Monday, 15 Dec 2008
Set: Sunken Treasure / You Are My Face / War On War / Handshake Drugs / Impossible Germany / It’s Just That Simple / Forget The Flowers / Box Full Of Letters / Jesus Etc. / I Am Trying To Break Your Heart / Spiders / Hummingbird / A Shot In The Arm / Hate It Here / Walken / I’m The Man Who Loves You
Encore 1: Via Chicago / California Stars / Kingpin
Encore 2: The Late Greats / Heavy Metal Drummer / Red-Eyed and Blue / I Got You / Outtasite
I picked up the travel bug a few weeks ago and began looking for a show to see in a place I hadn’t been. Truth be told, I had to take one more flight to maintain my frequent flier status for 2009. Baltimore was cheap, Wilco was playing, I bought the ticket. The Lyric Opera House is a beautiful theater, built in 1894. The foyer of the building is misleading. You really can’t appreciate how large it is until you’re inside. The sound is pristine, one of the best sounding Wilco shows I’ve seen, period. The band was all in high spirits, the crowd was moving and dancing, and it turned out to be a pretty nice 24-hour getaway. Below, a review of sorts….
10 Highlights/Reflections/Remembrances of Wilco in Baltimore
1. “It’s Just That Simple” – Bassist John Stiratt assumes lead vocal duties for this lost treasure from the AM era.
2. “Box Full Of Letters” – I’ve seem Wilco more times than I can remember. What I do know is that this was the first time I’d heard this song live. A huge favorite of mine, great to hear, crowd loved it.
3. Pat Sansone has a beard. The multi-talented keys and guitar player is sporting a nice think beard. Normally, not newsworthy, but it was definitely the chatter amongst all the female attendees around my seats.
4. “I’ve watched all 5 seasons of The Wire in the past 6 days” – After butchering the lyrics to “Jesus, Etc,” Tweedy confesses that he’s been on a binge of the HBO hit series The Wire. He admits to wondering if Omar or McNulty are in the crowd, causing him to lose place during the song. (Update: video here)
5. Interlude between “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” & “Spiders” Lots of noise, sounded like Sonic Youth. I wasn’t really sure where it was going, but knew that I liked it. “Spiders” is a song I’m always disappointed to hear surface in a set list, but end up loving by the time those big chords come in.
6. “Via Chicago” Still remains one of my favorite live tunes by the group. I’ll never tire of hearing it.
7. “Neil Young” Jeff talked about how awesome it was to open for Neil Young. He was conscious each night that they sometimes sound a lot like Neil. He went on to say that he “borrowed” a few things from Neil on “Hate It Here.”
8. “Neck brace” A guy in the front row was in a car accident and sporting a neck brace. That resulted in some back-and-forth banter between him and Jeff. Jeff asked to wear it, then saw how much pain the guy was actually in. It all ended with Jeff sporting said neck brace for the entirety of “Kingpin.” Pat Sansone took a great Polaroid headshot of Jeff during the song.
9. “The Late Greats” Another live favorite. It evokes so much joy and fun. A definite live staple.
10. No New Material – I’ll admit I was a little disappointed there was no new material road tested last night. It’s easy to forgive though when you get two superb encores and two hours of rock and roll.
Update: Check out the stellar shots of the show by Brandon Wu.
Myspace: Wilco
Find MP3’s at The Hype Machine or buy stuff from Strictly Discs | eMusic
December 15th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Great show last night! Who was the opening band?
December 15th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Opener was Benjy Ferree (http://www.myspace.com/benjyferree) – didn’t do much for me, but seemed to impress others.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the huge screw up sound wise. They didn’t have the drums miked properly for the first half of the show. You could barely hear them. About halfway through the show, there was a sound guy working for about two straight songs in and around the drum kit. By the end of the show it was all worked out, but what a cluster farg to start. Guitar and vocals way up…drums practically non existent. I still really enjoyed the energy and flow of the show, but still.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Agreed. The drums were very low in the mix early on. Towards the end Nels got real low in the mix. I’m not being picky, I loved the energy of the show and it looked like they were having a lot of fun. Pat was throwing his maracas pretty high on one of the encore songs. It had been a few years since I had seen them and they didn’t disappoint. I’m sort of a Baltimore native but had never been to the Lyric Opera House. Great venue for a Wilco show.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Great so randomly bumping into you, hope you had an easy trip back!
December 15th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Great fun getting your tweets from the show! Thanks and keep it up!
December 15th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
From where I was sitting (Orchestra Row-M….pretty much all the way to the right), the sound was really great. I had no problem hearing the drums, or Nels for that matter. Wilco’s “front-of-house” engineer (Stan) had to mix from the rear of the room, under the hanging balcony. If you know anthing about mixing sound, you will know this creates some challenges. However, Stan kicked butt….as usual.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I guess I’ll echo what Mitchell said. I was seated in the same section, a few rows back in row P and really couldn’t hear any problems with the sound. I’m not always the best in picking that out where others definitely are. Just curious where you guys with sound complaints were sitting?
December 15th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I was in Row U center orchestra and I thought the sound was good too although there was that point where the cymbal sound was gone. I thought it was a great show. Jeff seemed to be in a really good mood and so was the crowd. Does anyone know what that business about “Reid” (spelling?) was early in the set?
December 16th, 2008 at 6:44 am
I was in the Balcony row H, which is pretty close. The acoustics in the Lyric are phenomenal, so even the last row at the Lyric sounds good.
There were times where you would see Glenn playing, and you practically couldn’t hear anything. The cymbals came through other mikes, so you could hear them, but everything else was seriously muted, practically dead.
The opening act used their own drums. That chick’s drums sounded fine. Glenn’s set? Not at all. Trust me, it was a screw up.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:12 am
It was my first time at the Lyric, and I can’t remember my exact section. I was center balcony all the way in the back. The view was still great but as others were saying the cymbals were dead. I am a crappy guitar player in a crappy band, but my drummer friend went with me and he said the same thing. Still, we thought it was an awesome show.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Nice meeting you Ryan, nice review. The 10 highlights thing is a great list of memories. The show sounded fine to me, but I was hanging out on the side so didn’t have an ideal spot sound-wise anyway. Here are a few of the photos I got: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonwu/sets/72157611287537238/
December 17th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I scored front row, Nels side, which was cool for viewing but a little Nels-sound heavy….dunno if it had to do with my location or the mix though
December 17th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
You can download the bit torrent of my recording here:
http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=521015 (flac) or the tagged mp3’s: http://www.sendspace.com/file/oxw69e
December 18th, 2008 at 11:40 am
cbd, great recording. you did an awesome job. thanks! it approaches kicking television quality, sounds incredible.
always nice to relive wilco shows days later.
thanks again
December 18th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I’ll echo what spatoola says – recording sounds great! Thanks so much for doing that and sharing it with everyone here!
Appreciated!