Last night was the second of two consecutive sold out nights at Washington D.C.’s 9:30 Club for Wilco, on a short tour that is seeing the band play some surprisingly small venues like Tipitina’s in New Orleans and 9:30 Club. The concert was broadcast live by NPR and can be streamed at the following link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19271953

The opener, John Doe, took the stage around 8 pm to a half-full venue and polite applause. In retrospect I get the sense that most people, like myself, had no idea that the man is a godfather of the punk scene as a founding member of the band X. Although his music is far from punk these days, he was certainly an interesting choice of artist to accompany Wilco on this tour, with simple songs that did not stray far dynamically from their base and lyrics that, from what I could make out, seemed rather direct and simple compared to Jeff Tweedy’s often deep metaphor. Wilco’s lead guitar man, Nels Cline, joined them onstage for a quiet number on lap steel as well as a raucous, yet superfluous, cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”. The tune, however, did give Cline a chance to warm up a right arm, which often flails, jerks, and generally aids his spastic attacks on the guitar during some of his more intense solos with Wilco.

After a short break, Wilco took the stage and eased their way into “Sunken Treasure”, the same song that they opened with when I last saw them, at the Charlottesville Pavilion in October 2007. Despite the fact that much of the crowd seemed to be drinking quite heavily (hence the tortuously long wait at the bar between acts), I was quite impressed with the restraint that was exercised during the near-whisper, quiet sections of this song, with hooting and hollering happening only near the end of the song, to the line “Music is my savior, and I was maimed by rock and roll”. I love the fact that Wilco isn’t afraid to come out and start a show off with a longer, soft number, and then follow it up with two more deeper, reflective numbers - “Remember The Mountain Bed” (from Mermaid Avenue Volume 2 !) and “Company In My Back”, building momentum up before launching into their more rocking numbers.

I had heard that Wilco was taking requests for songs for this tour through their website, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. Was this going to be a show of obsessive-fan-only numbers? A best-of show? I was duly impressed with the mix of crowd pleasers and songs that, despite this being my 3^rd Wilco show, I haven’t heard them play before. All of their albums were represented, and I personally was glad to see them lay off of some of what I consider to be weaker tracks from A Ghost Is Born that they played in Charlottesville, like “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”, in favor of pleasant surprises like “Pieholden Suite” from Summer Teeth.

Overall, the band was in incredibly fine form. Their sense of band dynamics is as good as any live band you are likely to see these days, and they obviously have a great handle on their entire catalog. Visit http://www.wilcobase.com/ and you’ll get an idea how widely varying their set lists can be.

On a different note, there did seem to be some tension between the crowd at the band at a couple of points during the show. During one of the earlier songs, Nels seemingly intentionally threw a glass slide into the crowd. He looked visibly angry, although I never did figure out why. Jeff Tweedy asked the crowd at one point if we were having a good time and then followed up the response with “then quit yer yappin’!”. I said the crowd was polite for the opening number, but I can’t say so much for the rest of the show. I could easily write a short story about the couple that stood in front of me all night. Instead, I’ll wrap this up with a couple of pointers on concert etiquette:

1) It’s crowded in here. Nobody has much personal space, and yours isn’t any more important than anyone else’s. Don’t rudely, and without apology, push other people out of the way (“we’ve been standing here an hour!”) and then act indignantly when people try to squeeze past you.

2) PEOPLE…..PUT YOUR CELL PHONES AWAY!! Unless you are having an emergency, seriously, just leave them in your purse or pocket. Leave the light show onstage.

3) You are spending good $ to see a performance by an artist that you presumably like, so let the artist put on the show they want to put on. Nobody cares what song you want to hear. Whatever happened to the days when people actually GOT INTO the show and got carried away by the music, without chatting with friends, or text messaging people on their phone? Perhaps I am romanticizing the “good old days” of concert-going, or maybe I am just getting old. Sigh.

To sum, this was a really great show by a band in their prime (check out the stream if you haven’t already)! I’m not sure if the lack of new, unrecorded songs in the set means that we are a long way off from the next Wilco release, or if they are simply not testing new material out on the road currently. If the result is to be an album as solid as Sky Blue Sky, they should take their time.