Wilco – All around good band

Not only do they write and produce great music, they also seem to take care of their fans. Wilco is again offering free bonus tracks to people that have purchased their “Ghost” CD. Unlike many other bands and labels, you don’t have to keep paying for more and more just to get the extended mix of some O-Town/98 Degrees remix of a shitty song that was released a month earlier. Instead with the great and very Midwestern Wilco, you’re rewarded for being a fan. To recap some recent history:

2001 – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is delayed due to a bone-head move (or conspiracy-minded marketing coup). Wilco streams the album on the website and simply asks fans to buy a copy when it’s available. Net result of this effort, best selling Wilco record to date. Marketing pukes in the record industry cringe.

2003 – Yankee’s Australian EP is available for free on the band’s site if you have the CD. Tweedy tell fans you don’t even need the CD, you just need the code printed on the CD case. Oh, Jeff.

2004 – An early version of Ghost is Born becomes available on the net. Wilco asks if you listen to it, please donate to Doctors Without Borders. To those not about to be a rockstar asshole, we salute you.

2005 – Ghost enhanced content available for free.

The band usually has some terrific gems available in the “roadcase” section of their site. The roadcase has been a permanent fixture on the website. I could go on and on, but that would start to betray my generally caustic exterior and asshole nature.