Glenn Kotche) 4:10
9 Hate It Here (Live) (Jeff Tweedy/Wilco) 4:31
10 Impossible Germany (Live) (Jeff Tweedy/Wilco) 6:06
11 I Shall Be Released (Featuring Fleet Foxes) (Live) (Bob Dylan) 3:33
12 What Light (Jeff Tweedy) 3:05
13 Jesus, etc. (Featuring Andrew Bird) (Live/Soundtrack) (Words: Jeff Tweedy/Music: Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett) 4:01
14 Glad It's Over (Jeff Tweedy) 4:17
15 Dark Neon (Jeff Tweedy) 4:23
16 The Jolly Banker (Woodie Guthrie) 3:27
17 Unlikely Japan (Jeff Tweedy/Mikael Jorgensen/Chris Girard) 5:14
18 You and I (with Feist) (Jeff Tweedy) 3:16
19 I Love My Label (Nick Lowe/Profile) 3:26
REVIEW
by Mark Deming (AllMusic)
In the book that accompanies Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014, a four-disc collection of rare and non-LP recordings by Wilco, former Reprise Records publicist Bill Bentley admits that no less a legend than Doug Sahm thought he was making a mistake when, after Uncle Tupelo abruptly and acrimoniously broke up, Bentley opted to work with Jeff Tweedy's new band rather than Son Volt, Jar Farrar's post-UT project. "Come on, Bentley, you gotta go with the other guy," Sahm said, "he's gonna happen." Which was certainly the conventional wisdom when Wilco and Son Volt launched in 1994 -- most fans seemed certain that Farrar was going to go on to a brilliant career on his own, and Tweedy's band would be a fine but lesser commodity. But those bets were off after Wilco released their ambitious, game-changing second album, Being There, in 1996, and in the years that followed, it became clear that Tweedy was a stronger songwriter, a more imaginative sonic visionary, and a keener judge of collaborators than he'd had the chance to show in Uncle Tupelo. Two decades on from their debut, Wilco have created a large and impressively diverse body of work, and Alpha Mike Foxtrot is a massive odds-and-sods collection, bringing together 77 tracks from singles, promo releases, movie soundtracks, bonus discs, and downloads from Wilco's website. Alpha Mike Foxtrot plays like an alternate history of Wilco, and most of what's here is every bit as satisfying as what the band delivered on its first eight studio albums, if more idiosyncratic; it traces the evolution of the band from early solo cassette demos Tweedy cut in his living room to extended workouts from the lineup that solidified after the release of A Ghost Is Born, as Wilco grew from a spirited alt-country combo to a rock band as adventurous and eager to innovate as it was engaging and tuneful (Tweedy's simple but powerful way with a melody is the surest unifying factor that holds these songs together). And the plentiful live tracks here demonstrate how willing Tweedy and his bandmates have been to give their songs new shapes on-stage (a ten-minute live recording of "Spiders [Kidsmoke]" is a tremendous showcase for Nels Cline's stellar guitar work), and there's a fistful of studio tracks that didn't fit on an album but sound splendid in this context, especially the Replacements-styled "Student Loan Stereo," the soulful "The Thanks I Get," and the faux-live pop/rocker "The Good Part." In the strictest sense, nothing on Alpha Mike Foxtrot is unreleased, but there's a lot here that's never been available for general public consumption, and while the sheer bulk of this set means it's most likely to be heard by hardcore fans, anyone with a genuine interest in Wilco will find a lot of great music that fell between the cracks on this set, as well as a fascinating map of the many roads Wilco did and didn't take.
MORE REVIEW
By Ryan Dombal, Pitchfork.com
Near the start of Alpha Mike Foxtrot, a 77-track collection of rarities, alternate takes, and live tracks from across Wilco’s 20-year career, Jeff Tweedy can be heard worrying about whether he has a place in the long line of great singer/songwriters that came before him. "You already know the story, the chords are just the same," he sings, accompanied by strums and warbling cassette ambience. "You already know I love you, now I sound like what's-his-name."
