Brian F.

For those who, like me until five minutes ago, were not aware of this:

 

https://pitchfork.com/news/wilcos-jeff-tweedy-covers-bill-fays-filled-with-wonder-once-again-listen/

That is beautiful. Whoever got that CD signed for you is a real mensch...

 

(By the way, anyone who thinks that's an LP is wondering where you found such giant tomatoes.)

It's an abstract still life.

On 10/17/2023 at 9:14 AM, bböp said:

The only other noteworthy comment Jeff made came before Evicted, when he thanked the audience for "letting us play so much new music. It means so much to us." Then, introducing Evicted, he added, "We were informed earlier that this song is a huge hit. It's in the Top 5, (but) I don't know where."

Jeff, if you're reading this-- and we know you lurk-- you're No. 3 on Billboard's Adult Album Alternative chart. For more, see "Cousin on the charts" on the Just a Fan forum. Oh, also, Jeff, the only Wilco song that has ever hit No. 1 on any Billboard chart is "You Never Know"-- why don't you play that more?!

I'm glad that the majority of the crowd seemed to be on its feet by then, having broken out of the annoying trend of sitting during unfamiliar songs and standing for known songs that often plagues reserved-seating audiences.

Amen. SO annoying. 

 

1 hour ago, theashtraysays said:

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. 
 

This reminds me of last week at the Bellwether. Jeff was making his stock comment about "Meant to Be" being something the crowd would want to hear in a year or three years, and was engaged in some banter about it with someone at stage right. As this was happening, standing right in front of him, I said something to the effect of "No, we want to hear it now!," and Jeff interrupted whatever he was saying to the person at stage right to look right at me and say, in a very serious tone, "Thank you, sir," and then went right back to engaging with the person at stage right. Now that''s service.

 

 

As is typical in a rock album's second week of release, Cousin drops from No. 5 to No. 51 on Top Album Sales this week. The album also drops all the way off the Billboard 200 after spending a single week at No. 65.

 

"Evicted," on the other hand, makes a big jump on the Triple-A chart from No. 8 to No. 3 (behind the Black Pumas' "More Than a Love Song" and the Revivalists' "Good Old Days"). "Evicted" holds at No. 47 on the Rock & Alternative Airplay chart.

Congrats on the century mark! At my pace of 52 shows in 28 years, I won't catch you until 2051, at which point you will have been to over 200 and Jeff will be 84 years old.

First of all, that "c'est la vie"/"Levee" pun is world-class. Bravo.

 

Does it make Northern Californians feel any better to know that one show at an 8,500-capacity venue means that more of them got to see the band than the number of Angelenos that did, when you add up the capacities of the five smaller shows in L.A. and consider how many people attended multiple shows?

 

That thing is called a "marching machine"? We were wondering about that at the Bellwether the other night when Glenn busted it out. It looked like someone had taped a bunch of wooden cylinders inside a large tambourine. Incidentally, the percussion instrument that dangles off the front of Glenn's kit (as seen from the audience) on his left looks like a cluster of Fig Newtons. Glenn's into some weird stuff.

 

On the topic of Jeff flubbing the lyrics of oft-played songs, I meant to mention that he accidentally re-sang the first verse of "Evicted" in place of the final verse at the Bellwether on Night 1. I thought, "Well, you've only played it a dozen times this week. You'll get the hang of it yet."

FYI-- the set list on Wilcoworld incorrectly lists "I Got You (At the End of the Century)" as the final song played. Someone changed the setlist.fm page citing Wilcoworld, but I have changed it back. They definitely played "Outtasite (Outta Mind)" coming right out of "Monday," as they often do.

 

If anyone knows someone at Wilcoworld, tell them to fix their set list.

Thanks for the clarification about the disruption, bbop. I was only about ten feet to your right but couldn't make out a lot of what they were saying. I thought the "Hell Is Chrome" woman said something about it being the first song her father played for her or something to that effect, which made me feel very old. But I didn't even hear that it was "Hell Is Chrome" that she was requesting so I have no confidence that I heard the part about her father correctly.

