Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: If Charlie Likes Led Zepplin Too, Who Wins The Bet?

Let’s start out with a little history; I discovered Wilco on a the second stage at the HORDE fest in 1995. They were by far the best thing all night, but did not become my pet band for another year. After the 1996 release of Wilco’s 2nd album, Being There, the Who were officially replaced. The punchline is that by the following May, I decided to go to see Wilco and the Jayhawks instead of my prom; certainly an excellent choice. With the release of Mermaid Avenue, I was convinced that these guys were the greatest band nobody’d heard of.

And Goddamnit! You fuckers proved me wrong!

So it turns out that Wilco was a good band, and on top of it, they started to get popular, and fuck if I didn’t know what to do. How the hell did this happen? I was supposed to be Wilco guy. I had the market on this band! Nobody was going to say that they liked this band more than me. Sure, Wilco could be as popular as they wanted to be in any other city- BUT NOT MINE!! There were all these sad, single, middle-aged people that felt stupid for not buying those Replacements tickets that time, so were making up for it by singing along with my favorite band. There were also all those self-important college guys that decided “it was time to get into Tom Waits.” What a bunch of horseshit.

Anyways, I was getting jaded (still am), and the rumors started to fly…