When he recorded the demo of "Someone Else’s Song", Tweedy was entering a scary new phase of his musical—and personal—life after the dissolution of alt-country heroes Uncle Tupelo, in which he mostly played second fiddle to fellow frontman Jay Farrar. And in 1995, the same year the demo was originally released, the then-28-year-old became a new husband and father, with little name recognition and no discernible life skills other than writing and singing songs. But even on that imperfect artifact, a lot of what would later define Tweedy as an artist was apparent: the casualness, the anxiety, the almost-uncomfortable sincerity. Meanwhile, the randomness of the recorded-over cassette’s pops and hisses could be heard as an accidental precursor to the unplanned abstractions that would later elevate Wilco to the realm of America’s most innovative rock bands. So just as the early take on "Someone Else’s Song" catches a vulnerable songwriter at an especially vulnerable moment, its overall message is resolute, with Tweedy spinning his referential concerns into confidence: "You can't stop me, I want you to know/ I know it sounds like someone else's song, from a long time ago."
Both Alpha Mike Foxtrot and the 38-song What’s Your 20? best-of compilation offer compelling timelines of Wilco’s unlikely evolution from somewhat-generic roots rockers, to quasi-pop studio mad men, to soothsaying rock’n’roll deconstructionists, to spasmodic guitar adventurers, to epiphanic jammers, to a comfortable, if less exciting, combination of all those previous guises. What’s Your 20? is for the neophytes—it’s a very reasonable place to start for future generations facing down Wilco’s full catalog on Spotify. Alpha is for the die-hards, the ones who may have a yellowing ticket stub from the band’s fall 2001 tour in a drawer somewhere, who know all the words without thinking, who want to live through this band once again, but in a skewed, newish way.
Every track isn’t some kind of lost classic, and not just because every track has already been released in some form, whether as a B-side, on a soundtrack, or via the band’s website. Even Tweedy himself acknowledges some of the lesser moments here with off-the-cuff, generally-on-point track-by-track liner notes: He describes a scattershot remix of Summerteeth’s "A Shot in the Arm" by David Kahne (aka the guy who rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and dropped Wilco from Reprise Records) as "a dated mess [that] doesn’t have anything to do with the feeling that I had about the song," and confesses that the horny, cringe-worthy "Old Maid" is drummer "Glenn Kotche’s least favorite song in the entire Wilco oeuvre." Running nearly five hours, Alpha plays like a clearinghouse more than a finely-edited set but, largely thanks to its bevy of well-chosen live tracks, its sidelong view of Wilco is worth a peek.
Though Tweedy first gained attention as an acolyte of classic country and folk, it’s his penchant for upending convention that has proven to be most enduring. This restlessness was there from the beginning; though Uncle Tupelo were known for their reverence to songwriting tradition, they also weren’t afraid to bust out a blitzing punk version of "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door"—or a country take on the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog". Alpha highlights this rip-‘em-up aesthetic early on with two versions of the small-town ode "Passenger Side", from Wilco’s 1995 debut, A.M.; the first jangles and twangs tastefully while the second turns the song into a pop-punk screecher in the Replacements mold.
This contrarian strategy—taking a quiet song and exploding it live, or vice versa—offered a way for Wilco to make their early songs, along with the band itself, more slippery and less susceptible to pigeonholing. Another great example of this from Alpha is an aching guitar-and-piano take on A.M.’s "Box of Letters", which reveals the hurt underneath the kiss-off’s biting album version while reminding us of the warmth of Tweedy’s determined shrug of a voice. Eventually, the band figured out how to combine its multiple musical personalities within one song as Tweedy delved further into himself to tease-out a fresh kind of indirect writing based on improvisation and subconscious connection.
"For a long time, I thought if I wrote a song that anybody could sing, I'd succeeded," he told The Chicago Reader in 2004. “Then I started losing interest in that and started feeling like I wanted to write stuff that only makes sense if I sing it." A watershed example of this approach is Summerteeth’s "Via Chicago", which morphs from a downtrodden ballad to a tumbling feedback squall while Tweedy nonchalantly dreams of murder. It's not a Bob Dylan song, or a Neil Young song, or a Tom Petty song. It is a Jeff Tweedy song, a Wilco song. The track is rightly included in What’s Your 20?, though the early demo of it featured on Alpha is just a static, stepping-stone take that Tweedy himself calls "sad and miserable."