 

The observation about the cease-and-desist on the cell-phone videos is interesting because I noticed in Santa Barbara last night that venue security was going out of its way to stop people who were filming on their phones. Because I was all the way in the last seat on the end in a curved row E, I had the front-of-stage-right security guy about three feet away from me, and he kept running into the audience to tell people to stop filming. I asked him if this was a venue policy since I don't recall the band discouraging videos. He said that the venue management had told the staff before the show that the band said video was not permitted, and they were continuing to so instruct him through his earpiece during the show. This is obviously secondhand information, but it's enough to wonder if the incident bbop describes at the Bellwether prompted a reaction by the band. This was, of course, a game of whack-a-mole and I'm sure there were still hundreds of people who took video.

Infinite Surprise

Levee

Handshake Drugs

I Am My Mother

Cruel Country

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Kamera

Meant to Be

Side with the Seeds

Pittsburgh

Bird without a Tail/Base of My Skull

Cousin

Hummingbird

Via Chicago (no coda)

Evicted

Impossible Germany

Jesus, etc.

Theologians

I'm the Man Who Loves You

-------------------------------------------------------

Falling Apart (Right Now)

California Stars

Monday 

Outtasite (Outta Mind)

 

("A Shot in the Arm" was listed as the closer to the main set on the printed set list. "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" was listed as the final song of the encore in place of the Being There rockers.)

 

This was a very pleasurable day trip. After making the drive up from L.A.., I went to the box office to pick up my ticket at around 5 p.m. (I don't have a smartphone but, even if I did, I'll take a hard ticket any time I can get one.) Walking up State Street toward the venue, a gentleman walking in the opposite direction was excitedly chatting on the phone with a friend. I overheard him say, "Guess who was in line behind me at the box office?! Mikael Jorgensen's mother-in-law!!" After a brief pause, I then heard him say, "He's the keyboard player for Wilco." The gentleman's friend's unfamiliarity with Mr. Jorgensen did not seem to diminish the gentleman's enthusiasm. (After the show, I saw Mikael's mother-in-law, whose name is Olga, and shared this story with her, leaving out the detail about the friend's apparent reaction. She got a kick out of hearing how excited the gentleman was to meet her.)

 

After a delicious dinner at a favorite restaurant near the Santa Barbara Bowl, I headed back over to State Street to kill time before the show. State Street is closed to vehicular traffic other than bicycles and scooters, so it's a nice stretch to go for a walk and check out the shops and restaurants. While perambulating, I looked up and saw John Stirratt heading right toward me on his way back to the venue. I said hello and told him I was here to see him and the band, and we had a very nice chat for about ten minutes. We were talking about all the cool venues Wilco has played, and I brought up the show at the Camden Opera House (in Camden, Maine), which he said was actually when he first got the idea that he might want to live in Maine. I mentioned that I had been looking at that ticket recently and was amazed to see that tickets were $24.00 ($22.00 in advance) for a 500-seat theater. Grossing at most $12,000 from ticket sales, I said they must have each cleared about 75 bucks that night. He said that they had a big-money gig in Boston (two days later) that subsidized the trip*, but he also thought the theater was 900 seats. (I accepted this claim without demur, but I checked the Camden Opera House website today and it says the venue has 489 seats.) Anyway, he said the shows in L.A. were fun but that he was glad to finally get out of town. We also talked about what Laurie, his twin sister, is up to these days in Oxford. I asked him if there was any chance the band would bust out "A Bowl and a Pudding" soon, and he said they're trying to get it together. I surmised that the echoing vocals might be difficult to recreate in the live environment, and he replied that they probably wouldn't bother with them, comparing it to what he called "Oh Satellite." (Having had a conversation recently in which I pointed to "You Satellite" as a particularly low moment in the Wilco canon, only to receive vociferous refutation from a fellow fan, I quietly reveled in the idea that even John doesn't think this song is worth remembering properly.) I also told him how I had asked Jeff on Starship Casual if he had considered making "A Lifetime to Find" a duet since it's a back-and-forth with Death, and that I had suggested John would make a good Death. I said he has the voice of an angel, so it might as well be the Angel of Death. He seemed to appreciate this compliment. On my way back to the venue, I saw Pat having a drink with a friend at the outdoor seating area of one of the bars or restaurants. I didn't bother him, but a friend told me that he had run into Pat on the street yesterday and had a nice chat with him, including a discussion of whether Pat intended to bring the banjo back to "California Stars." (He doesn't.)

