Cherry Ghosts
The Wilco show last night was pretty amazing. They are such a tight live band, and Jeff Tweedy is a great frontman. Not in the Mick Jagger, strutting and preening sort of way, but more of a serious presence, willing to address the audience and engage in a little back-and-forth with the crowd. And Nels Cline is a pretty amazing guitar player. It’s awesome how noisy and avant garde they can be, for a former alt-country ensemble. They played almost all of the new album (I think the only track they skipped was “Less Than You Think”), a lot of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and a handful of older songs (notably “A Shot in the Arm”). They also dug out a couple of covers, closing their set with Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, complete with an extra person on stage playing….wait for it….MORE COWBELL!
I do have two complaints though: 1) the concession stand ran out of beer right when Joey and I got in line, and we weren’t about to pay 6 bucks for a shot glass of cheap red wine, and 2) the crowd couldn’t decide if it wanted to sit down or stand up. Every time a rocker like “I’m the Man Who Loves You” or “Theologians” started, the front rows would stand up, starting a tidal wave as all the people whose view was suddenly blocked stood up, blocking the view of the people behind them, and so on. And then, as soon as the slow songs started, everyone was back down in their seat.
On a related note: Tweedy has a remarkably healthy view on file sharing and digital distribution, as related in today’s Wired.com interview.
On another pseudo-related note: I want to make a field recording of the street-crossing signals in downtown Oakland, and build a song out of them, using the blips from the walk signals as the basic rhythm, and keeping allt he traffic and other noise as part of the backing track. It’s a really simple and inspiring sound, for some reason, especially in stereo.
Hmm. That’s about all for now. More later….
