Added: 4 years ago
From: achn2b
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  • Ok, that was decent!

  • this fuckin sux

  • a guitarist like him should have a good band behind, a good jazz drummer and a great jazz bassist. Like this it sounds like a wedding performance.

  • Very valid stuff. Wish we could sit down and shoot the shit over a few beers for a long listening session. But alas... It's been great conversing. Many thanks. I think I'll remove most of my comments in the next day or two, so we're not taking up all the space on the Nels Cline section, speaking of extraneous stuff. Thanks again for your articulate responses..

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  • Great guitarist. Even though he does have a passing resemblance to Alastair Campbell in this vid.

  • @Tompsk69 Actually, he is the spitting image of the Irish playwright Arthur Riordan.

  • It looks like he's making love to his guitar... grody

  • so shit!

  • Really? I don't think he's overrated. I've seen John Mcglaughlin live and I think Nels is almost as good if not as good as him.

  • who the fck disliked this? :47 destroys

  • Wilco is not nearly popular enough.

  • 1:36 - Frank Zappa is alive and working as guitar tech for Wilco....

  • @theanthill1001 Good eyes man! =]

  • this seems like normal blues rock crap to me.i only like this guy when he tries to sound like sonic youth (which he does, and yes i know hes being avant jazz for years in chicago). i also only like the wilco song that sounds like can so what would i know

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  • @RootsinBrooklyn this is very bluesy. And Nels Cline would disagree with you about Sonic Youth

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  • @RootsinBrooklyn Have you ever heard him play with his trio (the Nels Cline Singers)? Their stuff should satisfy you about 'what the fuzz or buzz is about this guy'. As for his work in Wilco, in rock it's so much not about how many accidentals or outside phrases or new ideas you inject, it's about direct communication. And that is why he got hired for Wilco - because he is a jazz-schooled player who can play with total directness if that's what the context demands.

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  • @RootsinBrooklyn Neither do I. Neither does he, apparently, being a modest guy. I think he's better than you think he is (and many fine musicians, from Julius Hemphill to Mike Watt, would seem to agree), but I guess he's got some of the attention because he's a leftfield jazz guy who has lucked into a good gig in a very (OK, fairly) visible rock band.

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  • I'm not saying he's my favourite guitarist ever, but you must admit, isn't it nice that a fine musician once in a while gets the recognition he deserves? Maybe there are players out there as good as Nels Cline who haven't had his level of visibility, but that's an injustice. For once, it's good to see justice done. No? And while there are maybe more natural jazz players out there, and more direct rock players, there are few who can do both, i.e. carry rock intensity into jazz complexity.

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  • @RootsinBrooklyn Mike Stern: yes. Didn't like it that much - not intense enough to be rock and not interesting enough to be the kind of jazz I like. Buzz Feiten, Terry Haggerty: not knowingly. Will check them out. Jeff Baxter: assuming you mean the guy who played those solos on Steely Dan records, good fun but otherwise I refer you to my comment on Mike Stern. John Scofield's stuff I know quite well, and I don't really enjoy it. I think you have to be American, or something.

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  • @RootsinBrooklyn The edginess and aggression of punk suits my temperament better than the more mellow, even slightly (!) stoned vibe of the Allmans or Santana. I don't deny that the Allmans and Santana are fine musicians, but what they make is usually a little too relaxed for me. There are emotional areas, generally to do with anger and hostility, that they simply can't access, just as most punk bands can't make you cry (with the exception of Husker Du).

  • @RootsinBrooklyn Just to clarify - I'm not a bigot or a philistine. I hear that Scofield is a gifted player, but it's just not for me. I can't get all that excited by the endless funky bluesy workouts. I actually prefer someone like Pat Metheny, who for all that he sometimes plays stuff quite close to muzak, seems to have a more varied mode of expression than Scofield. Metheny can affect me emotionally, whereas Scofield just makes me want to drink beer and go 'whoo!', which isn't quite enough.

