his goal in life was to be an echo

Tonight I went to see one of my favorite bands, Wilco. The band sounded great and played the usual suspects of songs. In fact, I was kind of surprised that they didn’t play more from the new album….this could have easily been a show in support of “A Ghost is Born.” I guess they played about 5 new ones.

They played outside at Marymoor Park, which is in Redmond, which is a suburb of Seattle, which seemed kind of weird to me. Wilco in the suburbs? It was a really nice outdoor venue, but Marymoor is the kind of place where you can bring a picnic and lounge about and whatnot, and while that sounds really nice, and I certainly enjoyed my picnic, but I did have some concerns about this kind of place. I think atmospheres like that can make people forget that they’re there to see a concert. They just treat the show as background music for their picnic.

I think there are some cases where it should be really hard to see an artist. Like maybe you have to take a test to prove you like them, or you have to endure miserable conditions to get to the show, because being able to weather the conditions proves that you understand what a concert and music is all about. I would hope that these conditions would prevent people from doing things like bringing babies and talking while someone else is singing.

I don’t want to sound like I have a stick up my butt. Concerts are supposed to be fun. But tonight I was watching people who clearly didn’t care that one of the greatest rock and roll bands of our age was up there. There were plenty of other parks where those people could have gone to hang out, see and be seen, put some headphones on if they needed some music. Why would you want to pay money but not pay attention? I kind of hoped Jeff Tweedy would have one of his infamous hissy fits and tell people to be quiet:



Not that the talking tonight was that distracting…it was more what I saw versus what I heard. The sound was really great for an outdoor venue. I guess for me, Wilco is such a dynamic band that I can’t imagine not listening to the words or watching Nels Cline play the guitar. But I know that other people just want to get stoned. To each their own.

Interesting enough, tonight I was Googling trying to figure out when I saw Wilco the first time. It was at the Newport Folk Festival in Raleigh, and they were doing songs from “Mermaid Avenue.” I remember really liking them and my dad buying that CD almost right after the show. But I had no concept of who they were as a band at that time, and I can still remember the Conan O’Brien where Winona Ryder held up “Summerteeth” and talked about them.

Anyways. The reason I bring this up is that according to Google, the date I saw them in Raleigh was 8/15/98. So it was ALMOST nine years to the day that I saw them again. I think that’s kind of neat. Other people at that concert included Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith (with special guest star Darius Rucker), Lucinda Williams, Joan Baez, and Dar Williams. That was a nice day.