 

As for the show-- a.k.a., what you really want to hear about-- it was a standard playlist delivered very energetically. There was nothing new for this tour, unless you stretch the definition of "new" and consider that "Levee" made its second appearance. The Arlington Theatre is a seated venue, so we had the sitting and standing factions, but standing won out by the time the set got to the one-two punch of "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" and "Kamera." Jeff had commented that the audience couldn't seem to make up its mind whether to sit or to stand, and that Wilco is not the kind of band that tells people what to do in this regard. He said he left it to us to decide whether we wanted to be "good citizens," a fiendishly ambiguous remark that allows that sitters to think that they're being good citizens by not interfering with the sightlines of those behind them and the standers to think that they're being good citizens because one of the hallmarks of being a good citizen is active participation in the life of the nation (in this case, Wilco Nation). As I say, it ended up being moot because people were on their feet for the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot combo, remained up for new song Meant to Be (maybe Jeff's timeline of people wanting to hear the song in one to three years has been accelerated) and pretty much only sat down for "Pittsburgh" after that. I was actually in the last seat at the end of the row Nelside, so I had complete freedom to stand without bothering anybody, which made up for the fact that I could not see Mikael at all and often could see only part of Nels behind the stack of speakers. I also had the good fortune of having a very enthusiastic gentleman in front of me who was rocking out most of the night, and we shared a moment during the breakdown in "Hummingbird" where I offered him my arm and we did a little do-si-do. We had a lot of room to move around in the aisle and took advantage of it for the show-closing Being There tracks (which I'm so glad were subbed in for "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"-- the band was offstage before the encore for a little longer than usual, so there must have been some debate about this choice, but I say they made the right call). Jeff remarked at one point about the beautiful indoor theater that looks like it's outdoors. (The Arlington is decorated to look like it's al fresco, sort of like the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian in Las Vegas.)

 

There are pianos scattered up and down State Street that anyone can play, including one at the front of the entryway to the theater. (There is a long outdoor courtyard that leads up to the doors to the theater, so this piano is right next to the street but a couple of hundred feet from the theater proper.) When we came out of the theater, a couple of guys were playing and singing "Story to Tell" on the public piano, and did a nice job of it. I joined them for a rendition of "At Least That's What You Said" that was a lot of fun.

 

Wilco now moves aside as a much bigger artist takes over the Arlington tonight: they're screening the Taylor Swift movie. I'm looking forward to it myself but I think I'm going to save it for an early-afternoon weekday showing to avoid the pandemonium that I'm sure is taking place at every showing this weekend. 

 

Wilco's tour continues to infinity. Sadly, Brian F.'s tour ends tonight, after eight Wilco gigs in ten days (counting Kimmel).

 

* It seems like I should have attended this Boston gig, which was at the then-Bank of America pavilion on the waterfront. After all, I drove to Maine from Boston on a (holiday) Monday to see them, so why wouldn't I have seen them right in Boston, just a few blocks from where I worked, two days later on Wednesday? But I have no record of having been to this show-- no ticket or stub, and it doesn't appear in an email I wrote to my then-girlfriend in 2002 listing and describing all of the Wilco shows I had seen from 1995 up to that point (an email without which I would have forgotten about at least a couple of shows that I did attend-- and, to be clear, she requested this summary). Thinking back, I wondered if I might have had a baseball game that night, but I checked and I didn't. Why did I apparently pass on that show? The mystery binds me still.

4 hours ago, kidsmoke said:

Those of you lined up at the Bellwether tonight will hopefully have no issues with line management tonight. My husband Bob has been a house manager and so poor house management bugs him. Last night he sought out the house manager and paid his compliments to the venue, as due, but told her about the line fiasco. It appeared to be accidental, in that the restaurant doors upstairs had apparently been, ah, 'left open" by the restaurant security, and people up there just took advantage of it and streamed in early, having already been ID-checked at the restaurant. Vanessa, the House Manager, was very apologetic and assured us it would be corrected tonight.
I can't be there, but I hope that's the case.

