Take Me For A Ride
28Jun07
There is a thread that connects and continues. There is a road that you travel every day and, sometime, you look out the window and see something that you missed in all your previous travels. Or sometimes, you see it all again in a brand new way.
That guitar solo in “Impossible Germany” - I listen to that and the hair goes up on my forearms. You know, people say that that happens to them and they don’t mean it. They don’t mean “I got goosebumps” - I’m telling you I mean it. I stopped the car. I still stop it.
I am a sucker for the guitar solo and must admit this one is superb, but don’t know if it rivals this one.
I’m also partial to this one, as well.
All very different, yet magically — dare I say, musically — the same.
Bon retour, comme il est agreable de vous revoir!
You know, I think Chet is great but that song just doesn’t hit me emotionally. Technically flawless of course . . .
Not so much about the song specifically, but how Chet makes the guitar “sing”. Like Les Paul, an influence across musical genres and times. These guys can “raise goosebumps” even when the song itself might be out of the musical comfort zone in which a person dwells.
Or not, I’m saying I appreciate the talent Les shows. I’m also saying I don’t get goosebumps from it. The song isn’t outside my “comfort zone” so what is it then? Perhaps it’s that Chet himself doesn’t connect with me in anyway. He doesn’t speak to me. He may speak to others but not me.
Doesn’t something like this transcend the shackles of musical blinders? Take this song, slow it down a bit, add a stronger bass line and an electric guitar solo to replace the mandolin and can’t you hear an alternative recording? Now, THAT, would be a cover.
Shouter — don’t disagree with you and didn’t mean you, specifically, on the goosebump raising and comfort zone…more a generalization of many music listeners (i.e., “I hate twangy Country”) and was more of a rhetorical statement/question. I’m sure that you are much more well-rounded concerning musical preferences.
You are ko-RECK that sometimes an artist is technically flawless, yet emotionally un-kunNECKted. Itzhak Perlman is like that for me. I can appreciate the talent yet not be overly affected by the music/performance.
An alternate recording by, perhaps, Richard Thompson?
Eggsactly.
For me, it’s way more visceral. I’ve never had a CD affect me the way that this one does.
Here’s part of a 2004 Jeff Tweedy interview you can find at the Austin City Limits site, or cut and paste this URL:
http://www.pbs.org/klru/austin/interviews/wilco2_interview.html
“. . . something I really, really find gratifying and exciting is having people pay that much attention to the music and when you feel like you’ve made something that has been … meant enough to someone for them to really bring themselves to it and pour themselves into it [and] make something out of it that you really could never have intended.
I believe 50 percent of art is the perception of the listener, perception of the viewer, perception of the reader, and as a musician, as an artist all you’re really doing is hopefully giving people the raw material to think [?] something and make something out of it. . . .”
Wilco, all five of them, have really accomplished that on this CD.