Brian F.

13 minutes ago, kidsmoke said:

See you there, Brian & scribex6!

Brian, I did score an orch center (only row R though) and my friend Julie also got one. So there were at least a few on offer today.

Assuming this is Pasadena Julie, I'm glad to hear that good people got Center.

For the Santa Barbara show, I was only getting a single, which means that, although it's Row E, it's the odd seat all the way at the end of the row. It's more like Orchestra Far Left. Like, so far left that Marx and Engels might have the two seats to my right...

I just hope that, whenever it's released, the physical release is available. (And here I'm talking about the CD; if it takes longer to get the LP manufactured, don't hold the CD hostage to the LP.)

I got tickets for all four L.A. shows as well as Santa Barbara. It worked out with fees to $105 per ticket. It gives an idea of the state of the live music world today that $105 per show seems totally reasonable. (Note: the Bellwether show in L.A. was about $20 less than the Ace and Santa Barbara shows.)

Did anyone manage to get Orchestra Center? I was in right at 10 a.m. (as was coldasgasoline) and all of the tickets that came up for us were either Orchestra Left or Orchestra Right. I noticed before the on-sale that there was a button for AXS Premium and I wondered whether they might hold back the Center seats for that. Does anyone have any insight about any of this?

5 hours ago, nalafej said:

How are the A's go over in the opening slot?

 

Found them through Tiny Desk - really loved their episode there.

I thought the A's were moving to Vegas...

As for the sitters, you know where I, um, stand on this. As Jeff has said many times, including on this topic, "Don't postpone happiness," which is pretty clearly an anagram of "HOP ONTO PEPPINESS: STAND!"

Acoustic Art of Almost? That must have been wild.

A couple of us were speculating today that there could be shows in either Southern California or the Pacific Northwest in between the Berkeley and Monterey shows, but that is not based on anything other than geography.

It's nice to see "You Never Know" make an appearance. Jeff always jokes about Wilco not having any hits, or about "playing the hit" (usually in reference to "Jesus etc."), but "You Never Know" is the only Wilco song to hit number one on any Billboard chart (Adult Album Alternative/Triple-A), so you'd think it would be more regularly featured. Granted, being number one on that particular chart is an example of being a big fish in a very small pond in terms of the total audience reached, but still.

Not to belabor this, but I really want to emphasize that this is not just about the first night of this residency. On the Cruel Country tour, only three of the 36 most-played songs came from these six albums. "Impossible Germany" was played 39 times, "If I Ever Was a Child" was played 33 times and "Love Is Everywhere (Beware)" was played 27 times. The next-most-played song on the tour from these six albums was "Everyone Hides," which was played at six of 59 shows. The only other song with more than three appearances on the tour was "You and I," which was performed five times.

There were two songs from Star Wars played over 59 shows: "Random Name Generator" twice.

There were four songs from The Whole Love over 59 shows: "Dawned on Me" twice, "Born Alone" once and "Whole Love" once.

"You and I" was the only song played from Wilco (The Album) on the tour.

Only "If I Ever Was a Child" and "Cry All Day"-- which was played once-- appeared from Schmilco.

Aside from "Impossible Germany," five other Sky Blue Sky songs appeared, one twice and four others once each.

These albums have been missing in action for a while now. It's not a small sample. The other night was only continuing the trend.

I tried to clarify that it wasn't only about last night. These other albums have not shown up a lot on set lists recently. I'd expect to hear a lot more of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at the next two shows, but not as much of these other six albums. We're talking about half of the studio-album catalog, and consecutively. I don't think it's an anomaly, but we'll see.

I know this is only the first of three nights where we anticipate no repeated songs, but it is odd to me that there is only one song in this 23-song set that post-dates the establishment of the current lineup of the band and pre-dates Cruel Country. "Love Is Everywhere (Beware)" is the only song from the six-album span of Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album), The Whole Love, Star Wars, Schmilco and Ode to Joy and 15-year period from 2007 through 2021. With the four Cruel Country songs, that makes five songs out of 23 from the last fifteen years. Nels and Pat are almost in a cover band with the frequency that they get to perform songs they originally played on. The band hasn't exactly been wearing out Cruel Country either, at least after the premiere at Solid Sound.

Do you think these albums are so underrepresented-- two additional nights to come notwithstanding, these albums have typically been underrepresented in sets the last few years-- because Jeff has soured on the songs or because he thinks the audience doesn't want to hear them? Or maybe both?

I'll mention Pearl Jam, whose 2020 Gigaton record is fantastic. The only problem with PJ past the twenty-year mark is that the albums have been few and far between. Since their 20th anniversary in 2010, they have only released albums in 2015 and 2020.

