2005-09-27 - 11:16 a.m.

An amateur review of the Wilco show that happened on September 21st in the middle of 9th street:

By Me.

There's a line in the Wilco tune "Misunderstood" that goes, "When you're back in your old neighborhood, the cigarettes taste so good, but you're so misunderstood." And sharing 9th street with a couple thousand other people from all walks of life, watching my beloved mid-western band play, I think I began to unravel the meaning behind the line.

The first show of their North America fall tour, Wilco showed their love for the Columbia area by hosting an outdoors show, effectively shutting down a portion of the busiest street in Columbia and charging a scant $15 for an entire evening of fun and inside jokes. Underneath perfect end-of summer skies, hippies, 30-something career hounds, emo rawkers, tattooed mechanics, aging cowboys, and java sipping hipsters gathered to swap Wilco stories that would separate them from the casual fan in the eyes of their peers.

The band rolled onto stage around 8:30 as the sun went down, electric streetlamps sprang to life and the crowd shook off the 9-5 blues. A few packs of first timer's surged to the front of the stage, but for the most part, attendees were satisfied with picking a patch of curb or a sturdy brick facade to lean against, sip their Dixie cup beer and enjoy the show. Tweedy (or Jeff depending on how close to the band you categorized yourself), opened the show with the fan-favorite "Kingpin" a bass driven slow-groove rocker from the album Being There. And as would be the general consensus from the crowd all night, half of the people cheered and sang along, the other half mingled and socialized.

The band traipsed across their entire catalogue, covering songs from all albums, throwing a lot of "rare" tunes into the set just to keep the critics happy. Tweedy's entourage looked loose and buoyant. Guitarist Nels Cline furiously scratched his guitar sending loose notes splintering into the front row, where they were happily gobbled up by bootleg tapers and indie aficionados. As always, Glenn Kotche was the rock, the foundation of the show. Drumming out colorful rhythms, acting more like a melody maker as opposed to a percussionist, Kotche acted as equal parts navigator and modernist painter, splattering color on the canvas as opposed to just drawing the outlines.

The evening wore on and the crowd shuffled past me, playing like a mix tape of all my college acquaintances. Not everyone from my past had escaped the gravitational pull of Como like I'd envisioned. For the most part, I imagined that everyone else (save the people I see everyday like my roomates) had graduated, gotten fitted for a suit and joined the big city workforce. I was (pleasently?) surprised to find this was nowhere near the truth.

Old friends and groupies from the good ole Ario days stumbled into me, shaking my hand and asking me when the next music project would be. "Soon, I think." Old girlfriends (and I use that term both loosely and a little shamelessly) surprised me from behind with cold hands over my eyes, asking me to "guess who." (I learned a long time ago to just say "I don't know" for fear of saying the wrong name and inciting a "Who the hell is that?!?" from the eye-cover-upper.) Co-workers, professors, friends of friends, etc... all smile, all happy to see me (or drunk?), all brought together by this silly little band...

By the time the band reached its first encore, I'd come to the conclusion that I was ready to go home. Sure, it was only 10pm, and there were probably two more encores of rare tunes and eclectic covers to go...

But this Wilco concert turned out to be my perfect metaphor of my time in Columbia. I love that band unabashedly and will defend them to even the staunchest of critics. I will stand by their music because it's honest, quirky and sometimes a little strange... and that's what I love most about them. Every song has a special meaning to me, and I hang on every word as if they were my own. I'm not alone here I know, we all have our favorite lil band...

But I've seen them 7 times now. I know exactly how each song will flow into the next. I know how that guitar solo goes, how that drum fill rolls, and how Jeff will scream "I'd like to thank you all for nothing" for at least a minute straight at the end of Misunderstood.

And like the song, I come full circle. I'm back in the old neighborhood, the cigarettes taste so good, but I'm so misunderstood... and yes, I'd like to thank you all for nothing.

P.S. Great show.

previous - next