Jump to content

BeShakey

Member
  • Content Count

    163
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by BeShakey

  1. The jammed GA section with a seated back section of the floor made for a slightly strange experience. Normally GA has enough space for people to be able to sort themselves but the lack of room meant everyone was jammed in with lots of people standing at the sides of the room because there wasn't room in GA.

     

    The set itself was largely a hybrid of Melbourne nights two and three. Meaning no real surprises, although it looked like there was a long conversation between Jeff and Pat around when Impossible Germany got played and the instruments being bought out were waved away, suggesting a song got dropped from the set at that point (would be great to confirm from anyone that has the setlist).

     

    The band seemed to be enjoying themselves, although there were a couple of minor mistakes from Jeff. He started to whistle during Dawned on Me having already done the whistling section, and messed up the intro to I'm the Man Who Loves You. There was some minor excitement (at least from me) when two extra microphones were bought out before the encore, but sadly it was just Leah Senior and band who didn't seem to have particularly impressed anyone I spoke with. Particularly sad when we could potentiall have had a Graham Nash appearance the previous night. 

     

    Having been to all the Melbourne and Sydney shows I'd say that while none were bad, the Melbourne shows, particularly nights 2 and 3, were a step above the Sydney shows. The Opera House is iconic, but fully seated shows aren't the best option for Wilco. Likewise, the weird seating arrangement for the Enmore meant that the room lacked the energy it could have had with a fully standing downstairs section. My only slight criticism is that it would have been nice to hear a few different songs. Meant to Be in particular is supposed to be the current single but didn't make an appearance at any of the shows on the tour. Having been away for a month short of 11 years, we got only 13 songs from the albums they'd released in that time (versus 10 songs from AGiB alone). Still, a great tour and hopefully the many promises to return sooner next time will mean we won't have to wait until 2035 for the next tour.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  2. Bumping this old thread for the benefit of those of you (like me) still listening to music on an old iPod classic.  I found a guy on eBay who will swap out the hard drive on my 164gb iPod with a 360gb flash memory.  It's more expensive than I thought it would be, but now I'll be set for life (or longer) and won't have to be as selective about the music I purchase for fear of running out of storage.  The seller claims it's seamless -- everything (music and album artwork) gets transferred over and he replaces the battery for free.

     

    Can you let me know who did it? The free battery replacement (assuming all goes smoothly) is really good since that seems to always be the first thing to go.

     

    If you don't mind me asking, what is the charge to have that done? Also, what do you do with the flash drive (besides plug it into a computer)? How do you access that music without a computer?

     

    The flash drive is in the ipod, so just connect it like normal. The advantage is more capacity, less power usage (so better battery life), and it's more hardy.

  3. Heard some of these at Bridge. Peace Trail was good, but some was terrible (Terrorist Suicide Hang Gliders) and a lot was mediocre. His problem seems that he can't tell the difference between his good stuff and his rubbish stuff and no one will tell him any more

  4. The FIIO X7 is twice the price of a classic so I wouldn't bill it as inexpensive. I bought one of the second generation x5s and on the positive side the build quality is great (it's a lot bigger than a classic, but that generally doesn't worry me) and it was nice having two micro sd slots, but the interface was pretty bad, it didn't track metadata (which I use pretty extensively to manage my library), and I found the library management options (mediamonkey etc) pretty bad. If all you're looking for is a lot of capacity (and are willing to pay a lot for it), it might be a good option, but I sold mine pretty quickly.

  5. There are lots of options if you're willing to look at people refurbishing on ebay. The refurbishers are taking new ipod classics (or sometimes old ones, which are cheaper but obviously likely to have a shorter life) and replacing the 160gb hard drives with larger ones (mine is 240gb) and sometimes including a larger battery. Even if they don't add a better battery, you get more life from them because the 240gb units are SSD. There's obviously a risk to it, but I've bought three of them. The first lasted about the same amount of time as the old ipod classics and was great. The second one had problems with the battery and the seller was great about returning it and refunding, since he couldn't replace for a few months. The current one is going strong after six months and cost $US330.

     

    For me the advantages are the large capacity and being able to keep my iTunes library (you'd get that with the Touch, but not with other large capacity players). You also get to keep the ipod classic interface, which sounds like it's a plus for you.

