Really comes across as a dick in I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

yeah, talk about some awkward moments. those scenes made my skin crawl.

Total prick, but their three best records were when he was in the band.

I'd have to watch it again, but I thought Tweedy came across as kind of the dick. I've only seen it once, but it seemed like Jay was just trying to work in certain ideas and relate to him and Jeff just seemed unresponsive.

I'm with you. I mean, Jay was being kind of dick-ish, but Tweedy wouldn't throw him any bones. I guess it's no wonder they parted ways.

Jay needed to just let it go and quit over-analyzing. Don't mess with the session flow, Jay, you know that.

Yeah. but he did write "Venus Stopped The Train"

see i though you were talking about the sub-set of heavy metal drummer

LOL

uhm... no offense, but this film was edited after he parted ways and was edited to paint him in a pretty negative light. Tweedy isn't exactly free of ego either honestly...

i've met them both a few times, Jay's a super nice guy, as is Tweedy, but they both have big personalities and a lot to say when it comes to their own thoughts on music.

No offence taken, solace. That's why I said:



The edit obviously has a lot to do with the portrayal, but I suspect that Bennett does tend towards a bit of pretentious wankery when talking about music.

maybe so... most producers tend to do that

I imagine that his ego took a battering when O'Rourke got involved.

I watched this again last night. I'd forgotten how good it is.

Jay does come off as kind of a jerk, I suppose, but it doesn't feel like a completely accurate portrayal of the band's power struggles and that's part of the editing. That scene where they're mixing Heavy Metal Drummer pinpoints it. Jeff has this solid quick and easy idea how to mix the song and then Jay turns it into this complex overblown problem that just escalates when he gets upset that Jeff doesn't completely understand his ideas. Quick edit: Jeff's throwing up.

It seems like Jay just over analyzed things too much and that dragged the rest of the band down. Certain people are like that. They need to have a hand in everything from song ideas to mixing to artwork. For most of the film, its as if Jay's always the one front and center at the board.

You could tell that the band wasn't that happy. Part of it might've been frustration with them trying to finish the album. There's a smirk when one of them says their friendship ran its course after 17 years and Tweedy seems like a weight has been lifted when he says he couldn't be happier that Jay was no longer in the band.

It seems crass and annoying when Jay says that he was planning on leaving anyway and that he was beaten to the punch, but I think there's a little bit of truth in there when he says that Jeff really wanted to be in the driver's seat. As good as it can be to have a bunch of highly creative people working together, there has to be one main director and that's usually the frontman. Its too bad, because the end result was a really great album. The band finally achieves massive critical success and one of the guys that helped deliver it doesn't get to reap the rewards.

i read that wilco book awhile back that the dude from the chicago paper wrote. it's a good book. it has some good passages on the writing of summer teeth...it seemed that jay and jeff were doing a lot of drugs and fucking around in the control booth, and it was almost just a jay/jeff project.

Ha. That reminds me of the scene in the film when Jay brings up doing cocaine in Amsterdam and Jeff just seems uncomfortable discussing it.

YHF essentially did what it was supposed to do for the band which was propel them onto a larger stage. The media coverage of the record release obviously helped, but I kind of wonder if the followups would've been even better if Jay was still in the band.

I'm pretty happy with trading Bennett for Cline.

ya, cline kicks all kinds of ass.

He was joking/being sarcastic, if you didn't catch on to that....