"All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours...
I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything...
He [the musician] hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air. [He] began to tell us what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness... I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did."

--James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues"

"Get a radio or a phonograph capable of the most extreme loudness possible, and sit down to listen to a performance... But I don't mean just sit down and listen. I mean this: Turn it on as loud as you can get it. Then get down on the floor and jam your ear as close into the loud speaker as you can get it and stay there, breathing as lightly as possible, and not moving, and neither eating nor smoking nor drinking. Concentrate everything you can into your hearing and into your body. You won't hear it nicely. If it hurts you, be glad of it. As near as you will ever get, you are inside the music; not only inside it, you are it; your body is no longer your shape and substance, it is the shape and substance of the music."

--James Agee, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"

"In the end, music is not about perfection, it's about our humanness--and that ain't ever gonna be perfection." - Rodney Crowell

"Which came first: the music or the misery? Do I listen to pop music because I am miserable or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?"
- Nick Hornby/John Cusack, "High Fidelity"

"I wanna see your smile through a pay phone... Lights that shine are caustic without you." - Jay Farrar

"I was maimed by rock and roll. I was tamed by rock and roll. I got my name from rock and roll." - Jeff Tweedy

"Hometown, the same town blues" - the very first line from the very first song on the very first Uncle Tupelo album, "No Depression." This is what launched a movement in which musicians recognize the magic of their parents' folk and country record collections and stringed acoustic instruments, but meanwhile refuse to abandon the electric guitars and amplifiers of rock and roll. Uncle Tupelo, from the small industrial community of Belleville (just thirty minutes across the River from St. Louis), are commonly attributed with the genesis of this music, and while they may be the first and the best of the bunch to fuse folk, country, rock and punk, they too drew from a number of influences. They carried on a tradition of music that had found its origin in the blues and rock and roll, and which included artists such as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, Neil Young, The Byrds, and the Band. By 1994, Uncle Tupelo had broken up and evolved into two new bands, Son Volt (fronted by Jay Farrar) and Wilco (fronted by Jeff Tweedy). In 2001, Jay Farrar released his first solo record, "Sebastopol" and he has since released 2003's "Terroir Blues." Regardless of the different directions that these fine musicians' careers take them, their music continues to fill listeners with wonder. Every album, song, chorus, verse, line, chord, and note is contructed with a stroke (or strum) of innovation and of brilliance. Explore and enjoy.

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Uncle Tupelo Bootlegs, Live Shows, and Rare EPs on CDR for trade

UNCLE TUPELO NEWS!!!

News?? Uncle Tupelo?? Yeah, that's right. All four of Uncle Tupelo's brilliant records have been remastered and re-released, and they all include a selection of fine rarities and B-sides from the band's heyday. It has also been rumored (ONLY RUMORED) that a record label plans to release Uncle Tupelo's last show (5/1/94, Mississippi Nights, St. Louis, MO) as a live double-disc album sometime in the future.