Shot in the Arm

Friday afternoon, Aimee and I dropped the kids off with some friends. We hit some traffic heading out of Nashville but the drive up to Louisville, KY went rather well. We arrived to the downtown Hampton Inn, dropped off our bags, and walked the four or five blocks to the Louisville Slugger Field. When we arrived around 9:15, Wilco was into their fifth song of the night.

It was kind of a bummer to have missed the beginning of the show, but due to the magic of recording technology and a taper-friendly policy on part of the band, I am currently listening to an amazingly clear audience recording of the show. I mean, this was Friday night. It is now Sunday night. The even better news is that this show was recorded for a Sirius Satellite Radio broadcast for later this week. I'm sure that before the week is out, I will have that recording as well. I am mastering the audience recording, but I may wait to get the soundboard recording in order to make a cool matrix recording. Whatever I decide on doing, I'll make it available here.

Now, I've seen some pretty amazing shows in my day - U2 and Radiohead among them. U2 provides a spectacular show. Radiohead's musical ability is unsurpassed, in my opinion. But you could tell Wilco was just having a lot of fun playing their tunes to an audience that was equally into it. (Aimee and I really enjoyed this guy in his mid-40s in front of us, dancing to his heart's content, and also the short blond , who had had a bit too much to drink, seducing her husband with her Salome moves. We did not, however, enjoy the two guys in front of us smoking the entire show. Yuck.) Later I learned that one of the tracks - sung by the bass player - had not been played live for 12 years, other than a few days before in Dallas. Although they didn't play my first favorite song, they played enough of my favorites for me to be able to sing along and feel great about life. [The image above was from a poster that was created for this show. Unfortunately is sold out pretty quickly, but I did buy a cool t-shirt.]

The next morning, Aimee and I filled up at the breakfast buffet and had a nice drive back to Nashville, arriving home around noon.