 

Short update: It was corrected, and all was right with the world. Thanks be to Bob.

 

Longer update later.

I'm glad bbop is back, mostly because his writeup pretty much covers everything worth noting but also because it relieves the burden of filling in as chronicler during his brief hiatus. My biggest challenge was that I can longer see what I'm writing in a dark theater without my reading glasses so, scribbling the set list, I had to hope for the best that my notes would end up legible. And with quite a few deviations from the printed set lists on this tour, I knew I couldn't rely on the "official" lists. Having said that, I can confirm that last night's set as played matched the printed set list. EDIT: Apparently, I was wrong about the set matching the printed list. I was told by a credible source that "Meant to Be" was on the printed set list. I must have missed it when I glanced at the set list someone had after the show.

 

Amen on the shitshow. I arrived at 2 p.m. and was in line more than an hour before the next person arrived. One of the people working at the venue announced at about 5:15 p.m. that people in the restaurant would be given access at the same time as those of us in line, and he surmised that it would take them longer to get from the restaurant to the floor than it would take us to make it from the front door to the floor. A couple of folks who were twelfth in line (Jason and Larry) decided to scope out the restaurant situation, if for nothing else to know what to do on Night 2. You can imagine my displeasure when, after being the first one through the door, I walked into the room and saw that the entire rail was already occupied. Fortunately, thanks to Jason and Larry, I was able to claim the spot I had "earned" by showing up early. From what I could tell, it looked like most of the people at the front of the line did still end up on the rail, including Arlene, who traveled from Vancouver and was the next person in line after me and coldasgasoline, and Kidsmoke and Mr. Kidsmoke, who were next in line after Arlene and her friend. I saw that bbop did not end up on the rail, which his spot in line should have entitled him to, but I think I recall from other shows that he prefers to be a couple of people off the rail and dead center because the sound is better there-- am I remembering that correctly? Anyway, I intend to split the difference tonight. I will still get in line very early to establish a moral claim, but then I will go into the restaurant to "game the system" without feeling guilty about it. If anyone is in line before I get there, I will defer to them if I end up in the spot they wanted. L.A. folks may remember when the Wiltern pulled this crap in 2012. There were dozens of people lined up for hours on Wilshire Boulevard, and they came out and told us that, for twenty bucks, we would get early entry and access to a bar inside the theater. Everyone near the front of the line held firm for a while but, eventually, people who were further back decided to take advantage of the opportunity to jump the line, which created a cascading effect that led to most of the people near the front of the line caving in and ponying up the twenty bucks. The scene inside the bar was comical. Almost no one had any interest in patronizing the bar. We were just all hovering by the doorway waiting for the go-ahead to make our way down to the floor. Anyway, there ought to be a law.

 

As for the show itself, they really leaned into A Ghost Is Born. Both of the tour debuts were from that album, and both were welcome surprises. With respect to "California Stars," I actually commented to Jason along the lines of what bbop wrote as they were noodling while the gear issue was worked out, that I wouldn't mind if they just kept doing that for four minutes instead of actually performing the song. Jeff's pajamas comment really resonated because I had been thinking all night that Nels was rocking the Hugh Hefner look, at least from the waist up.

 

With respect to "A Bowl and a Pudding," yes, please. Honestly, at this point, with only two shows left on my itinerary, I'd settle for a bowl or a pudding. I have a feeling this one is tough to translate to the live setting because of the echoing vocals, and that's why we haven't heard it yet. But it is, with "Sunlight Ends," "Meant to Be" and "Infinite Surprise," one of the highlights of an album full of highlights, at least in my opinion.

 

I do have one issue with last night, and this may have just been a function of where I was standing, directly in front of the floor-level monitor in front of Jeff, but it was-- and I don't know if I've ever uttered these words before-- too loud.