A huge factor going into Wilco’s ever-changing sound throughout their first decade was the band’s ever-changing lineup. For instance, the change from Summerteeth’s maximalism to the focused austerity of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot can in part be attributed to the band recruiting known experimenter Jim O’Rourke to mix Foxtrot at the same time as they were losing touch with multi-instrumentalist, producer, and overdub impresario Jay Bennett. Later on, Bennett’s ouster would lead Tweedy to flex his lead-guitar muscle on the brilliant A Ghost Is Born. And it’s this middle period filled with personnel switches and personal tumult—Summerteeth, Foxtrot, and Ghost—that still stands as their greatest work.
Considering Foxtrot’s lofty status within the history of Wilco—along with its sign-of-the-times label drama, it’s still their best-selling album by a wide margin—it is somewhat underrepresented on Alpha. The box set boasts a few relatively well-known outtakes, but in light of Foxtrot’s painstaking gestation, which had the band trying songs out in many different styles to see what stuck, it would have been interesting to hear a few previously unreleased attempts at those beloved tracks.
The material culled from Wilco’s ambitious and fruitful time making and playing Ghost is more substantial, peaking with three consecutive 2004 live tracks featuring their fleshed-out six-man incarnation, which remains intact to this day: 10-minute motorik blast "Spiders (Kidsmoke)", eerie deal-with-the-devil update "Hell Is Chrome", and the monolithic and bipolar "At Least That’s What You Said" all spotlight Tweedy’s stunning distorted guitar work—oddly one of the band’s most underutilized assets—which combines the majesty of Television’s Marquee Moon with the spontaneity of free jazz great Albert Ayler. The sheer emotional audacity of these solos cannot be overstated; 21st-century rock guitar does not get better than this. After figuring out how to get the most out of abstracting his lyrics and arrangements on Foxtrot, Tweedy did himself one better by eliminating language altogether on large swaths of Ghost, replacing it with six-string bursts that said just as much, if not more.
Whereas material from the first five Wilco albums make up the lion’s share of Alpha, the band’s last three records are only represented by about a dozen tracks, which seems about right. Because while those albums, especially 2007’s earthy Sky Blue Sky, contain great individual songs, they don’t coalesce the way Wilco’s best albums do. Perhaps the stability of their lineup has made it harder for them to make exciting left turns, or maybe Tweedy grew tired of constantly pushing himself and his audience to uncomfortable places. Even the singer himself recently admitted that their last record, 2011’s The Whole Love, "was taken for granted a little bit, not necessarily by critics, maybe by ourselves." After 20 years of Wilco, Tweedy is seemingly no longer vexed by the prospect of overcoming someone else’s song—though surpassing his own is only getting tougher.
BIOGRAPHY
by Jason Ankeny (AllMusic)
Wilco rose from the ashes of the seminal roots rock band Uncle Tupelo, which disbanded in 1994. While Jay Farrar, one of the group's two singer/songwriters, went on to form Son Volt, his ex-partner Jeff Tweedy established Wilco along with the remaining members of Tupelo's final incarnation, which included drummer Ken Coomer as well as part-time bandmates John Stirratt (bass) and Max Johnston (mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and lap steel). Guitarist Jay Bennett rounded out the group, which in 1995 issued its debut album, A.M., a collection of spry country-rock tunes that followed the course established in Tweedy's earlier work.
Wilco's sophomore effort, 1996's two-disc set Being There, marked a radical transformation in the group's sound; while remaining steeped in the style that earned Tweedy his reputation, the songs took unexpected detours into psychedelia, power pop, and soul, complete with orchestral touches and R&B horn flourishes. Shortly after the release of Being There, which most critics judged to be among the year's best releases, Johnston left the group to play with his sister, singer Michelle Shocked, and was replaced by guitarist Bob Egan of the band Freakwater. At the same time, while remaining full-time members of Wilco, Stirratt, Bennett, and Coomer also began performing together in the pop side project Courtesy Move. In 1998, Wilco collaborated with singer/songwriter Billy Bragg on Mermaid Avenue, a collection of performances based on unreleased material originally written by Woody Guthrie.
