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Brian F.

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Posts posted by Brian F.

    Wilco — 28 June 2024, North Adams, MA (Mass MoCA) [Solid Sound Festival; Day 1 of 3]

    in After The Show

    Posted

    I didn't notice any issues with the sound.

     

    On the one hand, I felt like they could have gone deeper. I thought they really leaned into the EPs, and I don't think of those songs as deep cuts necessarily. In fact, "Woodgrain" is probably the deepest cut from More Like the Moon and they didn't play that one. I was really hoping for more of the "played-fewer-than-five-times" songs, a la "Sunloathe" (which was played, and sounded gorgeous). And "Quiet Amplifier," a song that is not a favorite from an album that is not a favorite, was quite good in the live setting.

     

    Having seen them not only many, many  times, but also spanning their whole career from 1995 to present, I did come away impressed that they managed to play 13 songs-- fully half the set-- that I had never seen them play before. I saw them twice on the A.M. tour-- excuse me, the I Must Be High TOUR-- but there were three A.M. tracks I had never seen prior to Friday, and they played one of them, "Blue Eyed Soul." Jeff altered the vocal line on that one so it didn't quite land as I would have hoped. Still waiting on "I Thought I Held You" and "Dash 7." I expect I'll keep waiting, especially for the former.

     

    "Secret of the Sea" was tuned way up for some reason. It sounded like it might have been a full step up. It bordered on being above the range of my hearing. I love that song-- it might be my favorite Mermaid Avenue track-- but it sounded weird. And then it was followed by "ELT," a song that's already in an upper register and sounded like it might also have been tuned up a half-step. Usually, as artists get older, they tune things down because the high parts are harder to reach, so these were interesting choices.

     

    I was surprised to see that "One Sunday Morning (A Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" had not been played since 2014. Perhaps since Jeff plays this one solo often-- or at least it seems like it to me-- I thought of it as more of a live staple. I definitely did not think of it as a deep cut and, when they opened with it, I thought, "This night might not go the way I was hoping." I kind of felt that way until they went into "Blue Eyed Soul." Perhaps it was a deep cut because it was the full twelve-minute version?

    Solid sound schedule

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    Bear in mind that the announced times are subject to change. In 2022, they started fifteen minutes before the scheduled time on Friday night because they were trying to get the set in before a rainstorm that was expected to hit after 11 p.m.

    WIlco — 21 June 2024, New York, NY (Beacon Theatre) [Night 1 of 3]

    in After The Show

    Posted

    On 6/23/2024 at 7:33 AM, Albert Tatlock said:

    Ta

    Milwaukee versus NY rivalries reminds me of the only baseball game I have ever attended - at Yankee Stadium in 1984. There was some kind of extension as 'you people' don't like drawn games, so it ended after midnight. Travelling back to southern Manhattan on the underground on my own was an 'experience'. NYC was a bit bankrupt and rougher in those days.

     

    You should have seen the 1957 and 1958 World Series.

    • Like 1

    Solid Sound Festival 2024 lineup

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    In my continuing effort to share personal Wilco-related information that doesn't seem to be of interest to anyone else, I've gone back and figured out which songs I've never seen Wilco perform live. (Fortunately, I have my own records for many of these shows, so I don't have to completely rely on online sources that have mistakes, some of which I have fixed as I've come across them.) A few have never been performed live. Most have been performed fewer than five times. (Some I've seen Jeff perform solo.) The biggest chunk of the ones that have been played a decent number of times come from Ode to Joy because Wilco didn't play anywhere near where I live for five full years, and my ability to travel during that period was limited. (If there's an album to have missed, that's the one I'd pick.) Anyway, I'll be hoping for a few of these on Friday. My favorite songs from this list would be "A Bowl and a Pudding," "Blue Eyed Soul," "Pieholden Suite," "Quarters" and "Solitaire," but I would really love to finally hear "Dash 7" since I remember asking Jeff circa 1998 why they never played it. He said that in order to get his voice to go that low, they had to slow down the tape when they recorded it and they could never reproduce that live. I think he was kidding.