 

Oh, also, I should note that this show was a double milestone for me. It was my 50th time seeing Wilco, and my 75th time seeing Jeff Tweedy. (If you don't count Jimmy Kimmel Live, then tonight's show will be my golden/diamond jubilee.) It took 28 years to get to 50 shows, from my first Wilco show at Tramps in New York City in June 1995. (My first Tweedy shows were a Jeff-and-Jay Bennett gig at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge, Mass., in 1997 and a Golden Smog show at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston in 1998.) May the next 50/75 be as awesome as the first 50/75, although at this rate-- I was 19 at my first Wilco show and I'm 48 now-- I'll be 77 by the time I get to 100/150, which is good because I need something to keep me busy until I'm 86 and Halley's Comet comes back.

2 hours ago, 50footqueenie said:

'Cos you're my fact checkin' cuz...  

 

Oh, I'm nothing

My cousin

I think they were on different wavelengths, for sure, but the first two questions were very vague. I doubt Jeff catalogued the open-mic night in his mind as "September 27, Dallas." The interviewer presented the date as if were the events of November 22 in Dallas. Jeff seemed genuinely confused as opposed to distracted, and I can't blame him for that.

 

There's a chance video and/or audio of this will be posted online (unless Wilco doesn't permit it). KCRW did another one of these shows on October 6 with Say She She and it was already online as of October 9. Or maybe Wilco will hold it in reserve for the Cousin box set in 2044 (a la the KCRW set included in the Being There deluxe set).

 

By the way, when I mentioned that this gig was invitation-only, I didn't mean to imply that I was invited to it. I only got in through a combination of shoe-leather reporting, patience and the serendipity of knowing someone who got asked to be the Plus-One by one of the high muckety-mucks who was invited. I've learned over the years that there tend to be no-shows to these events, especially in L.A., but I think that was moot because there were only two of us trying to get in so the organizers seemed happy to accommodate us once showtime arrived.

(Just kidding.)

I'm already in line!

Cousin debuts at No. 65 on the Billboard 200 this week. The Billboard 200 measures sales and streaming. In terms of pure sales, Cousin was No. 5 for the week. I do not know the precise sales total, but it was between 9,632 and 15,484. Triangulating it a little more precisely suggests that it sold about 12,000 units. In vinyl sales, Cousin comes in at No. 7.

 

There are a lot of variables that make it hard to do comparisons across recent releases. Star Wars was made available as a free download. Cruel Country had a digital-only release, followed by a limited Record Store Day CD release, followed by a physical release. The Yankee Hotel Foxtrot anniversary was available in numerous formats, some of which were quite expensive. With these variables in mind, note that Cruel Country had first-week sales of 7,000 and the YHF sets had first-week sales of 13,000.

 

"Evicted" holds at No. 8 on the Adult Album Alternative chart (determined by radio airplay at "Triple-A" stations) in its eighth week on that chart. Wilco has hit number one on the Triple-A chart once, with "You Never Know." It is their only song to top any Billboard chart.

 

"Evicted" also drops from a peak of No. 46 to No. 47 on the Rock and Alternative Airplay chart in its third week on that chart.

 

 

This was an invitation-only gig for local public-radio station KCRW in Santa Monica. The 54-minute set was:

 

Pittsburgh

Infinite Surprise

Handshake Drugs

I Am My Mother

Cruel Country

Sunlight Ends

Soldier Child

Evicted

Bird without a Tail/Base of My Skull

Meant to Be

 

The set was preceded by a hilariously awkward ten-minute conversation between Jeff and Anthony Valadez of KCRW. Anthony: "So I understand something particularly special happened in Dallas on September 27. Tell us about that." Jeff: Confused stare. Anthony leans over and whispers something in Jeff's ear. Jeff: "Oh, yeah, the open-mic thing. Yeah, Glenn signed us up at an open-mic night, and most of us were around so we did it." Next question: "You've just released your thirteenth album, and it has a unique feature among the Wilco catalog. Can you talk about that?" Jeff: Confused stare. Anthony whispers in Jeff's ear again. Jeff: "Oh, yes, it was produced by Cate LeBon." Anthony: "I understand her dad is a big Wilco fan." Jeff: "Apparently, yes." Ultimately, the highlight of this conversation was a thoughtful answer Jeff gave to a question about whether or not Wilco should be in the world in these crazy mixed-up times. (His answer: yes, but expressed more poetically than that.)

