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Meant to reply to this sooner, but anyway...glad you got a pair of fun shows in Melbourne and hope the rest of the Oz/NZ tour (however much of it you're doing) goes just as swimmingly! Was Vienna really three years ago already? Yeesh. I do remember what a crazy day you had getting to that gig (or was it getting back to the UK)? Anyway, I think I can safely speak for Brianne in saying that we definitely wish we could be Down Under right about now. Have a drink or three for us!

Glad you got the shoutout, sir! You are both notorious and dangerous, I'm sure. Sounds like another pair of fun gigs in "Melbun" (and quite a time to be a music fan in your part of the world).

Have fun, F! Wish I could join you this week...

Too bad they went all the way to Perth to play 11 songs, though Perth seems cool...

I mean, yeah...that single night — 3/5/05 — was just tremendous. Both because of the songs played (at the time, before he was doing the scholarship shows and really before the living room shows were much of a thing, I just remember thinking, "Wow, just about every single song that I ever wanted to hear him play, he played.") and because of the crowd (the front row at that show was made up of so many friends and we were all so...happy). If I *had* to pick just one single solo show that I ever was at, this would be it.

Those are still probably my favorite pair of solo shows he's ever done (and that I was at), especially the latter. Those two, and the January '03 three-night run.

So you’re kind of riding on their coat-tails. You’re not a particularly invasive producer as such, you just provide the impotence for them to just go for it in whatever way they see fit? Well, with Low I guess one big difference is they came in with all of their own material and with Mavis I have to pick songs to work with and write songs for her. So there’s a lot of invasive production involved with that, basically I am making the musical landscape for her to sing in. What you need to understand is, what I’m getting at is Mavis’ voice is really at the centre of what she does and Mimi and Ala

Yeah, RIP indeed. Way too young. Shocking (to me, at least) because I had thought he was getting better.

Here you go...this was the complete setlist, as played, for Night 2 of this year's scholarship benefit gigs (and I agree, tonight was a great evening): Via Chicago Hummingbird Poor Places Please Tell My Brother I Wanna Be Your Dog [The Stooges] She's A Jar Henry and the H-Bombs [Mott The Hoople] Art of Almost One By One Sky Blue Sky Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down ("...for the new pope") Nothing Up My Sleeve Listening To The Wind That Blows When The Roses Bloom Again Blasting Fonda Hotel Arizona Country Disappeared Can't Stand It Someday Soon (started and restarted three times) We've Been

I'm sure plenty of folks will eventually chime in, but I'll just say that tonight's show was probably about the "loosest" solo show I've ever seen. Some of that was good (Jeff was pretty chatty, and had some hilarious banter as he always does at these benefit gigs) and some of that was not necessarily optimal (there were definitely some rough patches in his playing due to a pretty long, by Jeff's standards, break from performing, as well as having to use his so-called "B team" of guitars because his preferred ones were in transit to Australia for Wilco's upcoming tour there). It seemed like

They played Schubas in Chicago not that long ago, last October I believe.

Band of Syls. I'm sure Mr. Johnson would show up again.

Syl Johnson, but whatever.

Looks like both the album with Raise The Rent as well as the aforementioned Moxie can be found on Spotify as well, fwiw. Thanks for the info about her. She has a cool-sounding voice, and a pretty interesting, hard-to-peg sound. Would be interesting to see her (and presumably, her band) live. Too bad she doesn't appear to be coming close to Chicago in the near future, but I'll keep an eye out. In a larger sense, it's definitely a reminder that there's good music being made in just about every little corner of this vast land of ours and that it's up to us to support it as much as possible. Esp

Here's a link to an interesting little piece from the UK's Guardian newspaper about this, which I believe I saw when Joyce tweeted about it. Cool that you're friends with her, Tim!

Classic. (I'm curious as to what this latest auction will benefit, but I think it'll go for a bit more than in the old days... )

Well I could think of worse jobs, I suppose...

All these Numero stories over the years are kind of insane, but I have to say I find them all pretty fascinating. Noticed they've been diving into reissuing some of the 90's shoegaze stuff recently, so I wonder if the soul stuff is finally starting to get tapped out...

I just have to say, this was actually my first Wilco show (and a great one, even though I knew next to nothing)!

Not really a surprise, but Solid Sound Festival just posted this on Facebook, referring to Nels' duo with Julian Lage: Rumor has it this amazing pair might appear at Solid Sound this summer: http://nyti.ms/ZEVt32

Here's a link to, IMHO, a very good interview with Nels about this project... Nels interview with CT.com

Anyway, to briefly finish up the musical recapping from the Letters to Santa event... Playing solo electric guitar and laughing out loud a lot, Kim Deal did three mini-sets of three songs or so apiece, including the Breeders' Cannonball to end the second set and the Pixies' Gigantic to end the third. One surprise, at least to me, was her great cover of Chris Bell's You And Your Sister. I totally didn't realize that she and Tanya Donnelly had sung it on a This Mortal Coil record more than 20 years ago, but I'm glad she still sings it. JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound definitely provided a jolt

Oh yeah! Mind freeze this afternoon. How could I have forgotten that one...thanks, B!

As I said in the thread in Just A Fan, I feel like the musical performances at this year's recently concluded 24-hour Letters to Santa event at the Second City's etc. stage deserved a thread of their own, so here it is... Most of the songs Jeff played have already been mentioned in the other thread, but despite his claiming when he first took the stage that "What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?" was the only song he currently remembered, he turned in another terrific intimate set for the crowd that completely packed the theater (as well as to the many folks waiting in line to get in, thanks

Here's a pretty solid recap of the entire 24 hours, including some of the names I missed in the Albini segment.