Friday, February 10, 2012
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Wilco, Classic Center, 3/9/06

by The Bridge
03/17/2006

photo by Michael Segel

We will not be rehashing Wilco's legendary label battles by way of preamble. Nor will we say too much about their infamously frequent shifts in personnel, other than to attempt a favorable analogy of Wilco's consistently impressive quality of musicianship to that of, say, a really good Burger King, where the teenagers are generally friendly and the bathrooms clean, and the fries somehow always taste better than the Burger King at the mall, even though that one has had the same crusty-faced goth punk working the counter for years and the superior BK has a constant in-out flow of interchangeably ponytailed girls.

We will, however, be going on some pretty strange tangents. Feel free to skim.

See, it's just that this last show got me into a commerce frame of mind. Wilco, like most artists/works of art/producers/reality show stars these days, became a sort of brand name once they reached a certain level of fame. It's not just the embarrassing slew of merchandise now associated with any sort of fandom (t-shirts, mugs, iPod carrying cases, screen savers) that makes the marriage of music and profit so strange - people want t-shirts, bands need dough. Fine. No, it's cooperate America's finesse with the increasingly exact science of customer demographics that makes it feel wrong. Lemme backtrack to Wilco's show at the Fablous Fox (™) of a year and a half or so ago, which was, in a word, sublime. Touring in support of A Ghost Is Born, Tweedy et al played a generous set with robust, jammy renditions of soon-to-be favorites "Spiders(kidsmoke)" and "Handshake Drugs," plus finely culled picks from the back catalog. There was a tasteful light show, involving, if I remember correctly, some vaguely nature-scape-ish slides and light stencils. The whole thing went off beautifully - sound was exquisite, crowd was respectful, band was on point and intense.

I'm sure that there were advertisements somewhere in the lobby for various sponsors - whatever brew was being swilled, a couple of do-gooder booths with Greenpeace info or the like, the usual stuff. But once you're in the actual theater, the merch is dead. The Fox's grandiose atmosphere naturally inclines one to focus on the gravity of the art presented. There is also the matter of assigned seating, which always subtracts some of the "Woo-hoo!" factor in any audience. Still, I have been to plenty of general admission shows with reserved audiences, so I'm going to assume, for the sake of my argument, that the demeanor of a typical Wilco audience these days is largely the result of target marketing.

Let's talk about Bonaroo. Advertisers are shrewd, you know that by now. They are also insatiable pack animals. No animal demostrates this as clearly as the festival concert. Cram 50 or so bands into two or three days of market crossover potential, sell pricey tickets (considered a bargain by you, Joe Schmoe, because of all the bands you will miss while in line for the Port-A-Potty) that do not include parking, food, water, or the seven dollar beer you will probably end up spilling on your festival ground map while you're trying to figure out where the elusive Mist Tent is. After ten to twenty hours of heat, funnel cakes, and arguing over which stages to check out in what order, your brain becomes soft, pliable, like a wad of chewed gum on a baking hot blacktop. It begins to stick to everything.

The constant bombardment of name-brand signage, coupled with the faint sound of Alien Ant Farm doing unfair things to Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" on the mainstage, for example, will begin to insinuate an affinity for Vans sneakers, Red Bull and Jaegermeister, and assorted Hot Topic t-shirts. Of course, if you're at the Warped Tour (which I'm just guessing that Alien Ant Farm has played, but I don't actually know or care), you're probably a young lad or lass who's prone to being fond of these things. But that's the whole point. Corporate America has done its research, and the advertisers know who's coming to the shows.

In the case of Bonaroo in its burdgeoning years, that someone was largely a neo-hippie sort: late teens to, perhaps, early thirties; folks fond of batik skirts, microbrewed beer, SUVs, and henna tattoos; a group of fans that were, more often than not, considerably younger than the jam band musicians they came to see. But Bonaroo has morphed over the years, as its roster becomes more and more ecletic, with indie rock, hip-hop, post-punk, and just about any other hyphenated genre you can think of being well represented. And it is a very nice thing, profit-wise, with Bonaroo pulling in some of the only respectable numbers in summer concerts lately. And so, with Wilco's inclusion on the last couple of 'roos, their fanbase has grown larger, younger, and more inclined to drink Terrapin, which was the only beer for sale at the Classic Center on Thursday night.

I do not wish to suggest, by the way, that this particular group is composed of insincere fans, posers or the like. Merely that their energy is different from the slightly older, more reserved crowd of folks who started listening to Wilco only because they missed Uncle Tupelo. For one thing, there is the singing. The obssessivly adulatory types that under-the-radar bands like Uncle Tupelo attract in droves are not, as a general rule, above singing along at shows. A little silibant lip-syncing with the first B-side of the night, to prove that you know it, is permissible. But the sort of full-throated, word-for-word audience participation I witnessed on Thursday would be deemed sacrilegous by most indie-rock fanboys.

photo by Michael Segel

"Handshake Drugs", which was a phenomal display of showmanship for the entire band at the Fox, might have been here, as well. I couldn't really tell, though, because whatever magic the band may have been working was drowned out by the enthusiastic chorus of college-aged kids demonstrating their varying degrees of pitch control. This was only the second song, however, and I figured I had just hit a bad patch. Manuevering up front, I began to realize that what surrounded me four rows back was more the norm than the exception. But at least up front I could actually see the band members, even if I couldn't really hear them. This proved to be quite an entertainment in itself, as I watched Tweedy react to his disciples with a sort of whimsical resignation that surprised me.