I think there are plenty of acts that continue to put out good records well into their careers, but audiences don't tend to give later albums the same time and attention they give earlier albums, not necessarily because of quality, but because the circumstances of the listeners have changed. It's really easy for a 20-year-old to discover a new favorite artist and listen to their album hundreds of times. But that 20-year-old at age 45 tends to have a lot of other things that keep thing from spending time with new music: job, spouse, kids and, as time goes on, the increasing distractions of an ever-expanding entertainment menu. And a lot of people don't connect as well on an emotional level as they get older the same way they did with the music of their youth. I'm speaking here about the typical music listener. Obviously, the type of people posting here tend to be a bit more committed to the music they love and the artists they admire.

A related thing I was thinking about this week in the context of veteran acts is how there is a significant portion of the music-listening public that really never moves far beyond their entry point with a particular artist. Pearl Jam was a massive success from their first album, and the majority of their fans discovered the band due to that album or one of the next two that followed in quick succession in a span of three years. Today, thirty years later, it's those albums, and particularly the first one, that most fans want to hear. Many of them may not even realize that there are 21st-century Pearl Jam albums or, if they do, they barely gave them a listen. In the case of Wilco, which didn't achieve its biggest success and audience until its fourth album, it's that fourth album that generates the biggest response from most Wilco fans today. Even though Pearl Jam and Wilco both play a lot of songs from across their careers in their live shows, it's a minority of diehards that are most animated by hearing the songs that come from the albums that weren't their entry points. And, in both cases, even with the broad playlists, the late-career records tend to disappear from setlists after the tours immediately following their release. For Pearl Jam, this would be Riot Act (2002), Pearl Jam (2006), Backspacer (2009) and Lightning Bolt (2015). For Wilco, it's Wilco (The Album), The Whole Love, Star Wars, Schmilco and Ode to Joy. If the pattern continues, we won't be hearing much of Cruel Country when Wilco tours in 2026.

One other thought on this: there's an argument to be made that Wilco is only 20 years into its career now, if you think of Wilco as having had three distinct eras due to changing personnel. Wilco I was the Wilco of A.M., with Max Johnston and all the contributions of Brian Henneman, Bob Egan, etc. Wilco II was the Jay Bennett era of Being There, Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, where they begin transitioning into the current iteration of Wilco III, with first Glenn and then Nels, Pat and Mikael. Jeff is of course the central creative force, and he's been there all along (as has John), but this is not really the same act that existed in 2001 or 1999, let alone in 1995 when I first saw them.

There actually was a tournament called Crosswords LA that was run for a few years here, but it was a lot of work for the organizer and I think it lost money (even though there were no cash prizes). My first tournament was Crosswords LA in 2014, I think.

Bear in mind that ACPT and Crosswords LA are (and were) on-paper only. I haven't done any online tournaments because I would get completely destroyed competing on a computer. I have no facility with those crossword apps.

6 minutes ago, gogo said:

 

ACPT??  I have yet to be able to work out the timing to get to that.  Now I will be doubly-jealous of all combo ACPT/Wilco show-goers! 

You got it. I will be defending my 18th-place finish from 2022.

Wow, this works out really well for me. I was already planning to be in New York that week centered around an event in Stamford on Saturday and Sunday, and the theater is eight miles from the hotel where the event is, so I just stumbled into three bonus Wilco shows. Nice!

18 minutes ago, ZiggyBratwurst said:

Oh, ok. Then I guess I just don't know which song you're talking about. 

It's a song that he played Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Largo.

14 minutes ago, ZiggyBratwurst said:

After reading through these last few posts, I'm a little confused about why there's confusion about the name of the new song. But for what it's worth, on the spreadsheet I listed the new song from this Tweedy Show (#218) as "Evicted From Your Heart" because a) he repeats the line over and over in the song, b) both @u2roolz and @bböp listed it as such in their lists, and c) that's what it says on Wilcoworld.net.

My post wasn't about that song. It was about the song that could be named either "Nothing New" or "Having a Hard Time." Both phrases are part of its refrain.

16 hours ago, bböp said:

 

Just for the record, I went with Having A Hard Time for the title of the song in question because Wilcoworld actually posted the setlist for the first Largo show on Jan. 5 before I finished my recap/setlist post here. I originally called it "It's Nothing New" as well, but changed it in deference to what Wilcoworld had. I hear that someone may have seen a song listed as "Nothing New" on a physical setlist at the show, which is almost certainly where the confusion stems from. So until Jeff clarifies it or the song is released with one title or the other, we won't know for sure.

 

Either way, I wouldn't completely trust Setlist.fm on anything. It's a nice resource to have, but I'm sure there are also errors on there as with any Wiki-type database that anyone can contribute to or change. Very occasionally Wilcoworld has an error, too. Nobody's perfect, but I would tend to defer to Wilcoworld on song titles unless Jeff himself clarifies it either during a show, on the Tweedy Show or on his Substack.

