Watch Wilco & Robyn Hitchcock Make Guest Appearances in New Nick Lowe Video

Nick Lowe's first new video in 18 years is a goodie, and he's roped in some famous friends to make it even better.

Wilco and Lowe have been getting on famously of late, with Wilco covering Lowe's I Love My Label for the b-side to their first single from The Whole Love, I Might.
Lowe has made a number of live appearances with them and recently guested on their itunes session where they performed his Cruel To Be Kind.

Scott Jacobson directed the video that features comedian Marc Maron taking self-help seminars taught by Tim Heidecker.

Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue 3 Tracklisting Announced

As previously mentioned, April 21 sees a box set release for Billy Bragg and Wilco's Complete Mermaid Avenue Sessions.

The previously released Volume's One & Two make up the first two discs of the package, with the Man In The Sand DVD making up Disc 4.

Nonesuch have now released the tracklisting for Disc 3, which contains a further 17 songs recorded during the sessions that resulted in Volume's One & Two.

01. Bugeye Jim
02. When The Roses Bloom Again
03. Gotta Work
04. My Thirty Thousand
05. Ought To Be Satisfied Now
06. Listening To The Wind That Blows
07. Go Down To The Water
08. Chain Of Broken Hearts
09. Jailcell Blues
10. Don’t You Marry
11. Give Me A Nail
12. The Jolly Banker
13. Union Prayer
14. Be Kind To The Boy On The Road
15. Ain’ta Gonna Grieve
16. Tea Bag Blues
17. I’m Out To Get

You Can Pre-order The Box Set Here

Woody Guthrie's 100th Birthday Celebrations.

It's Woody Guthrie's 100th Birthday on the 14th of July this year and there are a number of significant releases lined up to celebrate his Centennial.


Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue is set to be re-released as a 4 disc box set on the 21st of April, containing remastered editions of Volume 1 & 2, the previously unreleased Volume 3 featuring a further 17 tracks recorded during the same sessions, and the Man In The Sand DVD. Preorder here.

Due out on March 5 is New Multitudes, where My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Son Volt's Jay Farrar, Will Johnson and Anders Parker essentially do their own take on a Mermaid Avenue - previously unpublished Guthrie lyrics put to new music.
Preorder the deluxe edition here.
Preorder the standard edition here.


Out now is Note of Hope - a tribute to Woody's music featuring Van Dyke Parks, Madeleine Peyroux, Tom Morello, Lou Reed ( without Metallica ), Michael Franti & Spearhead, Kurt Elling, Ani Difranco, Studs Terkel, Nellie McKay, Chris Whitley, Pete Seeger and Jackson Browne.
You can buy it here.

There's also a stand alone website for Woody's Centennial - visit it here to find out more.

Wilco - Dawned On Me - Popeye Video

The video for Wilco's Dawned On Me has been released and is a vintage style black and white Popeye cartoon, complete with cartoon versions of the band interacting with all of your favorite Popeye characters.

Check It Out Below :

The Minus 5 - Down With Wilco - Obscure Classics

Great albums you may have missed.

The Minus 5 - Down With Wilco ( 2003 )

