When a show is announced, I decide then whether I'm going to go or not and I try my best to get tickets. If I don't get tickets, I generally put it out my mind. If I care enough to want to motivate myself to go to a show, I'll care at the beginning and make sure I have a ticket secured and I don't have to chance it later on. It's hard enough for me to be decisive, but my deadline for deciding about a show is generally right off. Every once in a while, though, if I'm not completely sure, I might just put it off, just to see what happens. Usually I assume tickets are sold out after that and I don't bother with it again. But there are times I get tickets later on, through whatever means, and I've sometimes had that fantasy about deciding the day of to get tickets and seeing what kind of deal I can get, if one at all in the first place. And I look at second-hand ticket sites just to stay up with the processes of getting concert tickets, and it's a source of curiosity to track ticket prices and see how much I could get for mine, even knowing I'm not going to sell them. Carla and I had talked about seeing Wilco at the Bowl but we kept holding off. We wanted to see what kind of opener they would get, as they often seem to make compelling and unique combinations for Bowl shows, but adding Joanna Newsom to the bill didn't do much for us. Not that we have anything against the lady, and we both had heard of her through the years, but we knew enough to know that we weren't curious that it was going to automatically sell us on that show. I don't know if it's a common approach to hesitate on getting last-minute tickets, but Carla is the same as I am in getting tickets first-off or not at all. But no matter who's opening, it's still Wilco and it's still a show at the Bowl. The day of the show I was monitoring Seatgeek (a site I found because of Consequenceofsound), which I'd checked out of curiosity for a while and the one I knew I'd turn to if I ever wanted second-hand tickets. They're an aggregate of all the after-market ticket sites and sometimes there are some interesting deals. There were still handfuls of Wilco tickets available and I was pawing around for some cheap ones. It didn't matter to us so much where the tickets were, as every seat at the Bowl is a good one, and generally we just wanted to go in to the show. I found a pair of tickets for $35 each, and I was still a little hesitant since I hadn't bought second-hand tickets from this site yet but it was inexpensive enough to try it out. Even better, it wasn't through Ticketmaster and there weren't rape charges and hidden fees (at least not built into our tickets). That show for under $100 -- a good deal. I'm sorry for whoever had to let the tickets go for under what they paid for them but at least they got a bit of cash for them. So in pretty short order we got a dinner and a bottle of wine together and had our night at the Bowl. It was also the first time we took the shuttle, that time from the Zoo, which made it a lot easier and cheaper than trying to park at the Bowl and getting stuck in gridlock on the way in and out or walking that distance from the subway. The show itself was a standard Wilco show, which is not a bad thing at all, they just don't have the highs of sing-along radio hits or the lows of cuts from bad albums. But they still have a whole lot of songs, some of them buried on albums, and with a band who can play a well-known song as easily as an obscure one, a set-list can get wild, but this was a consistent show without a lot of surprises. They played more from their newest album, which seemed a curious choice since it hadn't been as much of a hit for all the crowd to be as familiar with it, but the sound fit with the expanse of the Bowl. And they played just enough from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to satisfy us, especially "Jesus Etc." Just that song and the magic of the Bowl and Carla & I together was enough for a special evening, to wrap up the season there for us, under the stars and with our arms around each other.
Newsom was pleasant enough, and if we were there for harp music it probably would have been wonderful, but as it was it was just background music to ease into an evening of other music we could digest and enjoy more easily.
Wilco's set-list:
"Dawned on Me"
"War on War"
"I Might"
"Sunken Treasure"
"Spiders (Kidsmoke)" (acoustic arrangement)
"Impossible Germany"
"Born Alone"
"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"
"Art of Almost"
"Misunderstood"
"Jesus, Etc."
"Handshake Drugs"
"Whole Love"
"Hate It Here"
"Box Full of Letters"
"I'm Always in Love"
"Hummingbird"
"A Shot in the Arm"
"Ashes of American Flags"
"California Stars"
"Walken"
"Heavy Metal Drummer"
"I'm the Man Who Loves You"
"Hoodoo Voodoo"
"Outtasite (Outta Mind)"
Joanna Newsom's set-list:
"Bridges and Balloons"
"Have One on Me"
"Inflammatory Writ"
"Colleen"
"In California"
"Cosmia"
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