Wilco Hijacked
Sam Jones’s gorgeously photographed Wilco documentary, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, is one the best DVD values I believe I have ever seen. For around $30, the hardcore fan gets the movie itself—which tells the now famous story of how the band came to release one of the albums of the decade—as well as a second disc containing literally hours of outtakes.
Now, I’ve never been one to be taken in by DVD “extras”—the recycled Discovery channel documentaries and endless, narcissistic directorial commentaries almost always leave me cold. But the extras contained on the I Am Trying To Break Your Heart DVD are a very different story—assuming you like Wilco, you will actually want to watch them. The big draw? A number of inspired, uncut, live recordings (including a rocking “Pot Kettle Black” and a bunch of Jeff Tweedy’s highly accomplished solo acoustic performances).
My only real complaint about all of these goodies is that they’re on a DVD, and not on my iPod. Fortunately, the naughty developers at Rogue Amoeba (with a little bit of help from Unsanity) have come to my rescue with the wonder that is Audio Hijack. Using the $30 pro version of this software, I have been able to grab a number of songs from the film and encode them as high quality MP3 files. The result is something akin to getting a brand new Wilco live album (can you tell how much I’m itching to get my hands on the new EP they’re supposed to be releasing?)!
(Update: Apparently the aforementioned EP is
forthcoming! How lame!)
Now if I could only figure out a way to mute Jay Bennett’s omnipresent voice over the songs…