Wilco Concert

I like Wilco. Andrea went to see them in Cleveland with me once. I don't think she liked them and I know for sure she didn't like the Sonic Youth who opened for them. Well, this time Paul needed to someone to go with him and I stepped in. The venue was pretty cool. It was an outdoors theater surrounded by Pine trees which gave it pretty good acoustics.


Paul and I set up out chairs and waited for things to begin. The opening band got stuck at the Canadian border and couldn't cross. I don't know what it was but I'm sure it wasn't drugs. As we waited for things to begin I was lucky enough to hear some complete nutball try to flirt with this girl. She was doing everything possible to communicate "leave me alone" but he must not have noticed as he was throwing grass in her navel. Subtle hints like "you're really annoying me" just flew over the head of our nutball friend. I was trying not to make my amusement to obvious but I couldn't help but laugh when she eventually said, "let's just be best friends." She then tried to get away from him by announcing her intention to go to the restroom. Our nutball friend responded by saying "I also feel the need to get rid of the urine currently in my bladder." Here's paul and i pointing and laughing at him.
Eventually Wilco got on stage and we moved up to the front. You should be proud of me Janine. If you look closely below you'll notice I'm wearing ear plugs.

(I'm singing. Paul's not.)

The band was on target for the night. I'm not as big of a fan of their new album and they played a lot from that. They played a long set though (approx 2 1/4 hours) and had a lot in there. Their lead singer is good at crowd interaction and he's pretty funny. I'm not a huge fan of those singers that just get up there, don't interact and take themselves too seriously. Some girl in the crowd baked them a pecan pie and someone else made them a "wilco" can of beer. Jeff Tweedy then kindly asked the audience to stop being so nice because it was really ruining the mood of the depressed, morose, angst-ridden portion of their set. Maybe you had to be there to appreciate the irony.

Here's a video if you're curious.