(Reprise)
Try to remember the year you first really heard rock and roll. The way you memorized the songs, all of which seemed to actually be about you. The way you practically worshiped your favorite band and couldn't wait to get to the record player and play whole albums over and over again. The way you wondered why radio stations didn't just put albums on and let them play because albums were much better than the singles the stations were playing anyway. The way you knew being in a rock band was the only future you could imagine.
Wilco frontman and songwriter Jeff Tweedy apparently remembers. Wilco's second release, the two-disc Being There, finds him mining his own love for late '60s and early '70s rock to come up with 19 songs that pay tribute to classic rock without sounding as tired as, say, the classic rock radio format.
"I wanted our influences to be right on the surface on this one ... I really wanted it to be 'Wilco quotes from their, or maybe your, record collection," states Tweedy.
And if you've seen some of the media attention paid to Being There so far, you'll find out he's succeeded. There are songs like "Monday" and "Say You Miss Me" that have Rolling Stones written all over them. "Outta Mind (Outta Sight)" shows Tweedy listened to a little Beach Boys while growing up and maybe caught a few episodes of public television's most famous kids show, "Sesame Street." (The album is dedicated to Tweedy's newborn son, Spencer.)
There's a loose "let's go into the studio and jam" feel to many of the songs. "Misunderstood" and "Sunken Treasure" both stretch out more than six minutes long. Disc Two's last song, "Dreamer In My Dreams," was recorded live in the studio and appears to end two times before finally calling it a day.
But the fact that a few songs aren't as tight as most '90s rock and roll doesn't mean Being There doesn't have focus. Disc One has more straight-ahead rock songs. Disc Two is prettier. Tweedy tried to make both discs about "the emotional experience of songwriting from the inside out." And his voice is still that perfectly flawed, easy-going instrument it has been since Tweedy's Uncle Tupelo days, sounding a lot of times like a less world-weary John Mellencamp.
There's very little on Being There that hearkens back to Wilco's excellent first album A.M.. There's no "Casino Queen;" no "Box Full of Letters." But from the album's noisy opening on Disc One to Disc Two's "last encore at the roadhouse on a hot summer night" end, Tweedy shows you don't have to make the same record twice to prove you're a great songwriter.
Making two records at once, though - now that's the stuff that makes kids want to be a rock and roll star.
