I took the 8pm ET hour of my Thursday 01 September 2022 show to showcase an album remix. A writer named Ben Welsh wrote a piece ages ago for Stylus Magazine [21 June 2004 – pj] about Wilco’s fifth studio LP release, 2004’s A Ghost is Born (AGiB). The thesis was that the album lacked any through line beyond the band’s use of the Sear Sound fuzz throughout, yet they could have assembled a tighter, more cohesive album had they looked at other music they either made for 2001’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (YHF) or recorded in the interim.

Here’s the track listing with my edits [AGiB release unless otherwise noted] {All songs written by Jeff Tweedy except where noted}:

1. A Magazine Called Sunset [More Like The Moon EP version] ※ {Jeff Tweedy, Jay Bennett}
2. Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard [More Like The Moon EP version] ※
3. Handshake Drugs
4. Wishful Thinking {Glenn Kotche, Jeff Tweedy}
5. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
6. Hummingbird
7. Theologians {Jeff Tweedy, Mikael Jorgensen, Chris Girard}
8. Panthers [AGiB bonus EP version available on Alpha Mike Foxtrot; Welsh does not have this one in his track list but I think it fits in great here] {Dexter Gordon?}
9. Company In My Back
10. Muzzle of Bees
11. Not For The Season/Laminated Cat [Welsh likes Jeff Tweedy’s 08 January 2003 slower live version at the Vic; I prefer the fuller studio version from the YHF Deluxe release; the song goes under both names]
12. At Least That’s What You Said
13. Cars Can’t Escape [YHF B-Side available on Alpha Mike Foxtrot] {Jeff Tweedy, Jay Bennett}

The non AGiB tracks were widely available to download for free on the Internet. For better or worse they all have made it on to some Wilco commercial offering so one today needs to buy the tracks or stream them on a playlist (I might post an Apple Music playlist later). When I burned a CD for use on WAWL I added the following tracks to fill up the 80 minute runtime:

14. The Late Greats
15. Hell Is Chrome {Jeff Tweedy, Mikael Jorgensen}
16. I’m A Wheel
17. Kicking Television [I have a studio version from somewhere but most versions one finds are live]

The original article and some other references are below. If you’re a Wilco fan, know the original album, and have the resources to assemble this remix I am keen to know your thoughts. If you like “Less Than You Think”, the one song from AGiB completely left out, feel free to let me know. I do miss the presumed album cover of this remix that accompanied the original article. I’ve had no luck sourcing it so far.

※ More Like The Moon is the same thing as the Australian EP and all tracks are on Alpha Mike Foxtrot.

Here’s Welsh’s original Stylus article (with my edits for readability, grammar, and reference):

Playing God
Wilco: A Ghost is Reborn

Jeff Tweedy finally made his Neil Young record.

Unfortunately, he made the wrong one.

Tweedy’s lyrical similarities to Young are nothing new. Jeff’s best lyrics—the cut-up punchlines, vague, cryptic syntax and sparks of oblique resonance—have always resembled Young’s ramshackle rhymes. However, A Ghost is Born, Wilco’s fifth album, marks the first time that Tweedy has cut an LP that sounds like a Neil Young record.

Tweedy’s backing band may have better chops than Crazy Horse (Young’s notoriously rag-tag gang of stumblebums) but on AGiB, with its loping rhythms, unrefined arrangements and loose, one-off feel, they reach for the rusty aura of The Horse’s 1970s recordings with David Briggs; sessions that birthed LPs like Everyone Knows This is Nowhere, On The Beach and Tonight’s The Night.

Sounds great, right?

Right. But there is a problem.

They failed.

AGiB offers pleasures that are as mild as they are subtle. A disparate and inconsistent collection of songs that reveal no overarching themes or moods other than a grinding headache of confusion and frustration, Ghost sputters, spits and then breaks down like one of Shakey’s vintage automobiles. In the end it feels more in line with Young’s scattershot early 1980s work (American Stars ‘N Bars, Hawks & Doves, and Re-ac-tor), than his classic period. The core of the problem is that a couple of the songs really stink.

Exhibit A: “Hell is Chrome”

This low-energy lament opens with an interesting bass figure and an attention grabbing vocal couplet but then plods over the same ground for four minutes without shifting dynamics or offering any appealing melody or texture. Its lyric does offer a foggy window into Tweedy’s drug addiction, but even that cannot redeem the dragging tune, which goes nowhere.

Exhibit B: “I’m a Wheel”

The most embarrassing bit on the album, “Wheel” is a rickety rave-up that has been an occasional inclusion in the band’s live show for years. Undoubtedly Wilco’s worst officially released song, it features the plum chorus “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 / Once in Germany someone said “Nein.’”

It’s not just a couple duds, either. The album’s poor organization does nearly as much damage on its own.

Exhibit C: “Less Than What You Think” & “Late Greats”

A maudlin dirge that drags on for several minutes before collapsing into nearly nine minutes of feedback, “Less Than What You Think” would have made a poor enough choice as the album’s closer. But, worse, Tweedy closes by following the waves of drone with the charming but slipshod “Late Greats.” It tries to provide some cheer but in this context can only stumble to the album’s conclusion with an awkward hitch in its gait.

