nalafej

Jeff Tweedy

On paper that's a fantastic and different Wilco set. Sounds like a great time too. Thanks for the reporting, bbop!

15 hours ago, dagwave said:

Jazz is Dead!

 

I'm sorry

13 hours ago, KevinG said:

Mr. Jeff Tweedy at the Stoughton Opera House. 

If Wilcoword has it right, no Cousin songs, interesting!

Victor Wooten

 

MMJ's Still Moves show last night

16 hours ago, Plumplechook said:

Saw them last month in Sydney and loved them.  Terrific band.  Much funkier and jammier than I expected.

 

They were great. After one 'jam' he even said something along the lines of "tell your friends that band with the sad folks songs is doing something new"   

 

So...you are not alone there! I'm all for the cowfunk.

23 minutes ago, remphish1 said:

It’s so surreal it’s not like any other concert I have been to! Really hard to explain but the visuals were amazing!

 

Where did you sit/stand and where do you think somebody seeing the show for the first time should seek out as far as which section to buy tickets for? I've heard conflicting opinions...

Slaughter Beach Dog if I get some help from ticket gods

Hiss Golden Messenger

They opened the show in costume. I was there and remember that very well.

Wilco

Just now, Brian F. said:

 

I can think of at least one: Pearl Jam. They released an album in March 2020 and, when they finally got to play a few festival shows in support of it in the fall of 2021, they came out and rattled off six of the first eight songs in the set from that album. On the first show of their proper tour in the spring of 2022, they played eight songs from that album. I don't know if there's any band of '90s vintage that goes as deep as Pearl Jam in their live show in terms of new songs and catalog songs. On their recent eight-show tour, they played over 100 different songs (and this is in spite of the fact that, since the pandemic, they have cut their shows back from three hours or more to two hours-and-fifteen or so). By comparison, Wilco has played 44 different songs on the 23-show Tour to Infinity.

 

 

Good answer! I wish I liked PJ's newer material. I went to the first Chicago show at United Center this year (3+ years after Gigaton release/ 4 of it's songs played) and found it to be a drag.

On 10/27/2023 at 7:05 PM, scribex6 said:

Since no one else has yet, I figured I’d share my experience seeing U2 at the Sphere in Las Vegas last week. (I’m a little behind as I was traveling after the weekend and busy with catching up on work.) I live in Southern California, so it wasn’t a long trip for me. I went two nights, Oct. 20 and 21, with my cousin, a friend of mine who lives in Vegas, and his wife.  My cousin and I are both members of the U2 fan club and were lucky enough to get general admission floor tickets for both nights. The floor at the Sphere is pretty small, about 1,200 capacity, so it felt like seeing them in a club or theatre setting, really up close and intimate. 

 

While you can find plenty of photos and videos of the Sphere online it’s quite something else to see it in person. The video images are crisp and clear and the full surround effect is amazing. Since we were on the floor, we didn’t get the full effect of the visuals but my friend and his wife who were in the seats did and it looked pretty cool from up there.

 

The clarity of the sound was one of the best I’ve heard in an arena. It never felt loud and overpowering and I didn’t need to wear earplugs. There were some technical issues on the second night when the vocals went out briefly and there was a little bit of feedback.

 

Of course, what matters the most is the performance. I thought they sounded great and fill-in drummer Bram did a good job. It’s not the same without Larry but both the band (and Bram) know that and acknowledged and paid tribute to him. Achtung Baby is my favorite U2 album so it was great to hear it in full, especially songs like “So Cruel” and “Love is Blindness” that haven’t been played since the Zoo TV tour.

 

The only criticism I have is that the setlist seems pretty static. It would be a shame if they don’t incorporate some Zooropa songs at some point.

 

Another aspect of it I enjoyed is that because it’s a destination concert, I felt like I was part of a whole community of U2 fans for the weekend. You’d see people with U2 T-shirts all over the adjoining Venetian casino, which also had a U2 exhibit and screening of films. I got to meet and talk to interesting people from all over including fans who came from Brazil, Australia, and two women from New Jersey who were seeing their hundred-and-something U2 show along with their 80-year-old mother who seen almost as many.

Here are some photos I took.

 

Love this take. I'm doing GA in February!

My third show of the tour and it didn't disappoint. I spent the afternoon at the nearby and absolutely outstanding Crystal Bridges museum as did 5/6 of Wilco who I saw there. No surprise - we've heard at least two other stories of band members touring an art museums on this tour.

 

The show itself was a blast. It was really nice to see Jeff sharing his appreciation of their hardworking crew during a break in the action (with the rest of the band non-verbally relaying their gratitude as well) and the band members throughout the show trading smiles, laughs, goofiness and (I might be reading a little too much into at this point) doing their bast to capture the moment for themselves given that this is the end for a while.

 

The new songs are just so good live and this setlist is a fine tuned and crowd pleasing machine from my perspective. How many other bands nearly thirty years into their career can pull off playing 9 songs from the past 2 years out of a 23 song set??!!! 

 

Among many standout moments, I have to remark on Glenn's drumming during Bird Without a Tail/ Base of My Skull - it was just insane. How does one human being create so much unique, glorious and loud rhythm and not steel the show from the dueling guitars?

