Reason #68,725 to love the Internet: Without it, I would never have seen this:
This is the one thing you need to watch/listen to this week. It’s a Staxilicious cover of Wilco’s “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” by JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound. Judging from the YouTube comments (why do I read them? Why?) the video’s been making the rounds for several months, but I only saw it last night when a couple Facebook friends linked to it. And I’ve been watching it ever since. I’ve purchased the single and the one album they have up on iTunes. I’ve even “liked” them on Facebook so that I will not miss them when they come to New York (for that must happen, right? Soon, right?), because there’s no way these guys aren’t AMAZING live. (This is also the main reason why I can never quit Facebook. I’m not fond of it, but I’d miss out on too much great stuff. My friends — hell, even my “friends” — are cool like that.)
For reasons I cannot explain, watching this video makes me miss Chicago like nothing else. It’s doubly strange to me because I never actually lived in Chicago proper, nor have I lived anywhere near Chicago since 1993. It is one of my favorite places to visit; for a time I was making trips between southwestern Ohio and Chicago on a regular basis, and I make it there just about every year for Thanksgiving (as I will this year, oh @Duff, possibly for a week this time, FYI. Also, “FYI” is already in caps, but you should probably read that as though it were in DOUBLE CAPS.)
Maybe it’s nothing more than this song is what Chicago sounds like. It definitely has something to do with the last shot of the video, which just hit me with a bittersweet burst of nostalgia. Like, “I lived there, once.” (Even though I didn’t, technically.)
It has been a while since I’ve been this excited about a new-to-me band.
It has also been a very long time since I’ve heard a cover song not only take the original to a supremely groovy new place but make me immediately want to go back to the original, and now hear it in a completely different way. But damn if Jeff Tweedy isn’t giving me serious goosebumps right now (he tends to do that), and damn, I actually kinda feel like bopping around to it.
And that’s all I have for you today — a stretched out version of what really should have been a Tumblr post, except for me trying to be all bloggy on a regular basis. (Even though I have a twinge of carpal tunnelly pain in my left hand. I SUFFER FOR MY ART.)
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