After almost 2 years of trying to avoid spending cash on concerts, I have managed to pull off a trifecta, seeing 3 great shows that hit my sweet spots: Steve Hackett in Nov., TTB in December, and Wilco this past Sunday. All very memorable.

Wilco played where we had seen TTB, the College St Music Hall, formerly The Palace. Good venue, small theater. TTB had more seating while Wilco had LOTS of general admission. We skipped the opener but still got to stand about 20 feet back from the stage.

Wilco began by playing their new album start to finish. Awesome. It is not my favorite by them, but their albums always do take awhile to grow on me. The songs were better live, and the sequence of songs is excellent. The order really works, in terms of dynamics and transitions. The songs are short on the album but got stretched a bit live, and they breathed more. If I can get a copy of the show, it will replace the studio album for me.

I'm delighted that they are standing behind their new record. I love when bands do that. Rush has usually been good about that too. They record New music and evolve and stand behind it live. By comparison, I love the Stones and always enjoyed each new album, but maybe they would play 3 New songs live and then play mostly oldies. Deep Purple too. Sigh. Now with all of these bands, I DO tend to prefer the older stuff, but I want to see a band take chances. That's why I go see them.

At the end of the last New Song, Jeff Tweedy hailed the crowd, praised us for listening to a whole album start to finish, and suggested that if people would take the time to stop, shut up, and listen to a whole album from start to finish more often, the world would be a better place. Amen!

We then got an hour long stretch of excellent songs from their whole career, plenty of sing alongs, and then finally a sweet acoustic set to end the night. Great playing, awesome harmonies, fun show, imho one of the best bands to see.