The Official Needles and Grooves 1001 Album Generator Project (aka Preachin’ about the Preachers if today’s selection sucks)

YHF is one of the last great "rock albums" (in the classic sense of the term), in my view, both due to it's backstory as this troubled masterpiece the record label turned down etc, combined with it first being released digitally at the height of the Napster zeitgeist and therefore kind of marked the end of the cd era. Add to that that it is a totally brilliant and fascinating album where I still find new things to admire with each listen. I recently got the box set on cd, and it was a bit overwhelming at first, but with time it has grown on me and I do find the plethora of possible versions of this album almost as rewarding as the original version. A masterpiece to say the least.
 
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The Unified Theory of Everything: Building Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Yer Ol' Uncle D said:
If you've never stumbled across this, you're in for a treat. I recorded this back in '97 when I got MuchMusic on the ol' Sony Hi-Fi VHS machine. They had some really neat live sets.

This is short and sweet and features all Being There songs.

This sums up the giddy joy Jay brought to the band in 30 minutes. A great watch...

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This was a shit ton of fun. Thanks!!!
 
In addition to a dedicated listen to the deluxe in vinyl. I’ve also been reading the honking book that came with it.

This sums up YHF pretty damn well:
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is proof that a rock album can sometimes be more than it is. - Bob Mehr
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I don’t think I ever realized that it was supposed to come out on 9/11/01. I think that time, along with the movie, has as much to do with the mythology surrounding the album as anything else. It hit us differently because of that day.

P.s. I enjoyed deep diving the album this weekend. I listened to a lot of Wilco. It was nice to connect with them the way I used to.

Also, of slight interest. My feature wall is kind of ever changing and why things are up there changes all the time. Through circumstance and coincidence, this is what’s been up since Friday and seems a pretty good display for Father’s Day:
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Last edit (maybe): might pick up the super cd sometime. Normally, bonus material goes up on the shelf after a first listen usually to just collect dust. The extras here went to their appropriate stacks for the compulsory three listens before the shelf because I liked them that much. They join The Beatles and Isbell with that distinction. I don’t even buy the Prince deluxes on vinyl because those things are sequenced in a maddening way. Long story short, this is how you do bonus material.
 
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I really enjoyed Parachutes. Coldplay were in with Gomez, Travis, The Doves, bands that rushed in to fill the void of guitar based UK Rock the Radiohead had abandoned with Kid A/Amnesia. A Rush Of Blood To The Head was the album where, for better or worse, they started embracing their inner U2. The singles on this album are all quite good but it was this album when Chris Martin started dating Gwyneth Paltrow and hanging out with Jay-Z. This album was the turning point and nothing since this album has done much for me. I don’t own any Coldplay on vinyl but I wouldn’t be opposed to picking up Parachutes at some point and if the singles from AROBTTH came on the radio wouldn’t change the station but that’s about it.
 
I can understand a lot of the criticism of Coldplay. However, I really like Parachutes. I really like this album and I really think Viva La Vida is their best work. The rest of their catalog is either retreads of the first two albums (X&Y, Ghost Stories) or weird experiments in pop that never quite work out (all the albums with weird names).

There is for sure a formula that was written here but I don’t think it was formulaic until X&Y.

I think @TenderLovingKiller® is on to it with their wanting to be U2 but I think that is evident with Parachutes as well. Parachutes is jangly indie pop not completely unlike War - except built in a post Radiohead world instead of in a merely post Punk world. This is the bombastic approach of Joshua Tree.

Reading the entry in the book and learning that A Whisper and Clocks were composed at the request of outside folks, I get some of the accusations of them being baked in a lab I’ve seen/heard through the years (although this is rich following YHF - an example of the record label and execs fucking up hard core in their taste making audacity - that being said this album is multiplatinum compared to YHF’s mere gold status. I’m also positive this success correlates to the relative disdain for the band in the music intelligentsia.)

It being released a few months after YHF and a few months ahead of the first anniversary of 9/11, I’m sure the radio friendly melancholy had a lot to do with its success.

I wasn’t fully aware of Coldplay until a few years after all this. Viva was the first time I was aware of them during the album cycle. I was astounded at knowing all of this album by the time I picked it up. (It would be several years later before I picked up Parachutes).

As a side note, I wonder, for me, how much being into Coldplay during that Rush to Viva period had to do with me receiving Radiohead better. I did not like Pablo Honey upon release and still have a complicated relationship with that album. My brother was an avid Radiohead fan from go… so I was more than aware of their music as their career progressed but it wasn’t for me.. I didn’t board that train until Hail to the Thief. That one connected with me and I very quickly acquired their entire discography and have been a fan since but not to the lengths of some of the cats around these parts.
 
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