For what it's worth, I asked Cash on Thursday what that song was called and he said, "'Having a Hard Time' is the only title I've ever heard."

I'm nominating the first line of this writeup for this year's Pulitzer in Breaking News-- Surveying. Previous surveyor laureates include George Washington, George Gallup... and probably other people named George.

"Everlasting Everything" was indeed an especial and unexpected highlight.

An (I think) unintentionally comic moment occurred after the "I'll Fight" banter, when Jeff proceeded to play "Hearts Hard to Find" with the opening lyric "I don't mind/When certain people die...."  There were quite a few chuckles in the audience from people who perhaps thought Jeff was sending a message to the guy who requested "I'll Fight," although I suspect that was going to be the next song up "either way."  I love "I'll Fight" and hope to hear it before this run is over, but you have to admit that shouting "I'LL FIGHT!" is a provocative thing to do at a live performance. I wonder what folks in the audience who don't know the song must have been thinking when the request was first made-- "Wait, does this guy want to throw down with Jeff right now?" It makes me think of my reaction last year when coldasgasoline yelled out "LOU REED WAS MY BABYSITTER!," the title of a song with which I was not familiar at the time, causing me to think either "How has my friend never told me that Lou Reed was his babysitter?!" but also "Why is he shouting out complete sentences that are not true?," only for me to be further flabbergasted when Jeff instantly replied, "O.K., I'll play it."  I remember thinking, "What is happening here?!"

I was the guy who gave Jeff the "Little Lies" 7-inch.  A little back story: I bought that 45 back when the song was a hit in 1987 when I was 12 years old. That record, along with my entire childhood record collection, went missing some time after I left for college and I assumed my parents had either thrown it away or donated it to charity until last Christmas when I discovered the records hiding in plain sight in a crate under a table in my parents' basement in Brooklyn. I shipped the records to my home in L.A. and spent January listening to all of them systematically. The reality, though, is that I was probably only likely to ever play that 7-inch once or twice over the course of the rest of my life and, after Jeff did his beautiful cover of it on Thursday night (and after having previously shared a performance of it on Starship Casual), I thought that the record would probably be put to much better use in his jukebox. He's gifted me with so much music throughout his career that I figured the least I could do would be to gift a little music to him. I hope it ends up in the jukebox and that I'll get to visit it someday when Jeff becomes my friend and invites me over.

The B-side to "Little Lies" is a Lindsey Buckingham-sung track called "Ricky."  As much as I want it to be a Fleetwood Mac cover of the "Weird Al" Yankovic parody of Toni Basil's "Mickey," it's an original and I'm really hoping Jeff works up a cover of it by tomorrow night. I will walk home if that happens.

22 minutes ago, bböp said:

A surveyor I am not. You win.

It is not a competition. I just think it's important for people to know that, if stuff goes down-- and these shows teeter on the edge of a riot at times-- you'll need to call the L.A.P.D. to respond. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which polices WeHo, has no jurisdiction at Largo. (Actually, arguably the only entity with jurisdiction at Largo is Flanny, who runs it as a sort of benevolent dictatorship.)

...But seriously, I would probably just call 911 if order needed to be restored but I can never remember the number.

For the record-- and I believe this has come up before-- Largo is not in West Hollywood. It is in the city of Los Angeles. The West Hollywood/Los Angeles line snakes in such a way that everything on La Cienega from Rosewood Ave. (where Norm's is) south is in L.A.

I was wondering the same thing.  I bought both the CD and LP boxes, but I haven't opened the LP box and probably won't get around to it for a while.  Is there any information in the LP box that's not in the CD box?  I really have no idea what I'm listening to on CDs 2, 3 and 4 other than bits I can sort of glean from the essays, but even that's not totally clear.

I just received both the CD and LP sets... just in time for me to pay no attention to them as the Mets play their biggest series of the season over the next three days.  Let's go, Mets!

And here's the printed set list.  "I Got You (At the End of the Century)" and "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" were not played.  Now don't you fall "arart"...

I did not attend this show, but here is the set list for the record:

Handshake Drugs

I Am My Mother

Cruel Country

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

War on War

Via Chicago*

Hummingbird

Bird without a Tail / Base of My Skull

Jesus, etc.

Impossible Germany

California Stars

Falling Apart (Right Now)

Heavy Metal Drummer

U.S. Blues

* No coda

I know coldasgasoline was there, and perhaps he'll share his experience, but he's traveling today.

There was someone in the second row in San Diego with a child that couldn't have been older than five.  She was wearing protective headphones.  Apparently, they worked because she was sound asleep before the main set was over.