NEW YORK (Wilco Fans Website) - In the dark, intimate confines of Washington's 9:30 Club,
Jeff Tweedy and the members of
Wilco emerge from behind a velvet curtain to the raucous cheers and outstretched arms of more than a thousand of their most reverent fans. (
Tickets sold out in five minutes!!!)
Without a word, Tweedy whirls into "Late Greats," from the band's new record:
The best band will never get signed ...
So good you won't ever know
They never even played a show
You can't hear 'em on the radio
A nod to Wilco's own troubles in the music industry - its last record was dropped by its label as unsaleable only to go on to sell 450,000 copies - the song is lapped up by the fans.
Those in the front, the ones who stood in line to secure positions inches from the singer they love so much, match Tweedy line for line. The album wouldn't be coming out for two weeks, but they know the words to its songs by heart.
Wilco put its entire new record, A Ghost is Born, on its Web site two months ago and invited fans to download it for free. The band wanted its fans to know the songs at the pre-release concerts, and it trusted them to buy the record when it eventually hits stores.
To give away your livelihood like that may be considered commercial suicide in some corners of the music business, but Wilco has never done things conventionally. The band doesn't care about getting its songs played on the radio. It ignores MTV. It gives away music.
Yet Wilco, whose difficult-to-classify sound is an intoxicating blend of roots rock, folk and pop, has found a quiet and almost anonymous kind of commercial success. Its records sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Its concerts sell out. And its members live comfortable middle-class lives in Chicago, with wives and children and mortgages.
Now Wilco is entering a new stage, where the rewards could be much greater, and the failure more devastating. The new record comes out tomorrow. A biography of the band by Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot was published last week. A photo book of the band will be out this fall. Tweedy published a poetry collection in March. Wilco is on the verge.
"We're not U2," Tweedy told Kot for the critic's new book, Wilco: Learning How to Die. "We're not the biggest rock band in the world. But we are part of the fabric of certain people's lives who have tickets and are waiting to see us. And there is no doubt in my mind that for some people out there, we are one of the threads they are hanging on to. And I think what we have to do as a band is to make those people aware of how we need them as much as they need us.
"To me, music is love, and I need it in my life just as much as they need it in theirs."