     

    The album tracks I've never seen Wilco perform are (with estimated number of performances overall):

     

    Before Us (62)

    Blue Eyed Soul (7)

    A Bowl and a Pudding (0)

    Citizens (1)

    Dash 7 (3)

    An Empty Corner (13)

    Everlasting Everything (4)

    Hold Me Anyway (60)

    I Thought I Held You (2)

    Just Say Goodbye (1)

    Leave Me (Like You Found Me) (1)

    Outta Mind (Outta Sight) (?*)

    Pieholden Suite (21)

    Please Be Patient with Me (1)

    Quarters (0)

    Quiet Amplifier (0)

    Shake It Off (46)
    Shrug and Destroy (2)

    Solitaire (3)

    Sunloathe (1)

    Ten Dead (1)

    (Was I) In Your Dreams (40)

    We Were Lucky (35)

    What's the World Got in Store (26)

    White Wooden Cross (59)

     

    * There are a lot of shows that list this version of the song being played, but I know most of them are wrong and should say "Outtasite (Outta Mind)," so other than when they did the full Being There run-through at SSF, I don't know when else they've done the "Sesame Street Version" (as I've always thought of it).

    Stuff in My House

    in Just A Fan

    Posted · Edited by Brian F.

    O.K., the original post got crickets so perhaps there's no interest in this kind of stuff (or maybe you were all just annoyed that it got posted four times for some reason), but I'll post something else here anyway and see if anyone likes it.

     

    The items attached below are from Wilco's show at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island on October 28, 1995, a year and a day before the release of Being There. This show started very late, at around 11 p.m. I know this because I watched the entire World Series game (in which the Atlanta Braves clinched the title with a 1-0 win over Cleveland, ending at 10:28 p.m. per baseball-reference.com) in my dorm room in Worcester, Massachusetts, and then flew down Route 146 to Providence (I didn't have a car, so I can thank my friend and speed demon Michelle who drove me and her boyfriend Ron) and somehow managed to get there before the show started. The show went past 1 a.m. and was, of course, amazing. Once again, these being the early days and the crowd being sparse, the last-minute arrival did not preclude us from being able to be right in front of the stage.

     

    The first attachment is the set list, written on a torn-off piece of yellow lined paper, and my ticket stub, with the date barely intact at the top. This is probably the first time I ever thought to ask for a set list. (People didn't really seem to care about or be aware of set lists back then. I think that became more of a thing after social media.) At some point, I attached a couple of items to the top and bottom of the set list, which you can mostly see. Attached at the top is a promotional postcard for A.M. that we received at my college radio station. The third attachment below is the back side of the postcard, which describes A.M. as "Thirteen songs about lost love, casino gambling, late night drives and letting it go." (I wonder if "Lost Love" was originally supposed to be included on A.M.) It adds: "Geography: Jeff (from Chicago, by way of Belleville, Illinois), John (New Orleans), Max (Dallas), and Ken (Nashville)... picking it up where Uncle Tupelo left off." It also notes that Wilco were Newsweek's "New Faces" pick for January 1995. The fourth attachment is a closeup of the front side of the postcard.

     

