Swish
04-25-2012, 01:56 PM
Yes, it's been 10 years since Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was released. It seems like yesterday we were talking about this great record. If you wonder how the name of this record came to be, here's an interesting story;
There is so much backstory to Wilco's fourth solo album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," that it achieved mythic status before anyone had ever actually heard it. It's pretty remarkable that the Chicago band was able to come up with music so strange, ambitious and interesting that the myth didn't overwhelm it.
Let's start with radio. Jeff Tweedy, who formed Wilco in 1994 from the remains of the highly influential alt-country band Uncle Tupelo, has always shown an interest in radio. After all, he named the band after CB radio lingo. So it's hardly a surprise that Tweedy got a bit obsessed with "The Conet Project," a four-CD set of recordings of numbers stations. (Hang on, this is where it gets a little "out there".)
Numbers stations are shortwave radio transmissions of voices (sometimes computer-generated voices) reciting seemingly random strings of numbers, letters and words. They've been around since World War I, and nobody knows for sure who is behind them or their purpose, although there is certainly evidence to suggest they are coded transmissions intended for spies.
Plexifilm (http://www.plexifilm.com)
It's the rare musician that would even listen to "The Conet Project" for fun, much less hear it as the inspiration for an entire rock album. Tweedy imagined it as a way to extend the path that Wilco had charted over three albums from simple country-rock to fussy, psychedelic pop. The result at times sounds like tuning in to shortwave radio. It crackles with static and strange noises. Some are generated by instruments and some are sampled (without permission) from "The Conet Project." The most famous sample comes at the end of "Poor Places," as a woman's voice recites the three code words from the NATO phonetic alphabet that give the album its name. Furthermore, the lyrics seem to have a recurring theme about miscommunication — reaching out to someone and being unsure whether he or she got your intended message — that metaphorically echos the mystery of the numbers stations, although Tweedy has said this is a happy accident for which he wishes he could take credit.
That's not the only unintended meaning that listeners foisted on the album. In many ways, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is the first great post-Sept. 11 album. The song "Jesus Etc." contains the phrases "tall buildings shake" and "skyscrapers are scraping together." Then there's the title and stark beauty of the track "Ashes of American Flags." Some critics went so far as to describe the album's cover art as an allusion to the Twin Towers, although it is simply one of several photos of Chicago architecture found in the liner notes.
Of course, the band recorded the entire album well before the terror attacks. In fact, the album would have been released on Sept. 11, 2001 (which would have made it the third fantastic album to come out that day) if executives at Warner Brothers Records hadn't committed one of the great boneheaded blunders of the decade, which is where the myth of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" really takes off.
North by NorthwesternJeff Tweedy
One of the consequences of the merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2001 was the dismissal of Reprise Records president Howie Klein — who had been a fan of Tweedy since his Uncle Tupelo days — perhaps on the very day Wilco submitted the album to the label for approval. The label didn't approve. It had been waiting since 1995 for Wilco's critical acclaim to translate into some sales, and instead of the popular breakthrough they were supposed to be recording, they delivered a dang concept album about numbers stations. The new executives wanted Wilco gone so bad, they released the band from their contract and gave them the rights to the completed album.
Wilco was now a free agent, and their first move was to post the entire album on their Web site. Critics, who are suckers for an artists-versus-suits story, hailed it as an instant classic. Labels started clamoring for the right to give the album a proper release, and the winner of this bidding war was Nonesuch Records — which, like Reprise, was owned by AOL Time Warner. And all the publicity helped "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" become the band's best-selling album.
I won't even get into the internal drama, changes in lineup and migraine headaches that were confronting the band at the same time. If you're interested in the complete story, may I recommend the documentary "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" by filmmaker Sam Jones.
There is so much backstory to Wilco's fourth solo album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," that it achieved mythic status before anyone had ever actually heard it. It's pretty remarkable that the Chicago band was able to come up with music so strange, ambitious and interesting that the myth didn't overwhelm it.
Let's start with radio. Jeff Tweedy, who formed Wilco in 1994 from the remains of the highly influential alt-country band Uncle Tupelo, has always shown an interest in radio. After all, he named the band after CB radio lingo. So it's hardly a surprise that Tweedy got a bit obsessed with "The Conet Project," a four-CD set of recordings of numbers stations. (Hang on, this is where it gets a little "out there".)
Numbers stations are shortwave radio transmissions of voices (sometimes computer-generated voices) reciting seemingly random strings of numbers, letters and words. They've been around since World War I, and nobody knows for sure who is behind them or their purpose, although there is certainly evidence to suggest they are coded transmissions intended for spies.
Plexifilm (http://www.plexifilm.com)
It's the rare musician that would even listen to "The Conet Project" for fun, much less hear it as the inspiration for an entire rock album. Tweedy imagined it as a way to extend the path that Wilco had charted over three albums from simple country-rock to fussy, psychedelic pop. The result at times sounds like tuning in to shortwave radio. It crackles with static and strange noises. Some are generated by instruments and some are sampled (without permission) from "The Conet Project." The most famous sample comes at the end of "Poor Places," as a woman's voice recites the three code words from the NATO phonetic alphabet that give the album its name. Furthermore, the lyrics seem to have a recurring theme about miscommunication — reaching out to someone and being unsure whether he or she got your intended message — that metaphorically echos the mystery of the numbers stations, although Tweedy has said this is a happy accident for which he wishes he could take credit.
That's not the only unintended meaning that listeners foisted on the album. In many ways, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is the first great post-Sept. 11 album. The song "Jesus Etc." contains the phrases "tall buildings shake" and "skyscrapers are scraping together." Then there's the title and stark beauty of the track "Ashes of American Flags." Some critics went so far as to describe the album's cover art as an allusion to the Twin Towers, although it is simply one of several photos of Chicago architecture found in the liner notes.
Of course, the band recorded the entire album well before the terror attacks. In fact, the album would have been released on Sept. 11, 2001 (which would have made it the third fantastic album to come out that day) if executives at Warner Brothers Records hadn't committed one of the great boneheaded blunders of the decade, which is where the myth of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" really takes off.
North by NorthwesternJeff Tweedy
One of the consequences of the merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2001 was the dismissal of Reprise Records president Howie Klein — who had been a fan of Tweedy since his Uncle Tupelo days — perhaps on the very day Wilco submitted the album to the label for approval. The label didn't approve. It had been waiting since 1995 for Wilco's critical acclaim to translate into some sales, and instead of the popular breakthrough they were supposed to be recording, they delivered a dang concept album about numbers stations. The new executives wanted Wilco gone so bad, they released the band from their contract and gave them the rights to the completed album.
Wilco was now a free agent, and their first move was to post the entire album on their Web site. Critics, who are suckers for an artists-versus-suits story, hailed it as an instant classic. Labels started clamoring for the right to give the album a proper release, and the winner of this bidding war was Nonesuch Records — which, like Reprise, was owned by AOL Time Warner. And all the publicity helped "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" become the band's best-selling album.
I won't even get into the internal drama, changes in lineup and migraine headaches that were confronting the band at the same time. If you're interested in the complete story, may I recommend the documentary "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" by filmmaker Sam Jones.