Jeff Tweedy has always struck me as a bit of a cynic, and after Thursday's show I'm beginning to think I may be guilty of stereotyping. True, his lyrics often have a sardonic bite, and he's got such a hangdog expression, with a shaggy appearance that grows more Neil Young-ish by the hour. But he's actually, come to think of it, one of the funnier and more accesible frontmen in the game right now. Wilco's shows (I've seen three) are always peppered with his seemingly off-the-cuff quips (Thursday sample: "As a rock musician, I'm required by law to periodically ask you how you're doing"). He tends to make a lot of eye contact, and his responses to drunken shoutouts are usually light-spirited rebuffs. As I watched him deliver the chorus of "Shot in the Arm" to a bunch of fresh-scrubbed, bouncing girls demanding, loudly, something bloodier than blood in their veins, I couldn't help but think of a fond father watching his five-year-old pretend to shave. "Look, they're trying to sing Daddy's songs. Isn't that cute?"

The only time I caught him looking anything like perturbed was during "At Least That's What You Said", when one particularly enthusiastic fan (the one who let loose the obligatory midset "I love you!!!") continued her lusty accompaniment even as the majority of the crowd zipped lips, bowing to the song's pillow-talk vocal dynamic. But two songs later, he seemed to have found the light side of it all, waving an encouraging conductor's hand during "Hummingbird" and afterwards thanking the crowd, in a teasing tone, for singing along.

The whole band seem to have their games faces on. The incomparable Nels Cline delivered solid, frisky guitar work throughout the night. There was a charmingly angular disintergration at the end of "In A Future Age" that almost sounded like a series of fuck-ups, and maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it worked for the song. Cline is crisp as a slap in the face when it warrants and knows how to wank some fuzz masterfully: watching him go all knocked-kneed at the end of "I Am the Man Who Loves You" gave me new respect for the art of the guitar grimace. I really think it makes you play better.

The keyboardists' lot in life is often a lot less rock-god than the guitarist's. Indeed, I must confess that I don't even know the names of the dudes on keys - one of them resembled Lou Barlow, and the other one's a bit Beckish, and I'm pretty sure I've seen him with the band for a while now. (So this piece is underresearched. YOU try wading through all those eerie fansites and coming up with a current tour lineup. I couldn't even find it on the bands' official website. If you really care about their names then you probably already know them. I'm just not a details girl.) At any rate, the importance of keys in Wilco cannot be overemphasized. The point/counterpoint keyboard melodies in "Poor Places" created a groundswell of gorgeous tension that almost managed to trump the Classic Center's lousy acoustics and fill the room. The great thing about watching the key boys (as I've decided to call them) is that their air of serious-artist professionalism somehow adds to the excitement of any given song just as much as a flailing, sweaty drum solo. These guys looked as intent and neccessary as surgeons, with expressions that seemed to say they weren't into any silliness, because they Had A Job To Do. The Beckish one even managed to play they tambourine without looking the slightest bit superfluous. (And I'm not dissing tambourine players. It's just hard to look neccessary when you're doing it.)

Another sign that the band is taking their growing popularity with the kids in stride: they played quite an obliging set list, with two encores and a ton of Wilco's more heart-throbby material. "Passenger Side," "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," "I Am the Man..." - these are all great songs. They're also great ways to get laid; chicks dig lines like "I really wanna see you tonight." The band also seemed pretty mindful of requests. I heard plenty of pleading for "Spiders(kidsmoke)", which ended up being the final encore. That tune, by the way, gave me an unsettling wakeup call, as the droning beat (so kraut-rocky, every music critic in the world feels obliged to point out) and the happy dancers began to make me suspect that Wilco has been something of a jam band for a while now, and we're just beginning to notice.

Let's see, what else? Drummer Glenn Kotche has ridiculously clean chops, and he and bassist John Stiratt have the kind of synchronicity that you keep forgetting about because they never seem to lose each other; it seems like a subliminal marriage. Stiratt's affable beach bum stage presence (he always looks like he just happened to stumble into this rock 'n roll gig the day before and is still stoked on the perks) matches the light, almost girl-groupish quality of his backing harmonies. There is no moment in rock right now that can match the unabashed cuteness of Tweedy and Stiratt doing the "ooo-oo-ah-aah" bit on "Heavy Metal Drummer". Not that I could really hear that part this time, that song being a sing-along favorite. Which I actually recall Tweedy encouraging last year, so it's his own damn fault, I guess. Before starting the song, he cheerfully remarked that the local Chamber of Commerce had guaranteed the band that the audience would sing along.

Despite the bands overall good nature, I'm worried. I mean, how long before they decide they want to sing "War on War" by theirselves? There were a couple of tunes the audience didn't know well enough to overtake, one of them being "The Good Part," a B-side on the "War on War" single. In an exquisitely articulate moment, Tweedy's lyrics hung in the air like a warning or an apology: "I can see the anxiety/Of trying to be yourself/But I can't tell you what kind of hell/It is to think you're really someone else."

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