    The set list is interesting because the encore was definitely only loosely planned. According to setlist.fm-- which appears to be getting its info from wilcobase.com-- the encore as played was "Screen Door," "Watch Me Fall," "Hesitation Rocks," "Kingpin" and "Misunderstood." The written set list reads: "Gun. Screen Door. Walk. [Kingpin-- replacing something that was crossed out and might be the word "Because.] Hesitation. Listin to Heart [sic]. Henry/H.Bomb. Cruelworld. 23 Max." I seem to remember that "Gun" was played but this was almost 30 years ago and can't swear to that. Anyway, I know for a fact that the set list on setlist.fm (and wilcobase.com) is wrong because they definitely played "We've Been Had" in the spot where it appears on the printed set list. How do I know this? Because I was attempting to keep track of the set list on the back of my ticket stub. (See second attachment below.) Since quite a few of these songs were new to me, either because they were Uncle Tupelo songs I might have only heard a few times or never, or because they were as-yet-unreleased Wilco songs, I had to guess at some titles. So, when they got to "New Madrid," I wrote "She's the One" because of the line "she's the one I think I love." Then, after "It's Just That Simple," the set list shows that they played "Dreamer in My Dreams," which was brand-new to me. I left a blank spot for that one in my written notes. Finally, the last note I made was "Cover Blown," which is definitely proof that they played "We've Been Had," since it is obviously referencing the repeated lyric "waiting for his cover to be blown." (I will update setlist.fm when I get a chance.) After that, they played "Outtasite (Outta Mind)," which was new to me (even though they had played it when I saw them four months earlier in June at the show referenced in the original post but, as I explained, I had to leave before the show was over and that song was played toward the end of the encore), and then "Casino Queen," which I must have just forgotten to note. The encore after that consisted entirely of songs I didn't really know, so I think I stopped keeping track.

     

    Oh, one more thing: the picture you see part of in the first attachment below, taped to the bottom of the set list, was the insert from Golden Smog's Down by the Old Mainstream CD.

     

    Anyway, I hope folks find this interesting. There's more like this if you do.

     

    EDIT: I found an email I wrote to my girlfriend in 2002 recapping my Wilco shows to that point, and for this show I wrote: "A thin crowd, and Jeff hopped down into it to dance with us." The email also tells me that it was Michelle's boyfriend Ron, not my friend Cindy, who joined us. I've corrected the post above just in case Cindy, Michelle or Ron stumble upon this.

     

     

     

    Wilco102895.pdf Wilco102895Card.pdf Wilco102895Stub.pdf Wilco102895Card2.pdf

    Wilco — 15 June 2024, Chicago, IL (Salt Shed [Outdoors]) [Night 2 of 2]

    in After The Show

    Posted

    Wait, what?! Jeff actually said that about the "You Never Know" of 2024? The funny thing is, when I posted about "You Never Know" in the thread from Night One, they had already played it on Night Two and I didn't even realize it. I wrote the post, and then went and looked at the set list for Night Two. When I saw they had played "Meant to Be," I added a footnote to that effect to my post but didn't even notice "You Never Know" on the set list a few songs above it. Anyway, wow. I'm so excited at the prospect of this song returning to the repertoire that all I can say is "Synthesizer Patell!"

     

    That comment about XRT is a very shrewd observation about how radio treats veteran rock acts. I can't speak from experience about XRT and Wilco, but I've seen enough instances of, for example, KROQ here in L.A. playing the new single from any of a number of bands that broke through in the '90s and running contests for listeners to call in and win tickets to see said bands, only to quickly abandon those new singles and go right back to playing the same three or four nostalgia songs from the '90s by those bands. Even U2 gets this treatment from rock radio.

     

    I hope that fan is O.K. It's hard for me to picture anything happening in between "I Am My Mother" and "Cruel Country" since those two songs seem have been surgically grafted together since 2022.

    • Haha 1

    Wilco — 14 June 2024, Chicago, IL (Salt Shed [Outdoors]) [Night 1 of 2]

    in After The Show

    Posted

    I'm hoping for mostly "album tracks" for the Deep Cuts set but, for what it's worth, the songs Jeff has been teasing on his Substack have been a mix of album tracks and non-album tracks. (I know these aren't necessarily the songs the band will end up playing in North Adams, but they are at least indicative of what Jeff has been practicing, and they have included "Message from Mid-Bar," "When the Roses Bloom Again" and "Bob Dylan's 49th Beard," among others.)

