bböp

Ah, thanks for the printed setlist info. If you can't beat the FB groups...right? And yeah, I was fully expecting A Magazine Called Sunset last night as well because of the article in one of the area papers about the only local among the karaoke singers. Her entry submission video was Magazine, so I was surprised when she ended up singing Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again). I wonder if that was her decision to change or if the band asked her to. (Incidentally, we saw her helping direct traffic among the crowd exodus from Joe's Field after Wilco's set tonight.)

There’s always so much going on during the one full day of the Solid Sound Festival — in my mind anyway, Friday and Sunday are almost half days — that Wilco almost becomes an afterthought at its own festival. That’s total hyperbole, of course, but between checking out art, music and comedy, navigating Mass MoCA and its various quirks, dealing with the weather and just trying to take it all in, you do almost forget sometimes that a big reason for many people to attend this biennial gathering in the Berkshires is to see Jeff and his bandmates perform a couple of memorable sets. So as weird as i

I guess that was just a random friend of Yuka’s, so not Cat Popper after all. I didn’t think it really looked like her, but it was hard to tell with her hair up.

So...karaoke night, eh? In what was almost certain to be a polarizing kickoff show on the first night of the sixth edition of the Solid Sound Festival, Wilco went through with a much-discussed plan for its Friday show to have some fans (and a few "ringers," as it turned out) take over the lead vocal duties on their choice of one of the band's songs. The event was billed as live karaoke with Wilco, and (most) folks were selected to sing on the basis of a short video submission a few weeks prior. This plan was met with enthusiasm by some, derision by others and curiosity by most. How would it w

Just doing a little pre-Solid Sound housekeeping, so that this show doesn't vanish into the either, as it were. Nothing (really) to see here, so carry on... Anyway, Wilco apparently played the God stage from 21:45 to approximately 23:45, after Tesla and before The Cult ("A Sonic Temple"). Unfortunately I was not in attendance, so the following setlist is courtesy Wilcoworld... Handshake Drugs I Am Trying To Break Your Heart War On War I'll Fight Misunderstood Hummingbird Shouldn't Be Ashamed Bull Black Nova Laminated Cat (aka Not For The Season) California Stars Hesitating Beauty Box Full

Calme toi, Monsieur Vache...c'est ici maintenant.

Jeff told me that was the case, actually...

And so this too-short Gallic odyssey comes to an end for now (until Paris in September, I guess), and after one quick festival appearance in Spain this weekend, so will Wilco Warmup 2019. The band is now officially back, shortly headed to Solid Sound 6 and then onward for what promises to be an interesting year ahead. For the final headlining show of their comeback tour, in the charming West Coast port city of La Rochelle, Wilco performed at the strange-but-cool venue La Sirène (The Mermaid). From the outside it looks almost like a concrete sailboat, but underneath the “sail,” on different l

Sometimes you pre-judge the relative quality of a show based on the venue or the location or the date or any number of factors — or at least I do — and sometimes you’re fairly spot on and other times you’re pretty far off. There’s always that pesky human factor, both in terms of the band and the audience, that can elevate or diminish a performance. Along those lines, I’d have to put tonight’s first-ever Wilco gig in Rouen, the capital of Normandy, into the surprisingly fun category. I must admit my first impression of the venue, Le 106, wasn’t all that great. It’s an airplane hangar-like str

Durian

There was probably some underlying reason Wilco had never played a show in France outside of Paris before tonight — I think I had heard something about punitive tax consequences of some sort for foreign artists — but perhaps there simply wasn’t the level of demand required to put on a show anywhere but the capital. After all these years that will change this week, with three shows in the north and west of the country during which I expect the band members to continue getting their sea legs under them after a long layoff as well as reaping the corollary benefit of introducing themselves to so

:ninja

Since pretty much anybody who would care to read a recap of this show probably already watched it themselves via the livestream (or could on demand, I assume) and since I’ve already slacked with said recap for nearly two days, I’m not really sure how much I can add at this point. Yet for duty’s sake, if nothing else, I suppose I will try to piece together a few thoughts on the subject of Night 2 at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. Paradiso is obviously an iconic venue, but it can leave a little something to be desired from an audience perspective. For one, the stage is about 6 feet high and there’

Does that mean ye were having a peery good time then?

When a friend casually mentioned before Wilco took the stage last night that it was the band’s first performance at Paradiso in nearly a decade, I don’t think it really registered with me. In the years following the release of A Ghost Is Born, when I really started going to more than my fair share of shows, it seemed like Jeff and his bandmates would — like clockwork — make a tour stop at Amsterdam’s renowned church-turned-club every two years. But when I went back and looked at it, tonight’s first of two concerts here was indeed the band’s first proper Amsterdam gig in nearly 10 full years.

Not that there weren’t any number of brilliant moments to be remembered from the second of Wilco’s two shows at Brussels’ iconic Ancienne Belgique this week, but one exchange between Jeff and a fan pretty much illustrated all you need to know about the relationship between the band and its audience (with the disclaimer that I wasn’t standing anywhere close to this person so I can only describe things the way I saw them based on Jeff’s reactions and comments, but I think the point still comes across). Jeff had finally opened up a bit, banter-wise, toward the end of the main set when the band

Well, Wilco warm-up week (or three) leading up to the Solid Sound Festival at the end of the month reached Europe starting tonight with the first of two shows in Brussels at the venerable Ancienne Belgique. And while I can’t say that the band is clicking on absolutely all cylinders quite yet, it put on a more-than-solid show that easily delighted the 1,800 or so crammed into the AB’s main hall. As with Jeff and Co.’s stateside return last week in Knoxville, Tenn., it seemed that a fairly healthy percentage of the sold-out crowd had traveled quite a distance to see the band play its first Eur

There was definitely a session at the Loft in, I believe, January or February. Remember the Wilco Instagram account posted a photo of the band at a Blackhawks game? Anyway, I believe the record is probably close to done (or very nearly). Whether they’ll play any new material until it’s actually out remains to be seen...

The challenge for a band, of course, when playing a pair of de facto warm-up concerts to shake off the cobwebs of an 18-month layoff is to still put on a good show for the audience. Given the overwhelmingly friendly makeup of said audience — once again, it seemed like the vast majority of the 700 or so inside the Bijou Theatre tonight were either super-ardent fans who had traveled from afar and seen Wilco many, many times or enthusiastic locals who were thrilled the band had chosen to visit their little corner of the world — that probably wasn’t too hard to achieve. Nevertheless Jeff and his

Yeah, I believe it’s fairly common knowledge (or at least expectation) that there will be a new Wilco record out sometime later this year or early next...

Ah, stop yer whining or no beer for you! #FOXACHE

Man, give a guy a few hours! Anyway, there you go...

As the Bijou Theatre lights dimmed and Wilco prepared to take the stage for the first time in more than 18 months, the heavy stage curtain remained tantalizingly drawn. When it finally opened, what would it reveal? To what extent would the performance that was about to take place be familiar and to what extent would it be different? And on a day when tickets went on (pre)sale for the first American tour in many moons, how much would this long-awaited performance say about where the band is headed in the short — and long — term? These types of questions, I suppose, are what has drawn fans fro

Or we could just turn it into a Broken Social Scene-type of thing... #justsaying #freeforall

Thanks for the detailed report! Of course I messed up the timing in my own head, so I was thinking the first show wasn’t until tonight...forgot you all are way ahead of us (timewise, and probably otherwise). Sounds like a fun way to kick off the tour. Glad to hear that Jen Cloher was well received (well, she is on home turf). I assume she just played solo? I regret missing her on this run, just as much as missing Jeff!