Wilco - The WHOLE Love
I pre-ordered the new Wilco and it arrived yesterday, on CD and Vinyl. Slid the CD into the car stereo this morning on the way to work and the car filled with percussion and noise and melody. First impressions are really good - much more varied and edgy than the last two of their releases (Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album)). Those two sounded like holding patterns, nice songs, well played, but safe for a band that you expect more PASSION from. This one appears to have it - at least on first listen, I want to hear it again. Which is always a GOOD sign.
Also on first listen, it sounds like an ALBUM. My favorite WILCO album is Yankee Hotel Fox Trot and on that one, they got the sequence of the songs right. Not so much on Being There or Summerteeth or the last two. But The Whole Love sounds like an album, greater than the sum of its parts, like the best Beatles albums. The Whole Love starts with electricity and friction and risk taking and ends with a 12 minute meditation on life that you don't want to end. In between, well, I haven't listened to everything yet -- and not more than once, my drive to work is pretty short! -- but it sounds really promising. I'll keep you posted, but you might want to check it out as well.
Have you ever found yourself in the right place at the right time?
Last week I attended a company wide engineering conference in Framingham, MA. Over dinner, we were talking about some guys who were going to the Red Sox game while others were going to a concert. Really, I replied, what concert. Wilco was the response.
My first reaction was chagrin that I hadn't checked Pollstar earlier to see who was playing in Boston during my trip. I subsequently found out that one of my collegues had purchased 4 seats for the show in Boston for that very night.
After exchanging text messages relating the fact that I was completely jealous and bummed at the same time, I was told that they had an extra ticket. They couldn't find me and decided to leave at 7 to make the show on time. I could have the ticket, all I had to do was meet them at the Wang Theater.
Mind you it was already 7:45 and Wilco was to come on at 9. Knowing that there was no chance to see the opening act, Nick Lowe none the less, I plotted a way to make my way downtown. At that time of the evening, there were no inbound trains that could get me there on time, a cab ride would cost me $70, hope seemed lost...but then I realized that another of my fellow lighting guys lived in Boston. So I basically told him, there really wasn't any negotiation at that point, that he HAD to drive me into town to the theater.
We hopped into his car and took off in hot pursuit of my destiny. We arrived at 8:45. In fact, I beat my crew, who took the train, then the subway, to the show by 5 minutes.
We grabbed our tickets at will call and made our way into the grand Wang Theater. You have to love old theaters. Carved plaster friezes, ornament painting...just beautiful. But I digress. We make our way to our seats...6 rows from the stage. Wow, just wow. A little over an hour ago I had no clue what my evening had in store. Now I'm up close and personal to one of my fave bands.
They opened with Art of Almost from the new album. Brilliant! If you think it's good on the LP, you need to see it live. What a great set opener.
They ended up playing 7 songs from The Whole Love. At that time, I hadn't heard any of the new album. Everytime I tried to listen to the streaming on Wilco's website, their server had crashed. Now that I have the new LP, I can tell you that all of the songs were even better live. Dawned On Me rocked way harder live. Another highlight was One Sunday Morning.
They played most of my favorite tunes from all of their albums. Impossible Germany, At Least That's What You Said, Shot In The Arm, amongst others.
Unfortunately Via Chicago, Spiders, Jesus Etc, and Ashes of the American Flag did not make our set list. No complaints here though. How do you make a perfect evening even better.
Totally unexpected and spontaneous. I do owe my driver some beers for his extraordinary effort in getting me to the show on time. Well worth it though!
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Dear Michael,
What an amazing story, Michael. And so timely. You are indeed lucky to have seen them and touring on this new great record and to sit so close. I have seen a few Wilco concerts and each one is different and memorable in its own way. The band evolves and changes with Tweedy's new lyrics, and moods, and approach to life. The last time I took my kids with me and we had first row balcony seats in small Pittsburgh venue - the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland, which you know well I am sure, Michael. It was like we were just above the whole band and they were right there and the music was everywhere.
I can't wait to be able to spend some time with this new music. Listening to it in the car while I was driving today was a bit frustrating because A) my car stereo sucks! and
Michael, I also like your story because of the lengths we will go to see a band we like! It reminds you of the priorities we had as ids - or maybe they haven't changed. And I mean that in a good way!!!
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Paul,
As a kid, I went to a ton of shows. Mainly as something to do...and they were dirt cheap. No such thing as a $100 seat to see the Eagles. $6-8 bucks got you in to see most major acts. At that time Pittsburgh was still a must schedule city so we were rarely skipped on a tour.
It's funny, now with all the travelling that I do, I really can't plan on attending a mid week show back home. I usually get bummed out when somebody like Ray Lamontagne comes to town on a Wednesday. My schedule is such that I may or may not be in town so I usually don't plan on attending since I don't want to get stuck with tickets I can't use. I got lucky that The Jayhawks are coming on a Sunday. Can't wait for that one.
I often look at www.pollstar.com which has concert listings for every city. I check Pittsburgh all of the time, but when I travel, I look up the city I'm heading to in hope that I get lucky and somebody I'd like to see happens to be in town at the same time. Usually this is completely in vain.
I didn't check for the Boston area last week. Framington is about 30-45 minutes outside of town. My bad.
I'm heading to Chicago for a project over the next few weeks. While Pittsburgh has about 8 pages on Pollstar of upcoming shows, Chicago has about 25. Obviously a bigger city attracts many more artists. I'm actually thinking of catching Stephen Malkmus, formerly of Pavement, next week. He's not scheduled to visit Pittsburgh on this tour so it may be the only chance I have.
On a side bar, if you didn't know, NPR streamed the Wilco show from Baltimore on Sunday night. They've posted the replay on their website www.npr.org. Click on the music tab and you should be able to find it. The first 6 songs were the exact same order as the show I saw. Check it out. I think you find as I did, that the new songs are even more powerful live.
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