  • My final boring answer to your good question: where I really connect with Nels Cline is that he's made a positive connection with the punk and post-punk bands that I love, via great guitarists like Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd and Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, and all the other guys you mention, fine musicians though they are, play as if punk never happened. Nels Cline understands the impatience and anger of punk and that's one reason I think he's got a broader range than some other guys.

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  • @RootsinBrooklyn You too may have nailed it, in that punk wasn't aiming for 'melody, danceable rhythms, gospel, soul, blues, and even innocence', but something quite different. I freely grant that a lot of punk and post-punk is just noisy and inept yammering, but some of it is genuinely expressive of a set of emotions and experiences that had never really been expressed in music before. I don't much admire of Moore's actual playing, but Sonic Youth do something for me that no other band does.

  • I love how shiny his clothes always are....

  • Cool solo definitely fits the song-

    but what's up with the thin tone and reliance on the whammy bar?

    Too bad the other guitarists start to come in and somewhat interfere with

    his well paced build up. Reminds a little bit of some of the earlier Lou Reed

    material played in Europe w Robert Quine or Chuck Hammer.

  • he has a great relaxed guitar style

  • That's the best high right there. When I play my guitar and just start jamming out, no drug can replicate that euphoric feeling.

  • Dude, you can't even spell. Shut the hell up.

  • @QuarkToo And we are jealous why?

  • I think it's interesting that he doesn't do any big bends, in a song like that it's not typical at all.

  • @MorningBuzz its because of his background in jazz, a genre in which bending is uncommon to non existent

  • Nels kills it! He kinda blew it on the change, but still awesome

  • you tit

  • youre brave arent you such a deep thinker

  • all what i can say is any1 who enjoys this is seriously gay

  • ...and you can barely say that you retard.

    Get back under your stone and stop wasting good oxygen

  • just as soon as i have finished humpin your mother

  • yeah. you got me with your superior intellect and deductive powers. well done and my heartfelt congratulations.Check your mail the Nobel prize will be delivered soon.

    tit

  • tit

  • do you mean you're

  • hahaha.

    Germany is our future colony.

    They study English.

  • I don't know about u all, but to these aged ears Cline is the most interesting guitarist I have encountered in memory in, oh, 30 years or more. Cannot say I have the slightest interest in Wilco, does not mean they are not a great band, it took me until I was 26 to "get" the Grateful Dead. But, knowing Cline from the Nels Cline Singers about 10 years ago, a band in which there were no singers, has instantly made me a Wilco fan. He is in heady territory peopled by Jimi, McLaughlin, Garcia, others

  • impresionante!!!

  • Music nerds arguing about their opinions is always a crackupfest.

  • tall!

    P.S:suck it jrceina85

  • How tall is he?

  • I want this on when I am dying....I think it sounds like heaven.I wish I didn't love Wilco so much,it interferes with my life...it drives my husband & are you ready for this...my grandson crazy.I have only felt like this before about Joni Mitchell, Leon Russell, & Elvis Costello in my 50 yrs here.And they are above them all. Their concerts are love fests fro their fans.They work so hard to play the greatest music & they play what we want to hear.I make myself sick.

  • When Nels plays, they instantly become his backup band.

  • 3 guitars too much... not necessarily. If you write interwoven parts in different registers of the guitar you can get great effects. It's a staple of my songwriting style... most of my stuff requires three electric guitars or two electric guitars and one acoustic twelve-string to perform correctly.

  • Listen to the full song and tell again three guitars are too much.

  • Okay.... *listens*... yeah 3 guitars are too much.

    Seriously, you have Nels Cline as your guitarist and you need to add 2 more guitars to that? I'm sorry but it starts to sound like Lynard Skynard or something at that point. Right at about 1:30 I could do without the other two guys.

  • what are you talking about?

    min 1.30 ????

    there is no way that a guitarrist can play that contrapoint.

    you have to listen the high quality version ,, and listen the speakers separately. there are diferent notes,, that make more rich the armony

  • blah blah blah blah, you're not shit

  • Wilco is amazing.

  • i agree, and my comment was in response to someone else's comment.

    wilco is probably one of the best rock bands to ever exist.

