catapult magazine

Since the yankee hotel foxtot thread kind of morphed into something new, I’ll post here.

I saw Wilco last night! It was pretty amazing. They played at a little auditorium/ballroom type place in Omaha — great place to hear music. They played for at least two hours and did every song from yhf except for Poor Places. Ashes of American Flags was the highlight. They also played some new, unreleased stuff — it is ROCK AND ROLL. Go see Wilco, if you have the means!

(That should be tonight for you Joannne and Jonner…Tweedy said they’d be in Minneapolis tonight!)

I forgot to add that the finale of the concert was their guitar tech guy coming out to do a dead-on Robert Plant imitation backed by Wilco on a cover of “Immigrant Song”. It was wild.

for all you chicago folks:

wilco is playing at the riv on the 2nd and 3rd. also, the wilco documentary by sam jones, “i am trying to break your heart,” opens this week at the music box.

yup yup. we caught them indeed. Unfortunately, the venue wasn’t optimal (the orpheum theater) as it was a bit stuffy what with the ornate balconies and reserved seating and stuff.

But anyway, the concert was excellent. I’m impressed with the new keyboardist, although I miss jay bennett quite a bit. I’m also very impressed with glenn kotche, the new drummer. what did you think of him? Also, don’t you find tweedy hilarious at times? i do. he was in fine form when he played a solo show at the guthrie last year.

(and last night we caught the shins, also very good, but in a very different way)

Kotche was excellent. I also liked the multi-instrumentalist (don’t know which one he was because Tweedy never introduced the band! What’s up with that? Stirratt maybe…) who sat at a keyboard, played a guitar, and manipulated some sort of sampler, all from the same seat, and sometimes all at once!

And yeah, Tweedy was funny. This girl in the front asked him to sign her copy of AM right in the middle of the show, and Jeff said “Yeah, I’ll sign it.” The whole concert kind of stopped for three long minutes while all the members of the band signed the CD, and Jeff says “Um, I don’t know how many concerts you’ve been to, miss, but usually this isn’t something bands do DURING the show…” Extra funny with Tweedy’s delivery.

Also laughed at the pre show music (Esquivel) and how they segued from Willy Wonka music into I Am Trying To Break Your Heart…

What happened to Jay Bennett anyway? I know there’s a whole big thing about that.

My favorite bands:

The Strokes
The Hives
The Shins
The Vines
The Kills

No, actually those are just bands whose names begin with “the”. Lots these days.

Well, as far as the jay bennett situation is concerned, it seems like it basically boils down to the fact that jeff tweedy sort of “wanted his band back”, since jay bennett was doing more and more things in the band (writing, playing several instruments, engineering, etc.)

if you want to read a rather long rambling (but very interesting) interview with him, go to http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-story/diversions/transcripts/04-11-02-bennett2.html?paper2=ah.

The new multi-instrumental guy in the group is leroy bach, but I don’t really know anything about him.

Oh, and you forgot “the the”.

Joel, Jesse and I just saw the Wilco movie last week. The first fifteen minutes are awesome. You get a real good feel for the noisy sections of the album and how it went in the studio, how they destroyed the songs Tweedy wrote in order to reassemble them to their present state on the album. The rest of the film is good too, but I felt like the film-maker was pushing the whole “pure, innocent artist vs. corrupt, evil music industry” too much. The film ends with the band walking victorious along the lake as survivors/conquerors over the industry as the song “Pure Imagination” plays over the end credits. The insinuation is that pure artistic vision has won over business and corporate corruption. A bullshit simplistic way of looking at the whole situation, in my humble opinion.