Stuff in My House

[Brian F.]

Mr. Kidsmoke has bugged me on a few occasions to share some ephemera on the site, and today seems as good a time to start as any as it's the anniversary of the first time I ever saw Wilco. It was June 9, 1995, at Tramps in New York City. Despite the fact that I was 19 years old and had already lived away at school for a year (and had ridden the subway every day to go to high school before that and was hardly sheltered), my parents were very insistent that my dad should pick me up after the show so I wouldn't have to ride the subway home to Brooklyn late at night. Being naive about shows-- this was the first "club" show I'd ever attended-- I told him to pick me up at 11 p.m. Of course, Wilco played well past that. I faced a dilemma. I felt bad about my dad sitting outside in a car waiting for me (and this was the pre-cell days where there was no way to communicate with him), but I also didn't want to leave and give up my prime spot at the front of the stage and miss the rest of the show. (These were also the days when no one was lining up early to secure spots on the rail. I walked in when doors opened-- I worked in Manhattan during the summers and was basically killing time after work until the show started-- but it was quite a while before very many other people arrived.) Ultimately, my sympathy for my dad won out, and I left before the show was over. I don't remember exactly where I left, but I know I was still there for "Reincarnation." There were seven more songs played after that, including ones that would end up on Being There, but I'm not sure how many of them I saw. When I tally up the songs I've seen, I have to stop counting after "Reincarnation" for that show. (It was an interesting crowd. The Uncle Tupelo songs got the loudest reception. A.M. had only been out for a couple of months and there didn't seem to as much familiarity with it, although that was what got me there. I knew some of the Tupelo stuff but just barely.)

 

Anyway, here's the ticket stub from 29 years ago tonight. (Hopefully, you can see it. It should be a PDF below.) I have some other things from that era that I'll post on a rolling basis as I have time, assuming people are interested. I know there was some interest in the set list from my second show, later in 1995, when I talked about it a while back. I'll post that next.

 

 

WilcoTramps.pdf

[Brian F.]

O.K. Obviously, I did not mean to post this four times. When I try to delete the superfluous posts, I get an error message. The moderator should feel free to delete the latter three posts. Sorry about this.

[Analogman]

I tried - but there seems to be some major glitch going on here. 

[Neuroglue]

I believe I might have fixed the issue, but I have limited time to test at the moment. Please let me know if you continue to encounter issues. 

[Brian F.]

O.K., the original post got crickets so perhaps there's no interest in this kind of stuff (or maybe you were all just annoyed that it got posted four times for some reason), but I'll post something else here anyway and see if anyone likes it.

 

The items attached below are from Wilco's show at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island on October 28, 1995, a year and a day before the release of Being There. This show started very late, at around 11 p.m. I know this because I watched the entire World Series game (in which the Atlanta Braves clinched the title with a 1-0 win over Cleveland, ending at 10:28 p.m. per baseball-reference.com) in my dorm room in Worcester, Massachusetts, and then flew down Route 146 to Providence (I didn't have a car, so I can thank my friend and speed demon Michelle who drove me and her boyfriend Ron) and somehow managed to get there before the show started. The show went past 1 a.m. and was, of course, amazing. Once again, these being the early days and the crowd being sparse, the last-minute arrival did not preclude us from being able to be right in front of the stage.

 

The first attachment is the set list, written on a torn-off piece of yellow lined paper, and my ticket stub, with the date barely intact at the top. This is probably the first time I ever thought to ask for a set list. (People didn't really seem to care about or be aware of set lists back then. I think that became more of a thing after social media.) At some point, I attached a couple of items to the top and bottom of the set list, which you can mostly see. Attached at the top is a promotional postcard for A.M. that we received at my college radio station. The third attachment below is the back side of the postcard, which describes A.M. as "Thirteen songs about lost love, casino gambling, late night drives and letting it go." (I wonder if "Lost Love" was originally supposed to be included on A.M.) It adds: "Geography: Jeff (from Chicago, by way of Belleville, Illinois), John (New Orleans), Max (Dallas), and Ken (Nashville)... picking it up where Uncle Tupelo left off." It also notes that Wilco were Newsweek's "New Faces" pick for January 1995. The fourth attachment is a closeup of the front side of the postcard.

 

The set list is interesting because the encore was definitely only loosely planned. According to setlist.fm-- which appears to be getting its info from wilcobase.com-- the encore as played was "Screen Door," "Watch Me Fall," "Hesitation Rocks," "Kingpin" and "Misunderstood." The written set list reads: "Gun. Screen Door. Walk. [Kingpin-- replacing something that was crossed out and might be the word "Because.] Hesitation. Listin to Heart [sic]. Henry/H.Bomb. Cruelworld. 23 Max." I seem to remember that "Gun" was played but this was almost 30 years ago and can't swear to that. Anyway, I know for a fact that the set list on setlist.fm (and wilcobase.com) is wrong because they definitely played "We've Been Had" in the spot where it appears on the printed set list. How do I know this? Because I was attempting to keep track of the set list on the back of my ticket stub. (See second attachment below.) Since quite a few of these songs were new to me, either because they were Uncle Tupelo songs I might have only heard a few times or never, or because they were as-yet-unreleased Wilco songs, I had to guess at some titles. So, when they got to "New Madrid," I wrote "She's the One" because of the line "she's the one I think I love." Then, after "It's Just That Simple," the set list shows that they played "Dreamer in My Dreams," which was brand-new to me. I left a blank spot for that one in my written notes. Finally, the last note I made was "Cover Blown," which is definitely proof that they played "We've Been Had," since it is obviously referencing the repeated lyric "waiting for his cover to be blown." (I will update setlist.fm when I get a chance.) After that, they played "Outtasite (Outta Mind)," which was new to me (even though they had played it when I saw them four months earlier in June at the show referenced in the original post but, as I explained, I had to leave before the show was over and that song was played toward the end of the encore), and then "Casino Queen," which I must have just forgotten to note. The encore after that consisted entirely of songs I didn't really know, so I think I stopped keeping track.

 

Oh, one more thing: the picture you see part of in the first attachment below, taped to the bottom of the set list, was the insert from Golden Smog's Down by the Old Mainstream CD.

 

Anyway, I hope folks find this interesting. There's more like this if you do.

 

EDIT: I found an email I wrote to my girlfriend in 2002 recapping my Wilco shows to that point, and for this show I wrote: "A thin crowd, and Jeff hopped down into it to dance with us." The email also tells me that it was Michelle's boyfriend Ron, not my friend Cindy, who joined us. I've corrected the post above just in case Cindy, Michelle or Ron stumble upon this.

 

 

 

Wilco102895.pdf Wilco102895Card.pdf Wilco102895Stub.pdf Wilco102895Card2.pdf

Edited June 23 by Brian F.