wilco: the post-classicism

- Play the hits! -shouted someone from the audience.
- Play the hits?? Where've you been, man? These ARE the hits! -answered Jeff Tweedy

Ironic or otherwise, that anonymous remark, and its response, provoked more than a laugh amongst many of us. Five songs into the concert, we already had the conviction that we were witnessing something extraordinary, memorable. At The Forum (10/11/09), Wilco cruised through their repertoire with their usual exceptionalness. With their their current members, alternating between 3 guitars and 2 keyboards, and relying heavily on Nels Cline's amazing playing, they sounded even more focused and precise than on previous occasions I've seen them. With the same ability to build the perfect song as to destroy it. I think that's precisely what makes Wilco such a breakthrough band. Their combination of construction and destruction of their own songs couldn't have happened before noise and punk. Their classicism is only superficial, it is embedded in a very thorough understanding of what killed rock it in the late seventies (both its excesses and the reaction against them). It is, necessarily, post-classic.

It was such an epic night that when the power went suddenly out during the second encore (well, half the stage's) panic didn't spread. The technicians didn't find a way out of the situation, so Tweedy grabbed an acoustic, walked away from one of the still functioning mics, and sang "someone else's song" a cappella. Then he just walked away and joined the rest of the band backstage.

I didn't take pictures of the concert. But if I had, I would have tried to capture the happiness that irradiated from people's faces as they left the venue. Happy, smiling faces, chatting about the concert, humming some of the songs they just heard. Some of them, holding to a brand new vinyl or a t-shirt, arguably trying to take some of that satisfaction home, trying to make it last just a little bit longer.