  • Hands down one of the best shows I've seen by Wilco. This show was performed 06-29-07 outside at Shelburne Museum in Burlington, VT. This was the first of the three shows I've seen of Wilco. Amazing guitar solos. I was screaming for "Ashes" while "via chicago" was playing. I'll never forget this show

  • i dont care what anyone says...nels cline is one of the best guitarists of today...you can like whatever the hell ya want but its a fact that cline does EXACTLY what he wants with his guitar...that makes him great....ive seen a lot of concerts but seeing wilco this past week was probably the best live performance of them all

  • yeah, i don't think many people are gonna disagree with you. the guy is fucking king!

  • wow its amazing there are idiots like you out there that think music needs to be very complex in order to be good. so my friend your a moron. Nels Cline is awsome and you suck at life. PS ohh what was that song you made, oh yeah you suck at life so you didn't.

  • you idiots that doubt Nels Cline are dumb shits. steve vai sucks cock, van halen makes shit music.

  • i don,t even personally like say methany,it,s an observation , made without pointless insults ,based on 40 years transcribing and playing experience

  • Who cares how technically "good" a guitarist is if their music is boring... Malmsteen is insane, so is Van Halen (though he is vastly overrated and can't seem to write a good song to save his life), but Nels puts so much life into everything he does. It's not that he is incapable of playing "complex" stuff, he just knows how to play what best suits the song. That is a truly great guitarist, and more so, a phenomenal musician.

  • it is not about the point , who is technically better, it was about Avant Garde.

  • monkeybum999:

    Nels Cline plays Avant Garde jazz on guitar. He has released albums interpreting late Coltrane recordings. He is FAR from a strict diatonic player. THIS solo may be diatonic b/c that's what the song calls for. A douchebag like Malmsteen would have blew his load all over this progression and completely ruined the feel of the song.

  • You wrote exactly what I was going to say.

  • Avant Garde?

    jajajajaja, nothing more far from that.

    I agree with you that Yngwie Malmsteen is a douchebag, but Robert Fripp for example, plays still now more Avant Garde jazz than Cline. And Fripp is a very diatonic player, with a lots of chord progressions in his music...he is the man

  • He recorded a modern rendition of Interstellar Space.

    Are you're saying "nothing is more far from [anvant-garde jazz]" than late Coltrane?

    Btw, I love Fripp too...

  • No, I was refering to Cline himself, but I think I take it back..I've been searching for more videos and music in the web..you are probably right.

  • WOW an admitted defeat on the INTERNET! The world has never before witnessed such a rare humbling event. props.

  • This is truly a spectacle.

  • @hickeye

    While I can see that he an accomplished guitarist, I can't for the life of me see why he is so "critically acclaimed". He is good, but not THAT GOOD.

  • @hickeye

    Nels Cline is a good but incredibly over rated guitarist. I can't for the life of me understand why he is so "critically acclaimed".

  • @75lester imagination

  • @hickeye you read my mind

  • @Lafforte and you're going out of your way to tell me your opinion because...?

  • @Lafforte Nels Cline is perfectly capable of post-bop harmonic complexity, or free playing, when it's appropriate for what he's doing. However, he is a good musician, and he plays what's right for the song. This is right for the song. So shut the fuck up.

  • @monkeysbum999 Van Halen, Malmsteen, Methany, etc. are extremely overrated. No one of their stoned, drinking fans can really comprehend and appreciate great, true music. Nels Cline is not diatonically based. He is my idol and a musical genius.

  • concon123:

    that is a ridiculous comment. first of all, he's probably faster than steve vai. second of all, his style is completely and totally different from steve vai- he's a jazz player

  • not to mention the stuff he does on the side is way more edgy than Steve Vai could ever approach

  • steve vai sucks.

  • haha people giving me the thumbs down...it wasnt an insult. and you sir know NOTHING about good guitar playing.

  • maybe, but that slow guys has made the most awesome solo of this decade...

    not to much complex,, but who cares..

  • Nels Cline is a full on jazz virtuoso...have you ever listened to his solo jazz albums? I love Wilco but he's the reason.

