No Kyle, it was not Levon Holmes, but rather Levon Helm...no matter, i was wrong. I thought it was the renowned keyboardist for The Band who was accompanying Wilco in the second encore...well i was right on that account, but wrong about who the keyboardist for the band actually was...Garth Hudson. So i think i deserve 1/2 a point for recognizing the distinctive sound of The Band's keyboardist but loose at least 1 full point for not knowing that Levon Helm was actually the drummer of The Band.

Enjoyed Wilco very much, but after the show i could not help think back to a conversation that came up earlier in the evening concerning the price of opera tickets and i came to a conclusion that it was not that bad a deal when you compare it to the cost of a Wilco show.

Let's see...in an opera we get a full orchestra, maybe a couple dozen singers/actors who continually learn new works, a couple of really good singers (the superstars), a bunch of set decorators, designers choreographers, a printed program with lyrics etc. etc. etc.

...at a Wilco show we get a bunch of guys basically regurgitating songs from a couple of their last albums, who are to lazy to show up for a sound check! That for almost $50 bucks...damn right i'm going to stick around and squeeze them for every encore their good for! Definitely think they should have stopped at two. I think they employed a very clever tactic in playing one of the very worst songs every written as their last song in the third encore..."you won't hear this song on the radio"...(taken from the end of their last album)...no shit you won't, 'cause it's crap! Absolute crap!...there was no chance in hell of the crowd calling for yet another encore after that.

...but really...no really, i enjoyed the show!

As for expanding my horizons and challenging myself to think critically about some hard to wrap my head around music..i'm all for it. If it is deemed worth listening to (not necessarily liking) i will gladly go out and buy it do my homework.

m.

metaBeats