roger wilco
Leah and Dan went out to a show tonight, using tickets very kindly donated to us by someone who won them from a radio station but couldn't make the concert. It was Wilco that we saw, and, never having heard a note from them before, I thought that they sounded pretty good. The only problem was we had to sit through the whole opening act first, and they weren't so good, and they were also incredably too loud. Which leads me to wonder, why are the mixes at rock shows always so bad? It isn't the volume alone, its the fact that the volume makes all the band's sound blend together in a uniform mush that is both boring and painful in its loudness. It seems like the sound guys expect the audience to be listening to the show through fancy high-end ear plugs; we didn't have any of those, but we did our part to comply by sticking our fingers in our ears throughout most of the opening act's performance (they were called 'The Fiery Furnaces', for anyone who cares. Wilco was loud too at times, but they were better mixed and they also comprehend dynamics, so it was much more bearable and indeed pleasant at times. Still, nothing too exciting--at their best they sounded like an average Sonic Youth song--so when Leah started feeling tired I was happy to leave early with her. I guess we're just old. It was still fun though.