  • Quite tasteful, Im probably more into shred but hey it is quite nice.

    Comparing Metheny and this guy is pretty ridiculous though , ones a full on jazz virtuoso and the other dude plays in wilco.

  • If you listen to Nels' playing you will hear many very jazzy runs. He is clearly also a virtuoso.

  • Nels is amazing!

  • Totally epitomises the 'Jazzmaster' sound.

  • One of the most melodic solos I've ever heard. Nels is great!

  • Most beautiful guitar sound today.

  • holy shit! William H Macy on gutiar!

  • he makes the jazzmaster proud.

  • That, by the way, was directed to glevitan...apparently, I suck at hitting "reply."

  • I compare this to a duane allman or dicky betts solo back in the days of THE ALLMAN BROTHERS>>>>

    Love it NELS thanks WIlco Charleston was a fun night.

    I also like how he will slide in a little radiohead sound just to show the folks he can keep up with Ed and Jonny.

  • I wouldn't say he has to show any one that he can keep up. That's a given.

  • If you ever get to see them live, run don't walk, it's amazing!!!

  • this guy is an amazing guitarist... when he plays, it's like an apendage.

  • Greatest song and solo of all time...

  • Saw Nels and Kotche do a solo/duo concert a year or two ago. Few musicians (on ANY insrument) have such a combination of "chops", taste, and originality. He's a real artist.

  • This is really really great.

  • Screw "Chops" his tone blows all you sniveling little metal heads out his ass!

  • i love how this guitar solo both works as a solo and serves the song as a whole after jeff and pat come back in with the interplay, very good stuff that's better then any "metal" solo since that's all flashy but doesn't further the song, good stuff plus lalopalloza 2008 wilco and radiohead, awesome

  • I don't know. Some of the best metal solos are great because they work within the framework of the song. Why does somthing always have to be good to the exclusion of other things?

  • glevitan... I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and hope you're kidding when you say Nels Cline has no chops. Nels Cline has more chops than every guitar player you named in your post. Ok ok... after watching your videos it is obvious you were joking. Clearly you have no idea what chops are. Nels Cline is one of the most technically proficient guitarists in history.

  • i mean what can i say ?

  • Personaly, I'd say something along the lines of "even though I fucking HATE Wilco (and believe me, I do) I can't help but drown in Mr. Cline's GENIUS." It's like Steely Dan filtered through infinite passion and joy....

  • This may not be his crowning achievement, but it is a fact that Nels Cline has chops coming out his pores.

    Perhaps you meant pork chops? Or metal guitar chops (most of which is by definition incredibly uninspired—and that's coming from someone who actually enjoys metal quite a bit)?

  • yes he plays with emotion....but the definition of "chops" is straight proficiency and skill and he simply isn't nearly wowing me with his skill, scale knowledge, speed, or creativity. Is that so bad???

    If you want to talk chops AND emotion lets talk about Vai, Johnson, Dimebag, Howe, fruciante, rhoads, matheny,. shall i go one?? Not all metal guitarist but all have the same level of emotion as Mr. Cline but in ANOTHER world with their technique, originality, and yes chops.

  • umm fruciante has worse chops than this. and in fact worse than most guitarists half his age.

  • You really should listen to some of his other material before making such a strong judgement. It's pretty obvious he's being tasteful for this tune. I'm still hooked on Randy and Dimebag, but this guy has something they don't. A good place to start to get the idea would be all of his lead work on "Side With The Seeds" off this album (Sky Blue Sky). Great use of dissonance, harmonic minor/alternate scales, tension, insanely bombastic speed and touch. Seriously, check it out.

  • With you 100% about Metheny....but I don't think you give Cline enough credit. There's so much subtle creativity and skill in this one solo, not to mention his other work.

  • Woah!!

    Music is only 25% skill. And 100% passion. Nels has passion. He can express it through his guitar. Metheny just plays some repetative progression of 16th notes for 8 minutes.

    Metheny just doesn't have 'skill' where it matters, in the heart.

