Everyone knows that the Rolling Stones are a bunch of greedy amoral bastards. (Pick your anecdote from rock lore to illustrate this fact.) The geezers keep flogging their fame into the 21st century, long past sell-by date of their flesh and musical inspiration. Do they need to tour and release more memoirs to make more millions? It hardly seems like it, yet they've been doing it for 50 years now, and they probably don't know what else to do with themselves.
Wilco is a bit like America’s answer to Radiohead. The band is hugely popular, inspiring major-league fan adoration, loads of Internet documentation and speculation, and ample critical acclaim.
Rex Fowler and Neal Shulman, the folk duo known as Aztec Two-Step, have been compared to another fairly acclaimed folk/pop twosome. The comparisons had become so pervasive that ATS recorded their album Time It Was: The Simon & Garfunkel Songbook as a tribute.
Modern pop-country music and traditional country music have little to nothing in common with each other. Thankfully, when the Sweetback Sisters play their own brand, it's based on the latter, superior version.
"They're a really tough crowd to play for," says John Linnell. "It's not unusual for them to talk through a song. Or even talk while we're talking. They don't care about the social conventions that usually account for good manners at a show. And if we play a song they don't like, they will definitely let us know."