Brian F.

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 lar

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 las

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 th

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

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 i

(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 releas

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 ov

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

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 exa

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 a

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

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.

Yes, and that record was broken several times. Incredibly, the current record was set in relatively recent 2015 by Adele's 25, which sold a mind-boggling 3.38 million copies in its first week.

In its first week of wide release, Cruel Country sold 7,000 copies across all formats (LP, CD and downloads).* That would include direct sales by the band as well as sales by retailers set up for tracking by Luminate (which will exclude some independent record stores). That number is slightly lower than it would have been but for the "white label" CD release on Record Store Day. (There were a total of 8,000 copies of that release available.) In its first week of release, the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot box set sold 13,000 copies (8,000 vinyl, 4,500 CD and 500 digital downloads). That incl

I noticed something interesting on the packing slip that came with my Wilcoworld preorder. For the LP, it says: BATCH PRINT: 119, PREORDER: 1000, R03: 881 For the CD, it says: R03: 427 I wonder if these numbers are sequential as orders were filled. It's interesting that the LP numbers 119 and 881 add up to 1000, which is also shown. What numbers do other people's slips show? I'm wondering if we can read anything into this about how many preorders there were. It seems plausible to me that they would have ordered a batch of 1,000 LPs to satisfy

A "First Listen" of Cousin with Jeff providing commentary is airing right now (9 a.m. PDT) on indie88.com. It will reair at 5 p.m. PDT.