What else could I do?

So, like the rabid Neil Young fans who have painstakingly recrafted the coulda-woulda-shoulda-been masterpiece Homegrown from the best material sprinkled across Young’s spotty early 1980s releases, I set it upon myself to reforge A Ghost is Born.

Here’s what I came up with:

I believe that AGiB’s virtues are found in its variety. While each track in Tweedy’s version is blessed with warm fuzz from Sear Sound’s vintage recording equipment, they have little else in common. For instance, the totally unexpected mecha-romp “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” and the head-bopping mid-tempo rocker “Theologians” are gems of radically different color and, still, neither have anything in common with the bouncy, piano-driven “Hummingbird.”

It was this variety that inspired me to make my selections from a wide array of sources and fostered my conviction that the effort would not be counter to the spirit of the original recording.

I concede that my meddling sacrifices the consistency of the album’s only universal standard, the Sear Sound fuzz, but I contend that the loss is more than regained by trimming the fat and adding muscle with songs that are much stronger than those included on the album. Not to mention resequencing the album in a way that makes it much more listenable.

Every song I selected was written during the same period as the ones Tweedy picked. (In fact, most are newer than “I’m A Wheel.”) So this is clearly something that Jeff, himself, could have put together.

So, why didn’t he?

Shit, I don’t know. Blame Jay Bennett or something.

My (Re)Creation

A Ghost is Reborn begins with two tracks from 2003’s online-only EP, More Like The Moon. The first, the inviting and tuneful “A Magazine Called Sunset,” lays out the welcome mat for the listener much better than Tweedy’s selection, the storming crescendo of “At Least That’s What You Said,” and provides the album with the radio-ready single it sorely lacks.

In a move designed to mirror the opening tracks of Wilco’s true masterpiece, 1999’s Summerteeth, the dark-pop of “Magazine” is followed by the reverberating ruminations of “Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard.” An arpeggiated solo-acoustic number that echoes Being There’s “Sunken Treasure”, it downshifts the tone and works well as a softening lead-in to the grayish AGiB material.

I then rearranged Tweedy’s selected material to better focus attention on what I felt should have been the album’s centerpiece, the kraut-rock epic “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” The playful piano of “Hummingbird” is reimagined as a soft landing after “Spiders” military motorik.

A live version of the unreleased b-side “Not for the Season” was selected over several rocked-out demo cuts because the stripped-down solo rendition best captures the somber tone of the lyrics.

Candy left over from Halloween
A unified theory of everything
Love left over from lovers leaving
Books they all know they’re not worth reading
It’s not for the season

The eighteenth century literary critic Motōri Norinaga (本居 宣長) coined the term mono no aware (物の哀れ) to describe Japanese literature that emphasized the deep impression of time’s passage and combined a serene acceptance of life’s transience with an appreciation of “the gentle pleasures found in our mundane pursuits” (1⤵). Those qualities in Tweedy’s lyric combined with his understated performance at Chicago’s Vic Theater that night strike at the heart of the complex feeling Norinaga was trying to nail down.

And what more appropriate way to capture a song about the transient nature of time than a live recording that has a date, time, place, and ticket stub attached to it forever?

The rising tide of “At Least That What’s You Said” provides an engaging climax following the mellow “Season” and then gives way to my own attempt at a coda, the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot b-side “Cars Can’t Escape.” A nuanced bit of four a.m. miserablism, “Cars” sees Tweedy take up the part of a jilted lover meditating on love lost before gently nodding off to sleep.

A sleepless ghost yearning to be reborn. An insomniac whose only choice is to wait.

Wait till the morning comes.

(⤴1) Jonathon Delacour, author of the weblog “the heart of things” [I cannot find an accessible reference; The concept is well described in an article by Georgetown University’s Berkley Center – Mono no Aware: The Transience of Life – pj]

Here’s more information, which I largely updated above but include for completeness:

A Ghost is Reborn (Ben Saves Wilco)

Wilco – A Ghost is Reborn
LP – (54:39)

01. A Magazine Called Sunset @
02. Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard @
03. Handshake Drugs *
04. Wishful Thinking *
05. Spiders (Kidsmoke) *
06. Hummingbird *
07. Theologians *
08. Company in my Back *
09. Muzzle of Bees *
10. Not for the Season %
11. At Least That’s What You Said *
12. Cars Can’t Escape #

* A Ghost is Born LP version
@ More Like The Moon EP version
% Jeff Tweedy Live Performance – 01.08.03 – The Vic
# YHF B-side – Released via Worldworld.net

Shoecore Records – 2004

I took this very seriously. I consider it a major improvement. …

Here’s the follow up (that I’ve yet to complete):

Wilco – A Magazine Called Sunset
EP – (Approx 28:00)

01. A Magazine Called Sunset
02. Late Greats
03. Hell is Chrome
04. I’m a Wheel
05. Kicking Television*
06. Less Than You Think

* If they didn’t lay this down in the studio, this will have to be a live cut.