 

The room was very small. There were about 150 people in attendance, including some in an upstairs loft area. On the floor, there was no empty space. I don't know if I've ever seen the full band in a space so small. From the stage to the back wall, it was only about six or seven people deep with little room in between each row of people. The stage was set up at an angle in one corner of the room. From Nels to Pat, it couldn't have been more than fifteen feet.  The only smaller room I can recall seeing a Wilco-related performance was a show by Jeff with Jay Bennett at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge, Mass., in November 1997.

 

The sound was incredible. "Sunlight Ends," played for (I think) only the second time was gorgeous again. At the end, someone shouted, "Play that every night!," which Jeff heard as "Play here every night!" He said, "It's nice to be here but, um, I think once is good." Before playing "Evicted," he said, "This is the tenth time we've played this today" (likely referring to soundchecks and performances of the song for Jimmy Kimmel's show and the Santa Monica gig). After the song, someone said, "Best one today!" Jeff said, "Have you seen the others? Actually, I believe you have. I see some familiar faces." He then proceeded to a non sequitur extolling the majestic hair of a gentleman near the front of the stage by Nels. He said the guy's hair was a beacon that had been guiding them all night.

 

The set consisted entirely of material from the last two albums except for "Handshake Drugs." The crowd seemed largely unfamiliar with the new material, but received each song enthusiastically. Once again, "Bird without a Tail/Base of My Skull" was blistering and it elicited loud applause.

 

 

And now the question is: will they attempt to pull off "A Bowl and a Pudding" live? Fingers crossed (echoing: fingers crossed).

I don't know-- the Cruel Country songs have been out for a year-and-a-half and got the same reaction.

 

I think this documentary clip captures the phenomenon well:

 

 

 

Infinite Surprise

Levee (first time played)

Handshake Drugs

I Am My Mother

Cruel Country

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Kamera

Side with the Seeds

Pittsburgh

Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull

Cousin

Hummingbird

Misunderstood

Evicted

Impossible Germany

Meant to Be

Jesus, etc.

Theologians

I'm the Man Who Loves You

A Shot in the Arm

----------------------------------------------------------

California Stars

Spiders (Kidsmoke)

 

[Falling Apart (Right Now) was listed first in the encore on the printed set list but was not played. They went a few minutes over, on at 8:30 p.m. PDT, off at 10:37 p.m.]

 

Although this is officially the Tour to Infinity, I have been calling it the Dead Awake in Waves Tour. Last night lived up to that alternative moniker in a frustrating way. For the first third of the set, there was a clear pattern. If Wilco played a song from its 2007-and-before catalog, the audience sprang to its feet. If Wilco played a song from Cruel Country or Cousin, the audience immediately sat down. Thus, every few songs-- for "Handshake Drugs," then for the "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"/"Kamera"/"Side with the Seeds" trifecta-- the largely dead crowd would suddenly awake in waves. Jeff commented on the dynamic, calling last night's crowd the "Goldilocks audience." He said Wednesday's audience wouldn't stand up, Thursday's wouldn't sit down, and last night's couldn't make up their mind. He described the crowd as being split between "listeners" and "revelers," and added that he appreciated the group's "honesty." Between these remarks, comments later in the show about how he asked Wednesday's audience if they had more to give and they responded, "Meh," and Thursday night's comments about that night's crowd being much better than Wednesday night's attendees (while noting that it included many of the same people), it's pretty clear where Jeff, um, stands on the standing-vs.-sitting issue.

 

The live debut of "Levee" lived up to the anticipation created by its absence on the tour prior to last night. It was one of only five tunes played last night that hadn't appeared during either of the first two nights' sets, along with "Side with the Seeds," "Kamera," "Theologians" and "I'm the Man Who Loves You," with the latter two titles making their first appearances of the tour. Jeff, nodding to the indifference from most of the crowd toward newer material,  remarked after "Meant to Be" that the crowd will want to hear that song in a year. He said they were playing it last night to plant a seed that will mature into future demand. "Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull" was a standout, with a blazing Pat taking the song to places it had not gone on Wednesday. His performance brought most of the crowd to its feet, where it remained for the rest of the night. "Misunderstood" was galvanizing again, meriting six more nothings than Wednesday's version (for a total of 32). "Evicted" seemed more assured than the night before, just in time for it to be performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday. Show closer "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" once again featured the a cappella singalong.