  • I found this guy through Jenny Scheinman, and have become a huge fan watching his clips over the last hour or so, i think he's the best kept secret in guitar playing, soul power and artistry and unique. i'm going to listen to everything i can find by him. reminds me of Al Green somehow.

  • greatest solo of modern times

  • i fuckin love this solo!

  • Wow. Never really been a big Wilco fan, but Mr. Cline can very obviously play.

  • that man has huge hands

  • lol my name is nels

  • he's The Best guitarist, in the The Best rock band on the planet today.

  • NELS IS GOD!!!!!!!!!

  • For sure, Mr. Cline, for sure...

  • i mean nels

  • usually i like heavyish rock, but nel cline is so amazing, even for softish rock

  • HOLY CRAP!

    ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • nels cline is an alien... just awesome.

  • fucking amazing

  • Excellent, soul-full.. Very smooth.. ***** Great

    I'm going to buy this CD..

  • impossible germany? more like impossible guitar solo

  • Nels Cline is the best thing that ever happened to Wilco.....

    You should see/ hear him when he pairs up with the Man in the Van (Mike Watt)

  • My favorite song off the new record

  • If you want to hear guitar work that good at times - pick up Neil Young's Zuma - Neil works his heart and pick off. And Paul Westerberg did Jeff Tweedy's voice better - listen to Let it Be and Tim and Pleased to Meet me and other great replacments cds and if you like listen to Paul westerbergs best solo effort - 14 songs - listen to the song Things .. Things is as good as it gets ..

  • I like to direct people to Stereo/Mono from 2002 for Westerberg's best complete solo effort.

    Best PW solo song IMO is "It's a Wonderful Lie" - there's a great live version of it here on YT. /watch?v=2INC0In9ZzY

  • Why the frick didn't I pick up on Wilco sooner - I am such a Replacements Fan and that guitar is straight out of Neil young's zuma and the a brothers and loan me a dime boz scaggs and Paul Westerberg will you ever get it back? are you listening germany impossible japan.

  • Agree 100% - I have been saying for years, Wilco is the band the Replacements could have become. My two favorite bands of all time.

    As for Nels, I always had a beef about him being a jazzer, but finally saw the band last Sunday -- and I was 100% wrong, his playing is very visceral and adds a ton to the band's performance. He is a blast to watch also.

  • Just wanted to know you opinion - if these live versions are better the CD 'cause my friend says he doesn't like Impossbile Germany that much. His fav Cd is Foxtrot which on You Tube to be doesn't sound great .. but I like Jesus ETc and have to listen to more.

  • The album version of Impossible Germany doesn't compare to the live versions here on YT - Cline's solo is fairly muted on the CD, but is the feature of the song when played live.

    Agree somewhat with the Replacements-Wilco comparisons... but the mats were hardly the professional musicians that the guys in Wilco are. whether that's a good or bad thing depends on what you like in music...

  • He is a jazzer, but it is far from what most would think of as a jazz drummer. Any of the Nels Cline Singers albums are amazing as well as just about everything he has done. 3+3=7 by Joel Harrison with Nels on both baritone and regular electric guitar is awesome as is his work with the Geraldine Fibbers and Mike Watt.

  • not only is he shitty, i heard a story where he slapped some lady because she didn't know who he was...malmsteen(or however u spell it)= royal douche, and + his leather pants are way to tight

  • This is so inspiring, i got the new wilco album a while ago and had never heard of nels, i was just blown away i just bought the Nels Cline Singers new Album, Draw Breath and its equally amazing.

    He's really gotten me into this type of jazz. He's defiantly my favorite guitarist, and yeah he play a Jazzy so that makes it all the more awesome

  • Nels is tops. Best guitarist of the last 15 years, for sure. Check out offsetguitars . com, if you haven't already. Lots of Jazzmaster info there!

  • people need to learn the world of nels cline, he is such an influential guitarist. Everytime i here this solo my jaw drops. He is just Frankly inspiring.

  • So much more inventive, creative and fresh than the crappy high-speed fireworks of people like Eddie van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai. Yuk! Nels Cline could give them all lessons...