  6. Hazel
    Fake Fur Coat
    Diamond Light
    Flowering
    Summer Noon
    World Away
    New Moon
    High As Hello
    Wait For Love
    Love Like a Wire
    Low Key
    Nobody Dies Anymore

    Via Chicago
    I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    One Wing
    New Madrid
    Remember the Mountain Bed
    Hummingbird

    Please Tell My Brother
    Born Alone
    Jesus etc
    I'm the Man Who Loves You
    A Shot in the Arm

    Thirteen (Sammy Tweedy on vocals)
    Please Don't Let Me Be So Understood
    Only the Lord Knows

    The Losing End
    California Stars
    Queen Bitch

     

     

    The Powerstation isn't a huge venue, but this is traditionally a weekend when Aucklanders make use of the last holiday before winter and get out of town, so the venue was only half full. The people that were there were respectful and enthusiastic (at the right points). As others have said, the Sukierae songs seem much better live and even though lots of people didn't seem familiar they got a good reception. One Wing was an early highlight of the solo set. And as for all the other sets of the tour Spiders was on the setlist but not played (along with Passenger Side). Jesus etc got a hushed crowd sing along (trying not to drown out Jeff), but other than that they seemed happy listening. I'm the Man was dedicated to Suzy, who was seated on one of the couches around the edge of the floor (along with Liam and Elroy Finn). Jeff commented that it was nice to actually be able to see her while he played the song. Sammy Tweedy sang all of Thirteen, getting a big clap (followed by the loudest cheer of the night when Jeff said it was his first time singing on stage). The kid's got a great voice and nailed the song.

     

    Jeff seemed to be having fun (it always helps if the venue is standing), but both Give Back the Key... and 5 Years were dropped from the encore. Banter wise there were only a couple of highlights. After Jeff introduced Spencer someone yelled out 'you're doing a fine job sir' and Jeff said thanks they appreciated any positive feedback, later asking for less positive feedback when someone yelled too much, and then more after he messed up Born Alone. After an early song he said something like 'that was a waltz, I don't know whether they've made it down here but they're huge in the states', there wasn't a reaction from the crowd leading him to comment 'that fell flat' (it might have been that people couldn't hear, my girlfriend asked after the show what he said about the Waltons). There were also a few comments about Auckland being the Tweedy family's home away from home (after the time they all spent here for 7 Worlds Collide (which was at the same venue)), and that this was the first time the whole family had been back.

     

    Overall, it was a really great show. I'd given up on seeing Tweedy, so it was nice to catch what might be their last show for a while.

  7. Haven't seen them for a while, but at theatre shows the Hives used to pretty regularly make the crowd sit down with an aisle down the middle of the floor which the singer would then walk down to talk to the crowd.

  8. Sideshows are pretty much guaranteed. Whenever they're only playing Bluesfest they get listed as 'Australian Exclusive' (check out the National and UB40 this year, or Ben Harper last year). There are usually no Brisbane shows because Bluesfest is about two hours away. The only other questions is if they'll make it to NZ, or if they'll just be Sydney and Melbourne shows.

  9. Didn't see anyone else posting this - BBC are playing some classic shows from their archives. The next one is Wilco from Glastonbury in '99. It's available for streaming after the show is broadcast, which looks like it's happening today. Here's the wilco link - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04pvjnk. Here's a link to the other episodes as well (includes Bowie and Crowded House) - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c001r/broadcasts/2014/11

  10. I should have said, I think the issue is why they don't have an opening band. In Australia it was because the shows were at the Opera House and there were rehearsals that prevented an early start. Here I suspect it's that they will play long shows. But the 'Evening with...' moniker is no guarantee (sadly, given I flew to Sydney specifically thinking it did).

  11. It's an evening with Wilco show. To me that means no opener and they will be on 8-810 ish and play 3 hours. Hopefully a little before the show we will get an indication.

     

    On their last Australian tour they played two 'Evening with..' shows. I bumped into John a few days before the first of them and he said that 'Evening with...' means no opener, but nothing more than that. Sure enough the shows were regular length (well, one of them was very short due to a misunderstanding about curfew).

  12. I'm expecting to get Workingman's Blues #2 both nights, he hasn't played What Good Am I? since the first night of the tour, sot it looks like he's completely abandoned setlist variation. It looks like you aren't going to get quality and variation, so I'm happy to get quality this time round.

  13. If anyone's interested I've got a complilation of their radio/TV work and a compilation of their live stuff prior to the release of the new album going up soon - http://this-was-now.blogspot.com.au/search/label/War%20on%20Drugs.

     

    The Dylan comparison might partly be about the fact that Granduciel talks about him being an influence. Apparently he and Kurt Vile bonded over their shared love of Bob. For me, they manage to mix together quite a few disparate influences into something that doesn't sound quite like anything else. Anyone that likes the new album should check out the first two, both great albums.

  14. Philosophy Bites is really good, the only other good philosophy show I've found is the ABC's Philosopher's Zone. The ABC has a lot of other podcasts, so it might be worth scanning through to see if anything else fits the bill, lots of it is obviously very Australian focussed, but lots of general stuff too.

×
×
  • Create New...