Your first Wilco show

[theologian]

The El Rey in 2001

 

think it was the first touring without bennet. Remember hearing much of the crowd (a big commercial for male pattern baldness) talking about how shitty the stuff from the upcoming album sounded. Great show!

[tjr]

November 1, 2005

Auditorium Theatre

Chicago

 

A Benefit for Hurricane Relief. Front row. I was one of the WXRT front row auction winners (Aimee talked me into bidding). I was just getting into Wilco and playing bass in the Wilco ensemble at the Old Town School. A bunch of new friends from the Ensemble all went that night, and were scattered throughout the theatre. Some of us were also lucky enough to go to the sound check before the show. Good times... here's a photo

 

TomR

[Fledderjohn]

...will be May 23rd in Cologne, Germany. Pretty excited I am...

[Prose]

I first saw them in 1995 at the Sunshine Fest in Crown Point, IN with the Jayhawks. I've heard that Jeff references this as the worst Wilco show EVER, but I loved it. Maybe it was because it was during that god awful heatwave that summer or maybe the crown town crowd was kinda lame. I dunno his reasons. I was excited to see them as I had never seen Uncle Tupelo figuring I would eventually get around to doing so eventually. It was this same mentality that made me miss Nirvana as well as the Jam many years earlier. I haven't seen a set in the timeline but itwas mostly UT and AM songs(my buddy was having a huge party down the street so even at there early start I was already boozin). Anyway the Jayhawks got about a third thru their set and a massive thunderstorm came and cut them short. Somehow I helped them rush gear of the stage and found myself on their bus. Wilco had long gone( I think) and Gary Louris and the others politely refused my invitiation to the party off of Crown Points square as they were gonna get an early start to Cincy I think. Strange, as there were a lot of coolers backstage but no beers so I headed of back to the party. A great day nonetheless!

[jenn]

I saw them summer of '95 at Horde too. My friend worked at a local record store in the south suburbs of Chicago and had been playing AM a lot for a few months. They were on a side stage and if I am remembering things right, (too much pot in my 20's), there was only a handful of people watching them. Weirdly, while I can barely remember being there I do have it burned in my brain that Jeff was wearing a red t-shirt. We were pretty close to the stage and singing along and Jeff was sort of smiling at us. It was cool. I was only just getting into them, so the experience at the time wasn't as monumental as it would have been now, or even a year later. We saw them again later that year (I think) at the Vic and that show stands out a lot more.

[Dan-O]

First show... Indy 7/19/02. 12 more shows since then (10 different cities and 12 different venues).

Best show... The Vic 5/7/05. In line all day, band comes out to hob-knob, front row, no opener, ridiculously long set, getting Tweedy's guitar, after show party, my picture in Kicking Television CD booklet and Q Mag article... will be tough to beat.

Next show... Indy 6/15/07

[Sir Stewart]

Front and center at the Avalon Ballroom in Boston, 4/23/1999:

 

1. I'm Always In Love

2. Via Chicago

3. How To Fight Loneliness

4. Hotel Arizona

5. Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)

6. Red-Eyed And Blue

7. I Got You (At The End Of The Century)

8. My Darling

9. She's A Jar

10. A Shot In The Arm

11. We're Just Friends

12. Hesitating Beauty

13. Christ For President

14. Passenger Side

15. Can't Stand It

16. Monday

17. In A Future Age

 

Encore 1:

18. Summer Teeth

19. When You Wake Up Feeling Old

20. New Madrid

21. Forget The Flowers

22. California Stars

 

Encore 2:

23. ELT

24. Casino Queen

25. Outtasite (Outta Mind)

26. Hoodoo Voodoo

[Willkoman]

Front and center at the Avalon Ballroom in Boston, 4/23/1999:

 

I was there. Centerstage, fifteen feet back. My friend Ken flew in from Colorado. I took him to see Neil Young Solo in NYC at The Theater @ MSG & Wilco at The Avalon in Boston.

 

Edit: It was a good week.

[kencoomerislockedinmybasement]

Gather 'round childrens and I'll tell ye a story. I flew into sunny Seattle. My pal Robert informs me he has tickets to see a band called Wilco. I think I had heard of UT at that point, but essentially had no idea what I was in for. We awaited the arrival of our Montana friends, who drove all day from Missoula (2 in the back of a pickup). Soon we made our way to The Backstage in Ballard. Mellow crowd, plenty of elbow room, a nice place to see a show. Jeff had long hair, cowboy hat, (you've seen the pics) the lap steel, dobro and banjo was well-represented

[oceanman]

1997-04-30

Emerson Cultural Center

Bozeman, MT

 

 

 

Encore 1:

17. Sunken Treasure

18. Casino Queen

19. The Shape I'm In (jam)

20. Dueling Banjos

21. I'm Going Home (jam)

22. Casino Queen

Holy crap,Solace you wouldn't happen to have this show would ya?

[Willkoman]

20. Dueling Banjos

 

I used to love when they played Dueling Banjos.

[HungryHippo]

this is a very fun thread to read!

 

i saw the guys in Raleigh on 9/25/04. the highlight for me was seeing Joseph Arthur open the show, didn't know who he was then and hanging out by the band's bus after the show with Joseph Arthur, Joan Wasser and various members of Wilco. Jeff was nice enough to sign my beat-up copy of 'Adult Head' too! Oh and the show wasn't that bad either

[cash]

My first show was a little more than a year , when I was 16. I went to the show with my girlfriend, at the time we had been dating for about 4 weeks. Spiders came on and two minutes later we started hooking up for the first time in our relationship... kinda corny but when your making out with your girlfriend for the first time and listening to nels go to work, theres not much that can go wrong.