 

All in all, this was a great show that didn't quite match Night 2 but clearly surpassed Night 1. [Alternate review for Kidsmoke: This show matched Night 1 and clearly surpassed Night 2.]

 

I could write 10,000 words on the sitting/standing issue, but I'll just note that it has to be demoralizing for an artist to be confronted with such visible evidence-- people just sitting down en masse at the first suggestion of an unfamiliar tune-- that a large swath of its audience has minimal enthusiasm for or interest in the new material it is excited to play. (I'll further note that I completely understand that not everyone is able to stand for two hours. If I were standing in front of someone who could not comfortably stand, I would gladly switch places with them so that they could enjoy the show without discomfort. But, of course, this is generally not a matter of physical limitations. Many of the people who were screaming for standers to sit down during Cruel Country and Cousin songs would leap to their feet when the songs being played were ones they knew and liked.)

Hell Is Chrome

Infinite Surprise

I Am My Mother

Cruel Country

Handshake Drugs

Pittsburgh

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

One Wing

Sunlight Ends (first time played)

Everyone Hides

Hummingbird

Cousin

Random Name Generator

Via Chicago --> Many Worlds

Either Way

Impossible Germany

Evicted

Dawned on Me

Meant to Be

A Shot in the Arm

-------------------------------------------------

Jesus, etc.

Falling Apart (Right Now)

Monday

Outtasite (Outta Mind)

 

Set was played exactly as listed on printed set list with no changes or omissions.

 

[Kidsmoke should skip ahead to the bottom of this post.]

 

Now that's more like it! All of the energy that seemed to be missing from my vantage point on Night 1 was apparently being held in check for Night 2. The standers triumphed over the sitters and eagerly await the rubber match tonight. Jeff commented a few songs into the set that the Night 2 audience was much better than the Night 1 audience, while acknowledging that it was probably a lot of the same people. He was right on both counts. 

 

Seven songs in, my fear that this week's shows would lack variety seemed to be playing out, with only the opener "Hell Is Chrome" not having been played on Night 1. Beginning with a soaring "One Wing" [W(TA) 4eva!] and continuing with the note-perfect debut of the absolutely gorgeous "Sunlight Ends" and then a peppy "Everyone Hides," the variety show kicked into gear. It was a little depressing to see quite a few people in the crowd react to "Sunlight Ends" as if someone had lit off a stink bomb. Within the first 15 seconds, scores of people either sat down or headed to the lobby, but it did not diminish a shimmering performance of what is, for me, the highlight of an album full of highlights. [As an aside, It would be one thing if this were some kind of divisive song in the catalog or perhaps a played-out oldie and it got this response, but this is a brand-new song that had been available for exactly seven days (almost to the minute) when it made its debut, so the disinterest would seem to be rooted in unfamiliarity rather than distaste. Is it so hard to listen to something new for four minutes by an artist you love and paid good money to see? Whatever your favorite song is, it was at one point a song you'd never heard. Anyway, I shouldn't overstate this-- most of the audience listened attentively and, crucially, remained standing.]

 

"Either Way" made a welcome appearance, sounding great and eliciting an enthusiastic response from the audience. "Impossible Germany" which-- for the first time in my experience, underwhelmed on Night 1-- was back in form last night. Nels' solo, which was oddly monotonous on Night 1, was a lot more spirited and interesting on Night 2. The only drawback was that there was an equipment issue that resulted in crackling coming from a monitor or monitors on stage right. They got the crackling to stop, but the sound seemed off for the rest of the set. This could have been in part due to my location-- I was in Row E at stage right and thus getting heavy Nels and light Pat-- but I didn't notice an imbalance until "Impossible Germany." Jeff and Pat's guitars seemed to be missing in the mix after Nels' solo, at least from where I was sitting. "Evicted" then sounded a little flat and muddy-- not bad but it just seems like maybe they're still feeling their way through it. (I hadn't noticed this on Night 1.) "Dawned on Me," which was scratched from the Night 1 set, was solid and well-received. The "Monday"-straight-into-"Outtasite" combo was typically boisterous. I'm always happy to hear those classics.

