Wilco, January 24 at the Palladium

When you buy concert tickets, it's usually so far in advance that you can't be sure where you'll be or what you'll be doing when the concert comes up.  I bought tickets for Wilco when things were good, work was rewarding and positive, and I could have gotten up late the next day without negative consequences.  The Palladium wouldn't have been my first choice for venue to see a concert, mostly because Carla and the rest of my friends don't care for it (even if I do), but the show was announced and that's what it was and I jumped on getting tickets.  Shortly after the tickets were on sale and we got ours they announced the show at the Wiltern, which would have been a better venue, but we stuck with what we had.  Andrew & Heather sold their Palladium tickets to get Wiltern tickets, and that's a good plan but I didn't want to deal with the hassle and the potentially losing money on the deal.  I never mind the Palladium but I could see Carla's point, that since the floor is flat, when you're at the back of the crowd, as you will inevitably be, it's hard to see the stage, even when you're as tall as we are (which is just a hair above average).  Though for Wilco there's not really so much of a stage show.  They come on stage and play music and you listen and it's fantastic and it's a great show and you're happy to be there and that's it.  The Palladium show was no exception.  You can never be sure what you'll get with a Wilco show: not that they're going to be weird or get too obscure, save for a few extended jams (which are on the studio versions anyway), but they have such an extensive list of material they can draw from, and any of it is fair game at any point, and they usually seem to throw in as much stuff from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to make anyone happy.  Not only that but every night they change up their set-list completely, so you're not going to get the same show, even on adjoining nights.  This night they seemed to throw in more from Summerteeth than I've seen them perform, though that might have been because the poppier stuff from that album fit with what they were touring for, The Whole Love.  Or, more likely, just what they ended up with when they picked the songs for the set.  The show seemed to just rock out a bit more, that they were a bit more present, instead of  hanging back and just letting the music flow, here they were really pushing it out.  I noticed they might even have been smiling a few times (from what I could see anyway).  Maybe they were just having a good night -- they might be rock gods but they're still human (probably).  I don't regret picking the Palladium show over the ones at the Wiltern or the Hollywood Theater (the latter being a venue I'd never even heard before, which means it might have been a non-concert venue and perhaps more intimate than the usual places); we got "Jesus Etc." (apparently not always a guarantee anymore), though the Wiltern got "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart."  As it was, this show came in the midst of when I was working a crazy job that was horrible and a bad time for me.  We had to hustle out of the place so I could get back home and get in bed to get up at 5 in the morning to go to a job that I hated.  But I had one night that was an oasis of sanity during a rough period, and Carla was there, after all.  I'm sure the next day was rougher for it but at least I had a high from having seen a good show the night before.  (White Denim opened the show but we got there too late to see what they're about.)

Wilco's set-list:
"Art Of Almost"
"I Might"
"Bull Black Nova"
"At Least That's What You Said"
"Red-Eyed and Blue"
"I Got You (At The End Of The Century)"
"Born Alone"
"You Are My Face"
"Impossible Germany"
"Kamera"
"I Must Be High"
"I'm Always In Love"
"Jesus, Etc."
"Capitol City"
"Handshake Drugs"
"War On War"
"Dawned On Me"
"Hummingbird"
"A Shot in the Arm"

"Via Chicago"
"Whole Love"
"Candyfloss"
"Monday"
"Outtasite (Outta Mind)"

"The Lonely 1"