MP3 of the Week
Last week it was The Minus 5 and this week its Wilco. Must be a trend developing for 2006.
Wilco has live album out from the most recent (Ghost Is Born) tour. I think I saw three shows on that tour and loved them all. The addition of Niles Cline on guitar is awesome.
Anyway, there is a track on the live record, called Kicking Television, that I just love. It’s called Airline to Heaven and is a live version of the first song on the Mermaid Avenenue II record.
Sometimes it takes a live recording to really showcase a song and this is one of those situations. Like all Mermaid Avenue songs, the lyrics for Airline to Heaven were written by Woody Guthrie. It’s a cool song about taking an airline to heaven. But it never stood out to me on the studio record.
In the live version, Tweedy kicks up the vocals and the pace a bit and Niles Cline threads an Allman Brothers riff throughout the song and then finishes it off with a Duane Allman style guitar solo.
Just awesome.