theashtraysays

Guided by Voices.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Rescheduled TWICE… I’ve had this ticket forever it seems. Gonna be worth the wait tho.

Jayhawks

I won't be going to RSD on Saturday (out of town, and not a huge vinyl collector anyway), but I can check on Monday and see if our local record shop still has a copy if you didn't score one over the weekend. I'm in the US by the way. I presume we met last month?? I'm Vince - I was at all the shows there.

Cedric Burnside

There was one night in either the original Residency or (more likely) the first winterlude where they played a really weird set - maybe more bleak than deep - that Jeff said “would never happen again” or something like that. I don’t recall a deep cuts set at SSF tho. I’m sure bbop would know….

The Enmore was indeed more suitable for a rock show than the ICONIC (oops I did it again) Sydney opera house, not that I’m endorsing one over the other. But for sure the Enmore show felt a lot looser than the previous night at what Jeff described as being “inside someone’s sculpture”. The Enmore had a cool art deco vibe throughout with lots of velour and cool details all around. The setup was unique in that there was a GA “pen” in front of the stage for about 1/3 of the floor area, with a rail BEHIND the “pen” but none in front so it was all elbows-on-stage for the very crowded GA section.

firstly let me be clear that I’ve never been in a bathtub with JT (or any member of the Wilco band and/or Tweedy family or organization) so that’s not my area of expertise. secondly I was really hoping to conduct my own (solo) experiment on the whole drain thing but it turns out that all four lodging choices I’ve made have showers without bathtubs so it’s going to remain unverified for me. Science will have to wait. Alas.

Well let me just go ahead and break the seal on the word “iconic” and say that my first visit to this iconic venue was everything I could hope for. There, that’s done. On to the recap. The venue is amazing. It’s unique, artsy, and yes, iconic. There are seats 360 degrees around the totally open, flat stage. The side sections are small-ish, interlocked blocks of seats. Behind the unobstructed stage are more seats. The stage has no “sides” to cloak the crew or road cases. With that in mind, there were no “fringe curtains” for projections anywhere. The front row was really close to the rath

Well of course the second night was better than the first for you @froggie- you were standing next to ME tonight!! (Great meeting you and sharing the rail there!!). Railing vs boothing is a no-brainer. Gimme that pogo-friendly rail anytime, especially once Outtasite kicks in. I didn’t catch any lyric flubs, but there was a very rare Nels sour note on one of his more prominent non-improv solos (don’t recall which) where he definitely plucked a squeaker and got that look on his face like he just passed gas in church. There was no hiding it. He looked over at Jeff and the band expecting

Booth Report: We were clued in on the existence of these “booths” by local Melbourne-ite @eckythump, and for this “night 1” show (which was actually the final added night of three) we decided that our little group could use a night off our collective feet and chucked in the extra bucks to reserve part of one of the ~20 booths. These are located behind the soundboard and elevated above that massive main floor. There are even a couple more elevated areas behind the booths with rails that seemed quite popular with the locals who wanted that same elevated view without the cushy booth seats (o

It was indeed a strange little sit / stand / rush dynamic. But good lord those seats WERE quite comfy. My newfound friends in the front row had all conspired to break the standing seal right away, but when they opened with Hell is Chrome it was clear that Jeff was reading the room and not cranking it up early. But when Jeff kinda coaxed the crowd leading into RNG, we went for it!! One of the more peculiar moments in that tug of war was when a lone woman came down the aisle to the front as Jeff started Hummingbird, which seemed to be a favorite song of hers. Jeff kinda acknowledged her pr

Deeper setlist, closer rail, laid-backer crowd. That’s pretty much the story there for night 2 imho. Give me a Sunken Treasure and a How to Fight Loneliness and it’s a good night for me. We could tell that the crowd wasn’t going to be as rabid as night one while we were out on the sidewalk, as the line at 15 minutes till doors was nowhere near what it was the night before. Not a bad crowd at all (unless you were the opener - see below), just not as much excitement flowing back to the stage I thought. But a funner show at least for me in terms of setlist selection. About that opener -

^ what he said. Indeed a fun, fun night of rock and roll. Loved the room! Compact stage with a rather shallow floor and small balcony set way back. Sound was pleasantly loud (the big row of subs in front of the stage did the job without being jarring at all) and quite good. Just the right setup for a cozy Wilco show. Hoppin crowd with just a touch of rowdy as mentioned above. Tonight’s lyric flub was perhaps a result of a little too much “palate cleansing”, as Jeff totally botched the OPENING LINE of Muzzle of Bees after his comment / Glenn - jab. So we’ll never really kno

Yeah sorry about that. Copy/paste while I was offline on a plane. There’s probly a way to fix it but I’m a Luddite.

…Which was the show that almost wasn’t, at least for me. After a rough night without much sleep and perhaps some bad midnight udon noodles, I almost didn’t go to the show cause I felt like crap all day. Waiting for the delayed bullet train on the 34F degree platform for almost two hours did not help. Apparently there was an incident involving a train and a person somewhere that delayed all the trains from Tokyo to Osaka (including, according to Cheryl’s post) the band. But come showtime I thought I was stable enough to make it so I went on in during the Finom set which made the wait m

Once again thanks to the bbop for getting this started… If you haven’t read my comments about night one in Japan yet, do that first. My thumbs can’t handle repeating all the stuff that was the same like the entry process which was the same but with higher numbers. On we go… Namba Hatch is located right next to Haneda airport, and was a lot like EX Roppongi, but bigger. Even wider room, even higher ceiling, and deeper. The standing floor was sloped upward a bit (I didn’t notice if there was a “ledge” anywhere back, and also had rails going across the floor left to right abo

Many thanks to bbop for starting the thread. As I don’t have a laptop with me this trip, it was nice to get that head start so my thumbs wouldn’t have quite so much to do. So here goes… I was fortunate to make the trek to Japan to catch Wilco playing here for the first time in about ten years, and the opening night got off to a rousing start. The EX theater in the Roppongi neighborhood is a very nice modern room, with a high ceiling and deep set small seated balcony overlooking a wide standing floor that was tiered at least one level about halfway back with a rail. Terrific

Wilco!!

Yo la Tengo

My wife's fashion review on the Facebook group seems to have sparked some commentary!! ("Chairman Mao with a beanie")

Sad news indeed. Will the holographic farewell tour make it to the States?

bout damn time.

Likewise!! After figuring out our VC connection, we were wondering who’d take the reins for this recap with bbop being out and about elsewhere. Nice to see some first rate reporting so quickly!! Not much to add banter-wise to the above reports; Jeff seemed to have something say between almost every song which was delightful. I could tell that nalafej and I were struggling to jot notes on all of it. I will say that the room itself was worth an extra mention. Imagine a cube maybe 30’ on each side, with pews for 50 people on that main floor. Set into the walls on eac