 

We might have missed counting 'nothings' in Misunderstood last night (or even counting a single song from Being There - a serious/ criminal act) but did anybody count the number of times Jeff Tweedy raised his arms in the air in a celebratory fashion? I lost count very early in the show. 

 

Cheers to Wilco, their crew and fans for a show to remember.

A Giant Dog

Kurt's upcoming release, an EP titled Back to Moon Beach, includes a cover of Wilco's Passenger Side.

 

I'm looking forward to streaming this one...

5 hours ago, ctfshjohn said:

will this be a " regular " show,  or a short one that they play just the new album ?

or maybe a regular show with some covers thrown in for Halloween " musical costume "?

thoughts ?

 

Regular in length. Heavy on Cousin and rock songs in content. Chicago is so lucky to have Wilco call it home. Carol's & YHF shows last year and Metro & No Repeats Riviera shows this year...

Phish

Thank god Bbop is back on tour. Great recap as always and props to the band (I know, I know, who gives props in the year 2023) for expanding the repertoire. I too hope Bellweather #2 gets the rest of the Cousin songs.

Hmmm. Not sure about some of that. The drink lines were very long (easily 15+ minutes) between the opener and wilco to the point where I passed on getting a drink because I would have missed the start of their set.

1 hour ago, Chez said:

One of the best live acts on the planet.  Going to see them again next week at Thalia Hall. 

 

Tough competition for that title (best live act on the planet) in Chicago that night with the Phish at the United Center. !!

I had the pleasure of attending this Arizona shindig and joined bbop up front. I'd say we were on the rail, but it was really just a rope. It was a great time.

 

Bbop, of course, captured all the action eloquently in his post but he neglected to mention his heckling of Mr. Tweedy as the hip replacement needing/Soldier child solo shredding/ cheerleader for spiders crowd participation stated that the gig was their largest Arizona crowd ever. No doubt this was a healthy sized crowd (despite the rock n' roll competition across town, but aided by Scottsdale folks just interested in attending the first show at the venue), but Wilco's 2015 appearance at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick (the baseball stadium where the Foos were playing) was the correct answer and bbop shouted so.

 

As far as the music. Unsurprisingly, it was very very good. Bird Without a Tail continues to be a standout and has leveled up from the shows I caught in 2022. Meant to Be is the fun trip to disco that we all need (as the set closer please!)! Spiders is sloppier than ever with each band member really going off which is appreciated at the end of the night.

 

I'll save my very minor quibbles with the venue and the setlist for myself and say that....

 

I'm really looking forward to catching the tour closer in Bentonville! 

Meant to Be is meant to be a set closer. Couldn’t agree more and hope with time it resonates even more with the crowd. 

Monday 2 hours before a Monday so maybe we collectively experienced a case of the Sunday scaries! John and Nels were certainly pogoing around S if there life depended on it and I was right there along with them. 

 

I was happy to pick up reporting for that show but am absolutely returning the reins to your trusty hands. 

A Sunday night gig held within the confines of a convention center where the bar was down the hall in a conference room didn’t seem like the recipe for a great Wilco show based on my seasoned Wilco show going experience - but I was happily very very wrong. 

Wilco took the stage promptly at 8:30 and left the stage after the encore at 10:30. The audience took 3 songs to warm up and catch up to the excellence that the band was putting forward on stage, but once that happened, it just clicked. 
 

The highlights for me were the new songs and the pleasure of seeing who is playing which parts and with what instruments. Lots to take in on that front given the Cousin song count. The title track was a particular highlight- high intensity on that one. Meant to Be features Jeff and Pat on 12 string guitars. 
 

It was great to be part of the huge organic cheer for ‘the great southwest’ line in Hummingbird. Not a lot of banter from the stage and Jeff sort of indicated that was because they had as lot of music to play but he did acknowledge a delightfully engaging group of a dozen 20 something’s as they came back for the encore asking if they were in a band and agreeing with security’s decision to not let them storm the stage. Something to the effect of ‘you are great right there!’  A request for ‘Jane Smiley’ was denied with Jeff’s stated rationale being that we’d already experienced enough slow tunes and that wasn’t the right move for this crowd. 

 

To that point, this setlist really really worked. It’s a little sad to me that the band skips a 15 year period of their catalog but honestly that’s what I want them to do and I’m positive that I’m not alone. 
 

Pittsburgh was not on the setlist. Spiders was as the final song but got swapped out for the rock song encore!

 

Pittsburgh

Infinite Surprise 

Handshake Drugs

I Am My Mother

Cruel Country

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart 

Kamera

Soldier Child

Side With The Seeds

Hummingbird

Cousin

Bird Without A Tail / Base Of My Skull

Meant To Be

Via Chicago

Impossible Germany

Evicted

Box Full Of Letters

Jesus, Etc

Heavy Metal Drummer

A Shot In The Arm

 

Falling Apart (Right Now)

California Stars

Monday

Outtasite (Outta Mind)

 

1 hour ago, 5hake1t0ff said:

Melodically, this album actually reminds me more of A Ghost is Born / More Like The Moon EP era than anything more recent.

 

Oh, I hadn't thought of this and it is so spot on re: More Like the Moon (not as sure about AGIB).