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Nov 25 2005
On Music 11-25-05 PDF E-mail
Written by Nicholas Smith   
November 25, 2005
Live recordings are just that: representations of the past, a snapshot, if you will, of a few hours in time, usually heavily edited (unless, of course, you're listening to bootlegged live recordings). Thus, the editors and mix masters of live recordings have a rather important job; they are essentially in charge of what moments will be galvanized for musicians and music consumers ... for eternity.

Occasionally, mixing engineers will edit out imperfections -- a sneeze, for example, in the middle of a heart-thumping chorus, or more regularly, the dead time between songs when instruments are tuned and the band discusses the next song.

Before this train of thought gets out of control, though, let's remember that the burden of good live music is always on the musicians. In other words, the greatest mixing engineer simply cannot make bad live music sound good. Phew! Right? Right. With all that said, live musical recordings are cherished items. Like photographs, they enhance our memories and for the discerning music listener, they stand as proof that our favorite musicians exist in the flesh and not only in the electronic "airbrushing" of the studio. Take the 1957 Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane recording at Carnegie Hall (released early Nov., 2005) and Wilco's Nov. release "Kicking Television", recorded live at Vic Theatre in May of 2005, for conversation's sake...


As the story goes, a Library of Congress engineer was fumbling through old unmarked boxes when he discovered the Carnegie Hall recording of Monk's '57 quartet with Coltrane. For years, jazz aficionados complained about the nonexistence of live recordings featuring these two jazz giants, who played together during a brief (5 months), explosively creative period in New York City. There were three studio recordings on a Monk collaborative album, but the live stuff was only talked about, almost like a John Henry myth.

It didn't take long for Blue Note records to heed the call of anxious jazz listeners who'd caught word of the engineer's discovery and now, like the three princes of Serendip, the world can hear Coltrane and Monk, relatively young yet established jazz musicians discovering the power of their talents, live and in concert. There are some jazz critics who think that Coltrane hadn't found his true lyrical saxophone voice until playing with Monk, a notoriously difficult pianist and band leader for jazz soloists to play with. Those same critics believe that when Monk "taught" Coltrane, an otherwise untouchable genius, how to dig deeper into his improvisational self conscious, he (Monk), too, learned how powerful his gifts were. After all, who else could lead Coltrane, arguably the fieriest tenor saxophonist to ever play the instrument, into the full realization of his art?

The tracks on this album don't display Monk or Coltrane expressing their own superiority. There exists only a seamless chemistry between two jazz heroes. The first track "Monk's Mood" starts with a slow swagger, high arpeggios with thumping left handed bass notes, creating that awkward, forever identifiable Monk sound. Coltrane enters halfway into the track like a race horse out of the gates, full of assuredness and unfettered bobs and weaves, the endless spins and breath-taking stops of his kaleidoscopic saxophone. As the album starts, it too, stops abruptly in the middle of the last track, leaving us begging for more, but damn happy for the feeling.


Wilco was born out of Jeff Tweedy's Uncle Tupelo about 10 years ago. Since then, Wilco has yet to fall into any particular genre, letting rock, alt-country, electronica, and folk equally describe their music.

In 2002, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot established Wilco as a band that was officially doing something different, their previous six albums an examination of all musical sounds, with a keen eye towards creating their own sound ... a Wilco sound. The 2004 release, A Ghost is Born, further explained this evolution toward a uniquely Wilco sound, which, incidentally, caught the ears of the American mainstream with record CD sales and an endless list of celebratory reviews as the album of the year, the millennium, and so forth.

Wilco is now effectively synonymous with a sound, championed by the stark and raspy voice of Tweedy, singing his spare, occasionally dark, and thought-provoking lyrics, infused with the as-noticeable jazz guitar stylings of Nels Cline, an always audible keyboard, strong supportive drumming, and a background rhythm guitar player.

Its latest two-disc album (the first live Wilco recording), Kicking Television, captures the band in its newest and most raw form, free from studio inhibitions.

Recorded over four nights in Wilco's hometown of Chicago, the album includes an appropriate mix of Yankee Hotel and Ghost tracks, considering the cathartic effects both these albums had on Wilco and the musical populace. In the first track, "Misunderstood," the crowd can be heard restlessly shifting and yelling, providing a good live effect without compromising the quality of the song.

"I am trying to break your heart" highlights those mysterious Tweedy lyrics, and "Jesus" starts strong, ending with an entire audience sing-along.

The second disc is more of the same, no better and no worse than the first. This is Wilco live folks playing the kind of music that only Wilco can.


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