Scott McCaughey's lack of recognition is a total mystery to me. His noisy alternative rock / pop act the Young Fresh Fellows were one of the most influential bands in the Seattle music scene from the mid eighties and we all know what that led to. He then formed the Minus 5 in the mid nineties with R.E.M's Peter Buck, and members of the Posies as a creative outlet for his love of vintage sixties and seventies style pop. Since then the Minus 5's roster has also included Colin Meloy and other Decemberists, and on this release Wilco. Clearly he has some fans - they're all famous and work with him, but why isn't he a household name? It's certainly not to do with a shortage of vintage pop hooks, because he's got them by the bucketload. I suspect that McCaughey's often self deprecating wit may be to blame - he simply seems too smart for mainstream acceptance. It also doesn't help that the media generally focus on who else is playing on his records, as if he's a bit player in his own show.
Having heard all of the Minus 5's albums now I can safely confirm that McCaughey is very much the captain of his own ship, and that it his unique voice which is the common, dominant thread throughout his back catalogue.
Case in point is 2003's Down With Wilco, which features a line up of McCaughey, Buck, the High Llama's Sean O'Hagan and all 4 members of Wilco ( at the time ).
Recorded concurrently with Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, this was feverishly snapped up by the music press as yet another adventurous Wilco side project. Never mind the fact that McCaughey had the lion's share of the writing credits and that Tweedy only had a couple of vocal spots on the whole album, this, we were led to believe, was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot part 2. Which would have disappointed a lot of people when they got around to listening to it as this is a McCaughey record through and through with Wilco playing a supporting role at best. I'd be curious to hear how different this would sound without their involvement. If anything Down With Wilco has more in common with Wilco's previous album Summerteeth - both show an obvious Pet Sounds era Beach Boys influence, and both are gems of harmonic piano and guitar based pop music.
This influence is most obvious on gorgeous chamber pop gems That's Not The Way That It's Done and Retrieval of You, which is a great example of McCaughey's skewed sense of humour. Apparently Tweedy sent McCaughey an e-mail using this phrase, which then inspired him to write this lyric where the narrator of the song picks up a famous rock star from the airport and kidnaps them.

My Retrieval Of You:



Tweedy contributes the Family Gardener which is a pleasant folk number which wouldn't have fit comfortably on Yankee but feels right at home here.
Elsewhere, Where Will You Go's guitar hook comes straight out of the Badfinger songbook, and The Old Plantation sounds like an old lost AM radio hit.
For those that connect with this I would also recommended 2006's self titled Minus 5 album and 2009's Killingsworth, as well as investigating the Baseball Project - a new band McCaughey has formed with former Dream Syndicate frontman Steve Wynn which unusually presents a musical history of the sport and it's major characters. Not as niche as it may sound.

Dear Employer ( The Reason I Quit ):

A Chill Out Mix That's OK To Like - Download

The chill out mix has acquired a bit of a bad rap over the last ten years or so. Which is a pity because the idea is sound - the idea of a CD or playlist you can come home to after a hard day at work and unwind in the bathtub to is the ultimate idea of therapy to me. Unfortunately the people who put these mixes together generally are at the polar opposite end of the musical taste spectrum to me - I'm not saying that some people won't find Morcheeba relaxing, just that they wind me up something chronic.
So I got sick of waiting for someone to make the ideal chill out mix for me, and got stuck in and made one myself.
And here it is :

1. Heaven & Earth - Feel The Spirit available on the compilation Feel The Spirit

2. Blitzen Trapper - Heaven & Earth from the album Destroyer of the Void

3. Francoise Hardy - Mer from the album La Question

4. Fairport Convention - Fotheringay from the album What We Did On Our Holidays

5. John Cale - Andalucia from the album Paris 1919


6. Red House Painters - Cruiser from the album Old Ramon

7. Neil Young - Philadelphia from the Philadelphia Soundtrack

8. Candidate - Falling Leaves from the album Under The Skylon

9. Air - Afternoon Sister from the Virgin Suicides Soundtrack

10. Broadcast and Focus Group - What I Saw from the album Investigates Witch Cults of the Radio Age

11. Mogwai - Dial : Revenge from the album Rock Action


12. Doves - Willow's Song available on the deluxe edition of The Places Between - The Best of Doves

13. Wilco - Venus Stop The Train is an outtake from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and is not commercially available

14. Nick Drake - Which Will from the album Pink Moon

15. Nick Cave & The Dirty Three - Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum from the B-Sides & Rarities Box Set

16. David Crosby - Orleans from the album If I Could Only Remember My Name

17. Neko Case - Magpie To The Morning from the album Middle Cyclone

18. Arab Strap - Is Your Love In Vain. This track is unavailable commercially


19. Pride - Proud Sorrow from the David Axelrod compilation Warner / Reprise Recordings

20. Keren Ann - Song of Alice from the album Nolita




It goes without saying of course, that should you discover anything you like here, you'll support the artists by buying their material. Thanks and enjoy.

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