Wilco
Doubling our family’s attendance at rock concerts this year, Jen, Mimi and I, along with a couple friends and their kid, braved the suburban wilds of Redmond, WA, last night, to see the band Wilco play outdoor under the stars at Marymoor Park.
It was a lovely night, the music was excellent, and apart from heinous traffic we had to fight on the way there, (most of which wasn’t even caused by concertgoers), another fine time was had by us all.
It helped that unlike our nightclub experience earlier this week, I didn’t have to scuttle off like a water bug to have a drink. (Surprisingly, Redmond’s alcohol control laws seem to be more liberal than Seattle’s; I could buy a beer and actually carry it to where my child was standing; hopefully, seeing her father consume one and a half beers did not scar her for life.)
I like Wilco pretty well; their songs are well-crafted and the band are all fine musicians; I do find them just a bit, what’s the word, structured? No, it’s more like calculated; they strike me as having done some sort of analysis of what would make them just edgy enough to not be squares while still appealing to a broad, middle-class demographic. They’re like the Restoration Hardware of bands; the stuff is great but it doesn’t ring entirely true. (at least for me).
Maybe they’re more like the iPhone of bands; great design and everything, but somehow a little cold.
Or maybe I was just in a bit of a pissy mood after the drive; I always feel something of a failure when I take the car to a place that could have been ridden to. In fact, it’s a lovely bike ride to Marymoor Park; we could have taken the Burke and then the Sammamish River trail almost the whole way.
The ride home would have been really fun, especially after those one and a half beers.
It was a lovely night, the music was excellent, and apart from heinous traffic we had to fight on the way there, (most of which wasn’t even caused by concertgoers), another fine time was had by us all.
It helped that unlike our nightclub experience earlier this week, I didn’t have to scuttle off like a water bug to have a drink. (Surprisingly, Redmond’s alcohol control laws seem to be more liberal than Seattle’s; I could buy a beer and actually carry it to where my child was standing; hopefully, seeing her father consume one and a half beers did not scar her for life.)
I like Wilco pretty well; their songs are well-crafted and the band are all fine musicians; I do find them just a bit, what’s the word, structured? No, it’s more like calculated; they strike me as having done some sort of analysis of what would make them just edgy enough to not be squares while still appealing to a broad, middle-class demographic. They’re like the Restoration Hardware of bands; the stuff is great but it doesn’t ring entirely true. (at least for me).
Maybe they’re more like the iPhone of bands; great design and everything, but somehow a little cold.
Or maybe I was just in a bit of a pissy mood after the drive; I always feel something of a failure when I take the car to a place that could have been ridden to. In fact, it’s a lovely bike ride to Marymoor Park; we could have taken the Burke and then the Sammamish River trail almost the whole way.
The ride home would have been really fun, especially after those one and a half beers.
posted by Professor Dave at 1:23 PM
1 Comments:
I agree with you on Wilco. I like them, they make good songs, but they suffer from the same problem live that Spoon and The French Kicks suffer from- they never get above about medium rock.
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