Wilco – A.M. & Being There(Deluxe Edition) (Sire/Reprise)

 

Wilco celebrate their formative years with Deluxe Edition reissues of their first two albums, documenting the gestation and growth of one of America’s most important bands of the last quarter century.

Yes, its been over twenty years since Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar, the principal members of alt.country band Uncle Tupelo went their separate ways.

Farrar went on to form Son Volt, while Tweedy and the remaining band members regrouped to form Wilco.

At the time, the smart money was on Son Volt. Farrar and his new band quickly released Trace, an album that had fans and critics drooling.  Meanwhile, Tweedy and his crew whipped up A.M.

Released in early 1995, A.M. didn’t exactly set the charts on fire. Now, with hindsight, it sounds like a band still trying to figure out who they are…or more specifically, what kind of songwriter Jeff Tweedy wanted to be.

Listening to the reissue, the first three tracks…I Must Be High, Casino Queen and Box Full Of Letters, still sound fresh, bursting with youthful enthusiasm. I thought they were great songs back then and they still are.

But the remaining tracks don’t quite match up, with the exception of Passenger Side.

Tweedy and the rest of the band…John Stirratt (bass), Ken Coomer (drums), Max Johnston (dobro/fiddle/mandolin/banjo) along with ringers guitarist Brian Henneman of The Bottle Rockets and lap steel player Lloyd Maines…sound like an amalgamation of their influences (Burrito Brothers, Big Star, Rolling Stones) but have yet to develop their own collective persona.

The bonus material includes John Stirrat’s When You Find Trouble, the last song Uncle Tupelo ever recorded, along with a few outtakes, mostly songs that Stirrat wrote that didn’t make the final cut for A.M.

Perhaps most interesting is an early version of Outta Site (Outta Mind), a tune that would become one of the highlights of the next record.

That next record, of course, was Being There. Released just a year and a half later, it changed everything.

That’s because Tweedy’s songwriting had finally come into its own.

In the interim between the two releases, Jeff had to do some soul searching. Between his time with Uncle Tupelo and Wilco, he had been a professional musician for ten years with little to show for it. Now he had a wife and a baby to think about.

Quitting was an option, but fortunately, digging in and finding his voice was the result.

Being There still stands as one of the finest albums of the past 25 years, with Wilco’s own Yankee Hotel Foxtrot possibly overshadowing it.

By this time the band had taken on multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett and had coalesced into a fine, fit fighting unit.

In fact, the main reason for buying this Deluxe Edition is to hear this band play these songs live.

Being There was a double album, and now its been expanded by three more discs. One of them is a 15 track compilation of outtakes and alternative versions of the album’s iconic songs such as Far, Far Away, Monday and I Got You.

But the real treat is the two-disc live set recorded at The Troubadour on November 12, 1996. Broadcast live at the time, and later release as a cassette-only promo edition, this live performance is the holy grail for Wilco fans.

Sure, the current version of the band with Nels Cline and Glenn Kotche is awesome, but there3 is something special about hearing this version of the band firing on all cylinders just as they realize that they are a force to be reckoned with.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Wilco is now one of the most consistently creative bands around, with every new release and every performance setting the bar for excellence.

These two reissues serve to remind us as to how they got there and to celebrate the passionate rock and roll that emerged from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo.

Marty Duda

Watch the entire Wilco concert recorded at The Troubadour here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7pY6UPPbVQ