bravo, wilco
great, great show. for a band that is probably best-suited to small, intimate settings, they came out swinging with a massive sound and a smart setlist, both tailored to meet the demands of the arena setting. just a couple of quibbles:1) the guy who switched keys and rhythm guitar duties throughout the night: first of all, you look exactly like a producer i recorded a few things with back when i was playing guitar with broktune. that's not a quibble ... just a thought. second of all (and here's the beef), you do NOT have the right to be pulling pete townshend-style open chord windmills and striking mock guitar hero poses when fucking nels cline is on the other side of the stage.
2) jeff tweedy: surprised me by showing that he is a pretty accomplished soloist. however, you do NOT have the right to be playing three solos on the same song when fucking nels cline is standing to your right with a guitar in his hands.
petty grievances when you consider what a fantastic show it was on the whole. and seeing mr. cline play live for the first time ... completely awestruck, and not just because in person, his tall, lanky frame renders a more-than-passing resemblance to frankenstein's monster (much like tim robbins, who in his gangly, haggard glory managed to traumatize several small massachusetts children late last year when his band opened for pearl jam at the fleet center). he's got one of the most unique voices you'll ever hear on guitar. he's a little like tom morello in that he's fond of shaping his sounds with a battery of effects -- probably one of his favorite tricks is to manipulate his guitar and devices to produce what i can best describe as an electric typhoon squall -- but he also brings a completely sophisticated sense of phrasing and composition (listen to some of his solo stuff) to the table. he goes from graceful flamenco-style arpeggiated lines to tremolo-picking frenzies and back without doing anything to suggest that he's shifting gears; his playing just flows. i aspire to such a combination of breathtaking technique and edgy irreverence.
posted by jomilkman @ 10:11 AM
5 Comments:
Dude you should watch what you say about Jeff Tweedy. A friend of mine in the business told me a story about him and Nels Cline once...Apparently Nels came by to jam with Wilco, and Jeff wasn't letting him take hardly any solos. Apparently Tweedy cued him to solo on "We're Just Friends" which isn't a good song to solo over. So Cline kind of stumbles through a few licks, and then afterwards says he needs to take off. He told some of his friends about what happened, but didn't make a big deal of it.
Well, his friends were really put off, and one of them got all drunk at Lounge Ax and starts saying stuff about Tweedy being a guitar-god-wannabee. This all gets back to Tweedy, who confronts Cline the next time he sees him.
Tweedy asked Cline why he had been talking smack, and Cline didn't really know what was going on. Tweedy then said something like "Do I have to remind you that you're talking to Jeff Tweedy here? I was just on the cover of Guitar World Acoustic."
Cline tried to smooth things over, but Tweedy wasn't having any of it, and demanded that he step outside. Cline again tried to talk him out of it, but Tweedy started wailing on him, and whoever the heck is in Wilco these days backing him up was holding Cline down while Tweedy soccer kicked him, all the while shouting things like "Want to take a solo now, chump?"
So if you thought things were a bit odd that's the backstory to it all.
ok so i made all of that up.
welp, i knew you were fibbing when you said he soccer kicked cline; tweedy would clearly favor the big splash in combat-mode.
I saw Wilco in Los Angeles a couple years ago and some fan started yelling, "JAY FARRAR'S A MORE EVOLVED SONGWRITER IN THE ALT-COUNTRY GENRE!" Jeff Tweedy got pissed and just played louder. But the fan wouldn't shut up and yelled, "I SLIGHTLY PREFER WIDE SWING TREMOLO TO SUMMER TEETH" and Tweedy just lost his shit. He threw his guitar down, went into the crowd, and executed a sloppy but effective Rude Awakening. He returned to the stage, ripped his shirt off, and flexed for ten minutes while the band played a honky-tonk version of "Real American." Even Jesse the Body had to agree, the Tweedtser really proved something to the capacity crowd that night.
I'm pretty sure the fan was Barry Horowitz.
Given the idiotic crowd chatter on that Tweedy/Wilco stuff you burned for me, I thought you were serious at first, Tobin.
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