A petiton for seing Wilco in France

[samuel70]

A good thing for Wilco is to make a french tv show called Taratata..../...

I think i gonna make a travel any body can host me in europe

I'm a really cool french. I can learn you some french tricks and i came with the food

 

Ouille ! Wilco on Taratata would pretty much be like The Cure playing "Champs Elysée" back in the 80's....and, Naguy interviewing Jeff Tweedy, this guy's a buffoon.

(However, next time Wilco play in Belgium you're welcome to stay at our place in Brussels)

[victor79]

 

It's why Saibu the future best french band have got some problem to be star. Yeah I make some ad

 

 

And I thank you very much for that.

[keeprighton2]

And I thank you very much for that.

 

I'm up for this too. Have in-laws in Paris and I can tell you there are lots of English and Americans who live and work on the west side of the city.

Go there every xmas. How about a nice intimate gig at La Cigale? I'd be there like a shot and so would my two teenage nephews who I've weaned onto Wilco these past few years.

 

Daft Punk anyone?

[tblair]

Well I might have some sort of an explanation.

In recent years, I think they never played outside Paris. Most of the shows were excellent, one (at a venue called the Maroquinerie) was absolutely outstanding. One of the issues might be that a large part of the audience consisted in american people. Each time, Jeff did a little chatter routine like "hey, are there americans here tonight" and the response was always very loud, by far out-staging the 'local's' response. It might well be that the band thought "oh well, we like to play for americans, but isn't it what we do every other night of the year ? ».

Secondly, Jeff once said that it was kind of hard for them not to lose money when they play in France, because of some tax regulation. Seems like most of the time, the venues are not so big, and the deals they get from promoters aren't good enough to balance this tax problem.

Finally, the fact is they just DON'T SELL shit in France, no matter how hard they try (or maybe they should try and go all around the country to 'work' the crowds, but they would lose even more money, wouldn't they ?). I don't know why it is so, but it is : even when they got good press, it didn't change anything, they never broke through over here. Nobody seems to care, except for a bunch of us. You have to remember that the whole 'americana' movement had a hard time in this country back in the nineties. Bands like the Jayhawks, Tupelo, Wilco, Son Volt, Whiskeytown, Steve Earle et all never made much of an impression. We prefered britpop, what are you gonna do ? It changed recently, but a little too late, and the result is that Wilco only has the reputation of being this "indy, quirky, post rock experimental krautrock weird sounding proto-prog band", which, I believe, DOES NOT seem very appealing to french record buyers.

Last november, they had a date in London and, two day later, a date in Brussels, Belgium. Between the two shows, they had a night off. Well, you need to know that the Eurostar brings you from London to Paris in two hours time. Then, Paris-Brussels by train is like 1h30. I'm sure they left this date free to try and secure a deal to play in Paris. Ultimately, nothing happened.

They must have taken a direct plane from London to Brussels…

the band I'm in played the Maroquinerie once. It was almost sold out, a fantastic place to play, but an absolute rip off. By the time we'd paid for the venue (!), and commissions, and travel costs (which were minimal), we ended up losing money....

in fact, Paris has always been a bastard to play. Some weird politics between agents, or some such, has meant we never made any money in Paris.

Is the New Morning still going? A couple of nights there would suit Wilco, I would have thought

 

(PS... aside from the politics, we've had some of our best shows ever in Paris, and France in general. )

[El Bacho]

I agree that it's most likely due to tour agents. There's definitely an audience in Paris, even if most of it comes from American or British expatriates.

 

Wilco has always sold few copies in France. They don't have something like Nonesuch to promote them and they're handled by guys at Warner Music who are quite clueless. A few years ago, when Tom Petty released "Highway Companion", the guy in charge basically saw the name on a list of releases and ordered 600 copies as he just didn't know who Petty was. The album topped the Billboard and, even if Petty is no big star in France, they ran out of stock and couldn't sell any copies for weeks. Record shops that do imports were very happy.

 

Around the time of YHF and AGIB, there was some definite interest in the mainstream press and the record company did some work on them in France. Since Sky Blue Sky, they've given up. I had managed to get a few features on them in a music magazine where I was freelancing at the time but then I left and there was nobody else who would fight for them there. The biggest buzz makers in France, Les Inrockuptibles, tend to favor existentialist drama at the expense of judging good music, so an happy and healthy band isn't their favorite subject but the guy who wrote on them was also more or less demoted due to internal politics. And the record company assumes they lose money on promoting such a "small" band, so I guess they've simply cut all promo on Wilco. That's the same kind of reasons that explains why Lucinda Williams only did her first show in France in 2007.

 

There was a very long feature on them a few months ago in a new magazine, Eldorado, that also listed Wilco several times in their Top 100 of the decade. I'll try anyway to get some kind of explanation from my sources in Paris about the lack of a date in France.

 

Update: The guy I talked to mentioned the lack of Paris was an "enigma" but there are still talks of adding a Paris date to the tour.

[Auref]

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNooooooooooooooooooo

The last date free for the wilco tour in europe goes to belgium . I really love belgian people but why this country and not the france.Bring us wilco. Refuse that wilco go in belgium. Please made a politic crise in your country. And i promise i don't made anymore belgian jokes. It's true that there some explanation but a free gigs improvised is cost free and the gear need to come in france to go in belgium. So please made a free show under the eiffel tower.

[samuel70]

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNooooooooooooooooooo

The last date free for the wilco tour in europe goes to belgium . I really love belgian people but why this country and not the france.Bring us wilco. Refuse that wilco go in belgium. Please made a politic crise in your country. And i promise i don't made anymore belgian jokes.

 

We're already in the middle of a political crisis.

Nevertheless, Belgians are smart enough not to mess up with important events like Wilco playing our small country.

Come visit us, we're nice people .

 

Sam