 

Returning to the stage for the encore, Jeff singled out a gentleman in the front row directly in front of Nels for his prodigious appetite for popcorn. I was four rows behind this guy and his female companion, and I had actually noticed, because he was in my line of sight to the stage every time I looked straight ahead, that this guy was eating popcorn like his life depended on it. He was just shoveling handful after handful of it into his face-- and he was turned sideways much of the time so I could see this from where I was rather easily. Between that and the fact that he and his companion were chatting away quite a bit, I had even thought, "If I were in the band, I would find that really distracting." So I had to laugh when Jeff came out and immediately called Popcorn Man on the carpet for his enthusiastic snacking.

 

And now, here's my separate review for Kidsmoke, who had a great time at Night 1 and had to miss Night 2:

 

Night 2 sucked. Night 1 was way better, especially the crowd. You didn't miss anything worthwhile. A guy ate a lot of popcorn, that's really all there was worth noting.

 

 

All right, time to gear up for Night 3. Here I come again and I'm bringing my friends. Well, one friend.

The highlight of this show was definitely the Cousin tunes. All six that were performed translated beautifully live. "Misunderstood" (26 nothings) stood out among the classic tunes, as did "Box Full of Letters." I think back to when they would play A.M. tracks on the Being There and Summer Teeth tours and the audience would mostly shrug. Last night, there was a big roar from the crowd at the opening notes of "Box." I think it goes to show how, in 1997 or 1999, you pretty much had to buy an artist's older catalog to hear it, as compared to today where streaming makes an artist's whole catalog available to anyone (says a guy who has no streaming subscriptions but thinks he knows how they work).

 

The aforementioned roar notwithstanding-- and you should definitely check out the new EP by the Aforementioned Roar-- I thought there was a real lack of energy in the room last night. The crowd sat throughout. Even the "hit" ("Jesus etc.") and fan favorites like "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" did not bring this audience to its feet. (This is always the way it is at the Ace, but the sitters won the battle for the first time that I can recall. Happiness was postponed.) There were some extenuating circumstances. For one, it was uncomfortably warm in the theater. (It was a hot day in L.A. outside, but the sidestage clock showed a temp of 78 degrees in the theater.) For another, there were a couple of hundred of unsold seats in the balcony (in a theater with a capacity of just 1,600). And then there was the unfortunate situation involving a gentleman who apparently jumped from the roof of the theater onto the street below in full view of fans entering the theater. I don't know how many people actually witnessed this, but it would be understandable if it put a damper on their enthusiasm once they got inside the venue.

 

Other notes: Jeff completely forgot the second verse of "Love Is Everywhere (Beware)" ("Where the sunlight grabs the lake/It's frozen in the flames..."), bringing the song to a screeching but hilarious halt-- so hilarious that I resisted the temptation to cue him by shouting out the missing lyric because the confusion was so much more entertaining (and I wasn't close enough where I think Jeff would have heard me anyway). "Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull" seemed sped up for some reason. After "Meant to Be" elicited little reaction, Jeff quipped that, "In three years, you're going to be complaining about how we're not playing that song."

 

At the signing today, I asked Pat if we might hear "Sunlight Ends" or "A Bowl and a Pudding" at any of the upcoming shows and he replied, "We're working on them." Here's hoping they take the opportunity of three straight shows at the Ace to sprinkle them and "Levee" into the set. Otherwise, I have a feeling we're in for less variety this week and next than we have enjoyed on other tours or at the residencies earlier this year.

 

 

2 hours ago, calvino said:

 

An attentive person definitely would have noticed it by just pulling it out of the sleeve - guessing it isn't as heavy as the Floral Ice.

 

I fixed the above for you. Never underestimate my obliviousness...

2 hours ago, kidsmoke said:

 

I have the Floral Ice vinyl. Very cool looking and VERY thick vinyl. Is the black the same?

 

The black vinyl didn't seem particularly thick, but I didn't really examine it. I just pulled it out of the sleeve and glanced at the label to see what it looked like. I haven't listened to it yet.