Misunderstood

I give Wilco a lot of shit, because they allowed themselves to become parodies of themselves as well as some strange cartoonish media cartoonish parody of itself; they were, for a while, the band record reviewers were scared to give anything less than FIVE STARS! to for reasons that are unknown to anybody.  This isn't necessarily due to any fault of their own, other than allowing that awful movie to be released that put them only slightly under Metallica in the "christ, are these guys gay" Olympics, but their own cool kids table became somewhat of a joke. At least to me.  At some point, Wilco became the baseline for music that people will allow themselves to pretend to like in the hopes that if they believed in Tweedy & Co enough, one day the rest of the world would view them as "getting it", and their initial investment of sitting through shitty music would finally pay off.

But.

As lame as I think they became, and as much as I think Sistatime! could beat the shit out of them for no reason other than she's in the mood, I will always give them credit for the fact the the very first track off their first album is one of the greatest moments ever in rock history.  I remember lying on my floor in Oxford and playing this over and over after it came out - hell, I have no idea why I bought it in the first place, but it's fucking remarkable.  One of the greatest career leadoff tracks of all time.  There's I Saw Her Standing There, there's Blitzkreig Bop, and there's this. Well, and I Will Follow.