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March 5, 2006
i understand i'm just a fan
back in the middle 90's i played in a blues based rock and roll band in miami, fl. we called ourselves solomon grundy after the swamp dwelling villain that appeared in super man comics. there is also a nursery rhyme about a boy named solomon grundy who is born on a monday and was buried the following sunday but we weren't so interested in associating ourselves with that because a: it is a bit obscure and b: well it's a little bit morbid.
anyway, we acheived a level of moderate (read almost none) success in and around music venues on south beach. and i say our success was moderate because most people in miami could care less about live music - if it doesn't involve body glitter combined with the hard core dance moves of patrick dempsey circa can't buy me love then they aren't interested.
near the end of our four year run we spent more time practicing than we did actually playing out (that's official music lingo for you) - we had a manager named norbert who was scandanavian or something and he just loved us because the first time he saw us play we covered journey's don't stop believin' we had scads of original songs but norbert was only interested in the one. so he was fired. mostly because he was a moron, but also because of his really creepy afro wig that...well i won't get into that.
anyway, we had a great little practice facility in a warehouse in ft lauderdale. it came complete with a kegerator and orange carpeting in addition to several photographic renderings of elvis - velvet and otherwise. we also had several dozen promotional posters that our drummer rick had procured from a record store that was going out of business. the posters were roughly the size of an lp sleeve and we painstakingly affixed them to the walls - it was really pretty cool.
i became rather fond of one particular album cover that hung on the wall beside my keyboard - i would look at it from time to time for inspiration as i generally rocked out. it was a simple little album cover, red with a little seventies era radio on the front. the lettering on the front of the album was white and it read wilco a.m. - for the longest time i wasn't sure if wilco was the name of the band or the album. i'd certainly never heard of them having only recently emerged from the abyss of the heavy metal 90's i wasn't even the ovum of the musical snob i am today. as i recall my favourite bands at the time were counting crows (remember when they were good? yeah, that was a long time ago) and gin blossoms.
and if i can be completely honest here, i bought that wilco album because i thought the cover was cool and the first time i listened to it i really sort of hated it. with the exception of box full of letters and passenger side there weren't any songs that i liked very much at all. it was very country and at that stage in my life i really needed a rockin' guitar solo or a soaring chorus - something to ignite my lighter to. but over the months that followed i found that was the album i was listening to more and more often.
and then my roomate bought their second album being there and it changed my life. forever. and i have brought many converts into the fold over the years. of course it wasn't until i shook jeff tweedy's hand at the uptown mix nearly two years ago that the band's star really began to reach it's zenith - but i'm not here to talk about that. all i really wanted to say was that the bins at your local record store are filled to the brim with crap - but every once in awhile you find a treasure that stays with you for the rest of your life like a tried and true friend. and that quest might just be the best thing about being a fan.
| By young_christopher | 11:42 PM