Today’s song is from an interesting album. You see, the story of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” is a story about how the “Music Industry” is populated by out of touch business people who wouldn’t know good music if it stood up and smacked them in the fucking head.
The album was recorded from the Fall of 2000 to Spring 2001. The album wasn’t released until over a year later, on April 23, 2002.
What happened in the meantime was this. The suits heard it and, in their presumed wisdom, decided that none of the albums songs were suitable for the Music Industry task of selling soft drinks.
Seriously, they flat out rejected the album because some prick thought that their were no radio friendly songs on it. This was Reprise records. Owned by Time-Warner. Wilco later got the rights to the album for free when Reprise dumped them. Wilco then sold the album to Nonesuch records, a division of Time-Warner.
Time-Warner paid for the album twice!
Fucking hilarious. And the album’s tracks had found their way to the internet back in the fall of 2001. On September 18 of that year, Wilco released the tracks for free on their website so that better quality versions could be available.
Even before it had been officially “released”, the album had topped several “Best of” lists for the year. It got rave reviews, and since the CD has been available, it has become Wilco’s best selling album.
The suits were wrong. Remember that lesson, kids.
I heard this album for the first time after September 11th. And every time I hear it now, I think of that day. There’s not much more to be said about September 11th, so I’ll leave it at that.
This song conjures up memories of my Ex for me. Back around that time, we had re-kindled our romance, long-distance style now. Bad idea. Does that ever work? Now, enough time has passed that I can see it for what it is, a beautiful song.
There’s not enough ha-ha in this post, so here are some funny pics. See my post on “American Football” below for more mockery.