Their stunningly lush third album, Summerteeth, followed in 1999 and met with critical acclaim but only average sales, initiating tensions with their label, Warner Bros. Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 2, which featured more selections from the band's collaborations with Bragg on Woody Guthrie's unfinished songs, was issued in 2000. Following this release, longtime drummer Ken Coomer decided to amicably leave the band and was replaced by the Chicago-based Glenn Kotche. Wilco then focused on recording their fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which ultimately led to the departure of guitarist Jay Bennett and further tensions with their label. Unwilling to change the album to make it more "commercially viable," Wilco bought the finished studio tapes from Warner/Reprise for a reported $50,000 and left the label altogether.
Leaked tracks from the album surfaced on the Internet in late 2001, and the stripped-down lineup of Tweedy, Kotche, Stirratt, and multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach embarked on a small tour to support -- or drum up support for -- the unreleased record. Nonesuch Records picked up the album and officially released it in early 2002 to widespread critical acclaim. Meanwhile, an independent film documenting the drama surrounding the album (I Am Trying to Break Your Heart) followed in the fall of 2002. During the down time after the album was recorded, Tweedy composed and recorded the film score to the Ethan Hawke film Chelsea Walls, which ended up being released around the same time as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Wilco toured extensively following the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and in 2003 began work on their next album, A Ghost Is Born. While sessions went smoothly compared to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, after the album was finished Leroy Bach left the band in a split that was described as mutual and amicable; guitarist Nels Cline, keyboardist Mike Jorgensen, and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone joined Wilco for their subsequent tour. Shortly before the album's release, Tweedy surprised many fans by announcing he had entered a drug rehabilitation facility to treat a dependency on painkillers, prescribed to treat a long history of migraine headaches aggravated by panic disorder. Tweedy discussed his health problems in depth, along with the often tangled history of Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, in Wilco: Learning How to Die, a biography of the group written by rock journalist Greg Kot, published to coincide with A Ghost Is Born's release in the spring of 2004.
The following year, the group released Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, a 23-track collection recorded in the Windy City's Vic Theater, an album that was later deemed one of the Top 20 best live albums by Q Magazine. In 2007 Wilco's sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, hit shelves. Less experimental than its predecessors, Sky Blue Sky peaked at number five on the U.S. album charts and made a strong showing internationally. Wilco's seventh album, the breezy and laid-back Wilco (The Album), was released on June 30, 2009, one month after the death of former bandmember Jay Bennett, who passed away in his home in Urbana, Illinois after accidentally overdosing on the prescription painkiller fentanyl.
At the end of touring that album, Wilco took a break for much of 2010 (their longest break since formation) and resurfaced in 2011 with their own label, dBpm Records, and the release of The Whole Love. Wilco toured extensively in support of the album, including a string of dates with Nick Lowe, and stayed busy on the road in 2013, taking part in the Americanarama Festival of Music, a package tour that found Wilco sharing the bill with Bob Dylan, Richard Thompson, and My Morning Jacket. In 2014, John Stirratt's side project the Autumn Defense released a new album, Fifth, and Jeff Tweedy inaugurated a new project, Tweedy, that found him collaborating with his teenage son Spencer, who played drums and percussion. The family band released their first album, Sukierae, in September 2014, with the combo touring in support. 2014 also marked Wilco's 20th Anniversary, and the group celebrated the event with a pair of archival releases -- What's Your Twenty? Essential Tracks 1994-2104, a two-disc set that collected the band's best and most popular tunes, and Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014, a four-disc set of obscure and unreleased material. Wilco also celebrated their first two decades with a series of multi-night stands in several cities, including a six-night residency at the Riviera Theater in Chicago.
BIOGRAPHY (WIKIPEDIA)
OFFICIAL SITE
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