Formation
In the winter of 1999, Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy acquired a copy of Jim O'Rourke's 1997 album Bad Timing. The album featured four instrumental tracks that juxtaposed guitar parts with orchestration. Tweedy liked how O'Rourke's music was varied and "not easily categorized". According to Tweedy:
| “ | ended up blowing my mind more than just about any album I'd heard in the last five years | ” |
Tweedy was invited to perform with a collaborator of his choice for the 2000 Noise Pop Festival in Chicago. The festival promoter offered to pair him with members of the Mekons, but Tweedy decided to collaborate with O'Rourke. The pair met at O'Rourke's apartment a few days before the festival. They listened to gramophone records by T. Rex, Phil Niblock, and Roy Harper; later that night they wrote material for the concert and agreed to meet the next day at the Wilco loft in Chicago. O'Rourke invited Glenn Kotche, a drummer who played in a similar musical style, to the practice session. Tweedy found lyrical inspiration from word exercises; for example, he picked out random words from a copy of TV Guide and formed abstract lines such as "you boil hearts and discuss birds". He also sought to improve as a guitarist, taking influence from free jazz artists such as James "Blood" Ulmer.
On May 14, 2000, Jeff Tweedy played the Noise Pop Festival at Double Door in a concert that polarized Wilco fans. Natalie Merchant joined the band onstage, but left after Tweedy requested that she perform Utah Phillips' murder ballad "Rock Salt and Nails". Among the new material performed at the concert was "Laminated Cat", a reworked version of a Wilco demo entitled "Not for the Season"—Tweedy was unhappy with the straightforwardness of Wilco's version. The trio decided to name their band Loose Fur and recorded a six-song album in the summer of 2000. The band also made an uncredited appearance on O'Rourke's 2001 solo album Insignificance. The Loose Fur album was not released at the time because Tweedy was busy recording Wilco's fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Read more about this topic: Loose Fur
Famous quotes containing the word formation:
“... the mass migrations now habitual in our nation are disastrous to the family and to the formation of individual character. It is impossible to create a stable society if something like a third of our people are constantly moving about. We cannot grow fine human beings, any more than we can grow fine trees, if they are constantly torn up by the roots and transplanted ...”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“Those who were skillful in Anatomy among the Ancients, concluded from the outward and inward Make of an Human Body, that it was the Work of a Being transcendently Wise and Powerful. As the World grew more enlightened in this Art, their Discoveries gave them fresh Opportunities of admiring the Conduct of Providence in the Formation of an Human Body.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)