theashtraysays

…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

Strand of Oaks

Jeff Tweedy - betcha coulda guessed that one.

They played with YLT last night (Tuesday)

Switching it up a little. Andrew Bird

Yo la Tengo (One! More! Time!)

Yo la Tengo! Again!!

Yo la Tengo

Mike Cooley (DBT) solo

Love seeing that pic. Totally a Stan stan myself. (Did I mention we share a birthday? Tis true!) Interesting that of the zillion FB/IG posts, nobody mentioned this MONUMENTAL ACHIEVEMENT but you. #VCForever

Bob Dylan

Haven't seen much in the way of recaps for the book tour this time so I figured I'd chime in a bit about last night's event, since it was a rather limited run and many folks didn't get the chance to see one of the stops. Much paraphrasing here... I didn't take actual notes... but this is how I understood his comments. It's tough to recap something from memory which is basically ALL BANTER versus a regular Wilco show, but here goes. Jeff stopped by this very same High School auditorium five years ago for the memoir tour, and I remember that one being a little better attended than

Author Jeff Tweedy

First was 2005 at the very end of the AGIB tour. So I’ve only seen the current lineup. Fave? No idea really… loved them all. I started tracking shows on a spreadsheet about 6 years ago when I retired and has a personal goal of 50/year. I’ve done that except for Covid and think I’ll hit 60 this year btw. Someone asked me which shows I’d been to, and so I had to do some forensic work to fill in the blanks pre-2018, also just on a spreadsheet. I honestly thought I was only at 50 or 60 so I kinda surprised myself when it was way up in the 90’s.

So that bit of banter was my annual call out / shout down from Jeff, as I tend to overstep my enthusiasm a wee bit every now and then. In this case, after Jeff said “you’re not here to hear me yap”, I replied (from the second row in the pit, so well within earshot), “yap away!”. That prompted the last two lines above. Point was taken, and it did settle the crowd for a bit - but not the whole evening as you noted. Beyond that, the highlight was indeed Spiders with MBD doing a little shredding of her own amongst the Wilco shred forest.

Wilco. Noteworthy as this is my 100th Wilco show.

I’m not one to declare every Wilco show as “best ever”, but this one was indeed special. I’ve never seen Jeff so animated in getting the crowd into singing and clapping and generally embracing the gorgeousness of it all. The outro’s to handshake drugs and a couple others seemed to stretch out almost jam-like. By the end of the show you could see Jeff looking out up to the lit-up lawn area and seeming almost overwhelmed with it all. For Spiders, he encouraged the clapping early on, and I thought we’d just get the audience clap-along when he implored us all to “keep it going”. But clearly he wan