     

    Regarding the disappearance of "Meant to Be," it puts me in mind of the fact that "You Never Know" is the only Wilco song ever to hit number one on any Billboard chart, and yet they treat it like a red-headed stepchild (or Golden Smog's "Red-Headed Stepchild"). It has been played ten times since 2010.

     

    * And now I see that they dusted off "Meant to Be" tonight in Chicago.

     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    Live! Tonight!!

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    16 hours ago, remphish1 said:

    Guster 

     

    Those guys hung out in my dorm when they were just Gus. (They changed their name after another band named Gus compained.) They played my college a few times circa 1993-97. Nice guys.

    • Like 2

    If you tell someone to sit down at a Wilco concert, you pretty much suck at life

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    What if you have a bad back that makes sitting uncomfortable?

     

    If I ever get to the point where I am physiologically unable to stand at a show, I will sit, and I will not yell at anyone around me to sit down.

     

    The thing about the sitters-versus-standers debate is that it's generally not people who are physically unable to stand who are yelling for others to sit down. It's usually people who only want to stand for the songs that they know. I've been to quite a few shows where I've been yelled at for standing while the band plays new songs that I am very familiar with and excited to hear, only for the yellers to leap to their feet once "Jesus, etc." or "Handshake Drugs" gets played. Then, when another new song gets played, they sit back down. I don't understand why they're allowed to stand for the songs that they like but I'm not allowed to stand for the songs that I like. In the end at just about every show, the crowd ends up on its feet. Better for people to just realize that early and stand from the start.

     

    Having said that, if I were standing, and someone behind me told me that they could not stand because of a physical limitation, I would happily offer to trade seats with them.

    • Like 1

    Stuff in My House

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    O.K. Obviously, I did not mean to post this four times. When I try to delete the superfluous posts, I get an error message. The moderator should feel free to delete the latter three posts. Sorry about this.

    Stuff in My House

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    Mr. Kidsmoke has bugged me on a few occasions to share some ephemera on the site, and today seems as good a time to start as any as it's the anniversary of the first time I ever saw Wilco. It was June 9, 1995, at Tramps in New York City. Despite the fact that I was 19 years old and had already lived away at school for a year (and had ridden the subway every day to go to high school before that and was hardly sheltered), my parents were very insistent that my dad should pick me up after the show so I wouldn't have to ride the subway home to Brooklyn late at night. Being naive about shows-- this was the first "club" show I'd ever attended-- I told him to pick me up at 11 p.m. Of course, Wilco played well past that. I faced a dilemma. I felt bad about my dad sitting outside in a car waiting for me (and this was the pre-cell days where there was no way to communicate with him), but I also didn't want to leave and give up my prime spot at the front of the stage and miss the rest of the show. (These were also the days when no one was lining up early to secure spots on the rail. I walked in when doors opened-- I worked in Manhattan during the summers and was basically killing time after work until the show started-- but it was quite a while before very many other people arrived.) Ultimately, my sympathy for my dad won out, and I left before the show was over. I don't remember exactly where I left, but I know I was still there for "Reincarnation." There were seven more songs played after that, including ones that would end up on Being There, but I'm not sure how many of them I saw. When I tally up the songs I've seen, I have to stop counting after "Reincarnation" for that show. (It was an interesting crowd. The Uncle Tupelo songs got the loudest reception. A.M. had only been out for a couple of months and there didn't seem to as much familiarity with it, although that was what got me there. I knew some of the Tupelo stuff but just barely.)

     

    Anyway, here's the ticket stub from 29 years ago tonight. (Hopefully, you can see it. It should be a PDF below.) I have some other things from that era that I'll post on a rolling basis as I have time, assuming people are interested. I know there was some interest in the set list from my second show, later in 1995, when I talked about it a while back. I'll post that next.

     

     

    WilcoTramps.pdf

    Live! Tonight!!

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    At the Museum of Popular Culture, they were screening that Seattle Night 2 Home Show in the theater the day I was there. I watched a little bit of it, but I spent most of my time in the exhibits on Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana.

    • Like 1
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