Wilco Music Leaks On The Web, Again

Curses are a pesky entity. The Red Sox suffered without a World Series title for 86 years due to “the Curse of the Bambino” and the beloved losers of the Midwest, the Chicago Cubs, are now on the verge of going a full century without a title because they wouldn’t let a goat into Wrigley Field back in 1908. Man that was one pissed off goat. Even the Babe could eventually find a way to move forward.

The rock band Wilco isn’t a baseball team, but it does have a problem with keeping its albums from being downloaded online months before they’re due to hit stores. The group’s 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the first to fall prey to this new affliction, then 2004’s A Ghost Is Born and now Sky Blue Sky has also leaked online, well before its May 15 release.

As Billboard reports, fans of the group have attempted to make good of the unfortunate turn, asking that fans who downloaded A Ghost Is Born to donate what they would have spent to Doctors Without Borders, which eventually garnered $15,000. Maybe sometimes things happen for a reason. Who knows?

Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy spoke candidly of his concerns over the leaking pandemic: "There's probably some good argument to be made that it will prevent a few people from buying the record. But there's also the idea that I believe is true for us, which is, it's people listening to our music."

Tweedy still reserves hope that in spite of all the advanced downloading, Sky Blue Sky can still receive a rainfall of sweet cash: " We feel very proud of our record and we want people to hear it. Ultimately, that's the goal. I think most people will do the right thing and support us and buy the record, even if they have downloaded it."

Someone else can tell him that there’s no chance someone who already has the whole record downloaded will rush to the store to buy the crinkly-packaged thing because, basically, I just hate giving bad news.

The boys are willing to atone for whatever wrong(s) they’ve committed in the past and will offer a streaming of Sky Blue Sky on the Wilco Web site on March 11 from 9 a.m Eastern to 9 p.m. Eastern.

As a side note, Wilco manager Tony Margherita says he predicted the leak: "We've always viewed the whole thing as similar to radio. We were prepared for it to leak as soon as the first advance CD went out. That's just part and parcel of the deal. As with previous records, our plan was and is to give people another way to hear the record besides the download, since these often sound like crap and are a pain in the ass for people who don't have a lot of time or are not super tech-savvy."

Perhaps Wilco can make up for any lost revenue when the gang hits the road April 16 in Brisbane, Australia. With any luck, the leak problem won’t continue with Wilco's next record. Although, if it does, I hear we can blame it all on a guy named Scooter Libby and that should wash it all out of the way immediately.

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