 

Later that show, during the encore Jeff started playing Hesitating Beauty. I was pretty close to the stage, it was a small club. For some reason i thought the song was Airline to Heaven (I am a big fan of both songs). I start cheering loudly "yea airline to heaven woooooooo hoooooooooooo" that sorta nonsence. Jeff looks at me with a weird expression, a second later i realize that it's heasitating beauty, and quickly corrected my rants., jeff looks back at me and smiles... it was a great show. It was in NJ right before they went down to William and Mary (I remember because i had visited that school before they went down).

 

Great show, best I've ever been to in my life as of now, but jeff could outdo himself...

[TheMaker]

I always kinda blew Wilco off when they came to came to town 'til YHF leaked, and then I started going to shows. Love that rekkid! Spring of '02, stuck in the balcony at the U of T, but the set was great (if entirely too short at under 100 minutes including encores) and the "Bach lineup" really ripped it up on songs like "Ashes" and "Laminated Cat" (for which performance they were joined by the drummer from the Neil Michael Hagerty Band). I enjoyed the quieter numbers and straightforward rockers even more, and when I remember that show, I'm reminded that the "Leroy era" is pretty underrated by some folks. I think those were the shows that really made Jeff branch out and start doing his own thing as a guitarist, by dint of sheer necessity.

[saylarvee]

That was May 19, 1995 at The Backstage -- Seattle (Ballard), Washington.

 

This was my first WILCO show as well.

A great performance that lasted late into the night/morning, great covers, lots of encores.

I recall that Jeff didn't say much throughout the performance. He's made up for it since LOL!

[noyes]

never been to one.

 

my first will be the Warsaw show coming up and shit am i excited haha.

 

really fun reading everyones stories though

[H.Stone]

My first time seeing Wilco was at the 1995 H.O.R.D.E. Festival in Somerset, WI. They played a side-stage and "Box Full of Letters" was getting radio play on 770 Radio K in the Cities. My memory of them is .... a bit hazy as HORDE featured The Black Crowes, Ziggy Marley, G. Love, Blues Traveler... there was a lot of herb, to put it mildly.

[hardwood floor]

first time i saw Wilco was Dec. 16, 1994, at the Mercury Lounge in NYC

 

it was one of the first handful of wilco shows

 

i remember some drunk guy in the back screaming at the top of his lungs for Whiskey Bottle

 

somebody yelled out, "No, Jay wrote that."

 

then some girl screamed out for Looking for a Way Out

 

and I yelled out, "No, Jay wrote that too."

 

and then Jeff said, "I was wondering how I would handle this. But you guys are handling it."

 

it was a great moment and an astonishing show

 

1. I Must Be High

2. Box Full Of Letters

3. Too Far Apart

4. Shouldn't Be Ashamed

5. Walk Where He Walked

6. New Madrid

7. That's Not The Issue

8. Pick Up The Change

9. Wait Up

10. The Long Cut

11. If That's Alright

12. Should've Been In Love

13. We've Been Had

14. No Sense In Lovin'

15. Give Back The Key To My Heart

16. Casino Queen

17. Black Eye

18. Gun

19. Wherever

20. Who Were You Thinking Of

21. Reincarnation

22. Outtasite (Outta Mind)

23. Let's Hear It For Rock and Roll

24. Listen To Her Heart

[zebra]

I cannot answer in this thread until after 9/12 because that will be my first show. And in Chicago no less. I did see Glenn solo in Tucson, AZ a few months ago. Does that count? That was freaking amazing!

[keeprighton2]

Glastonbury 1997 (or maybe 99)

 

Tweedy walks on stage with the immortal line:

 

'Hello cocksuckers'. Nice.

[dondoboy]

Mine was the Summerteeth tour in Oxford Mississippi outside. I remember they started playing "Won't Get Fooled Again" and Coomer got to that awesome stuttered drum part at the begining and Tweedy stopped everyone exclaiming how fucking cool it was and asking everyone to start again so he could hear it again. I don't think they ever played the song though.

[Ghost Of Bob Cumming]

Hello all. New to these boards, but not Wilco.

 

First show was on Wednesday 21st June 1995 at the Wulfrun Centre in Wolverhampton, here in the UK. Wilco were supporting The Jayhawks, and what I remember is; that despite the heat Jeff wore a woolly hat on stage, Jay Bennett had a full beard, I bumped into Jeff & Ken Coomer on the street outside the venue beforehand (can't remember what was said - probably something half-mumbled on my part), Wilco joined The Jayhawks at the end of the whole show for an encore of 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' and 'Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man' (Byrds-fest!). The whole thing was superb, and I mention the 'Wednesday' bit because the next day we headed down to the Glastonbury Festival. That was a rocking (long) weekend!

 

I saw them headline at the same venue a couple of years later, but I've not seen them since. So imagine how pleased I am that the last show to be added to the forthcoming UK dates was a Saturday night gig in Newcastle - 15 miles up the road from where I now live. Tickets are in the bag, and one of my mates who was at that first Wilco show is travelling up from the old hometown for the weekend. Can't wait.

[froggie]

Wilco joined The Jayhawks at the end of the whole show for an encore of 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' and 'Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man' (Byrds-fest!).

 

cool!

just checked wilcobase and it doesnt look like the show was recorded