Let's Eat Paste

"But I want to go to the Rock Concert!"

Or something like that. Joy-Z will have to correct me if I'm wrong on that quote.

Last week, I was able to go to two rock shows in a row. Sufjan Stevens played on Wednesday in Lawrence, KS at The Bottleneck. And then Wilco played at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa.

The following anecdote will probably only seem funny to me, but I'm going to type it anyway. We all know I've run out of things to write about anyway.


I rode to the concert with my friends Casey, Traci, and Vance. Casey and Traci were in the front seat and Vance and I were in the backseat, I was riding on the passenger side. About forty minutes outside of Lawrence, traffic slowed to a crawl for some reason. After a while, three fellows got out of an SUV a couple cars ahead and walked off the interstate down a hill to some trees where they could relieve themselves. Traffic started moving a bit, so by the time they were done, their car had moved up quite a ways. They started walking, then jogging back to their car. As they jogged by our car, I rolled down my window and stuck my finger (index) into the air and started yelling "Woo hoo! Number one! Woo woo, Number One!" The first two guys looked confused and maybe a little nervous, but I think the last guy caught on.

We had dinner at a nice brew pub in downtown Lawrence, which turned out to be a pretty neat town. I left my fellow travelers a little early at dinner so I could be sure to catch Liz Janes, who was opening for Sufjan Stevens. I had seen her open for Sufjan last summer, along with the amazing Joanna Newsom, in San Diego. She started off accompanying herself with a ukulele, and then gradually her band joined her on stage. Sufjan was her drummer, and the rest of the band was made of other "Illinoisemakers," Sufjan's band.


Not from the show I attended...

So Sufjan Stevens and the Illinoisemakers came out all pumped up and cheering, dressed as an Illinois cheerleader/pep squad. The opening song was the 50 States song, with the chorus "It's part of the act, the 50 states, pack up your bags, it's never too late" and they mention every state and say a little phrase about it. Everyone laughed when he sang, "... go to Nebraska, there's nothing to do." This song can be heard on this concert recording from Toronto. They would often do coreographed cheers between songs, which was very fun and it kind of broke the pretension found at many indie-minded shows. The people that make up his band are extremely versatile, and they were constantly switching around instruments. At one point, I noticed the banjo player playing banjo at the beginning of a song, then picking up a trombone to play a horn part, then playing banjo again.



Almost all of the material was from his newest album, "Come On! Feel The Illinoise!" He played only one song from Seven Swans and for an encore he came back out by himself and played the song Romulus from the Michigan album, and the crowd was hushed. That's probably my favorite Sufjan song ever, so that was a treat for me.

If you're not familiar with Sufjan's stuff, Illinois is his second effort in the 50 States Project, which entails recording an album for each state. his first state project was Greetings From Michigan, which is still probably my favorite of his albums.

I have a feeling there would have been a longer set and more encore songs, but this was by far the hottest concert I've ever attended. It was crazy, and we were even standing in the back where it wasn't quite as crowded. It was a sold out show, so I know they were packed to capacity, but there must have been something wrong with the AC or something.

At the show I acquired what is likely to be a rare Superman edition of the vinyl LP version of Illinois. They had covered Superman with a balloon sticker. Earlier this summer they almost had a recall of the CDs because they hadn't licensed the image of Superman with DC comics, so all the newly pressed ones have that image removed.

We rolled back into Siloam at about 4:30am. Luckily, I had the day off from work, so I got a decent amount of sleep before I got up and prepared to head to Tulsa for the Wilco show Thursday night.

I had yummy homemade pizza with my friends Stephen and Joy-Z in Tulsa, and then we headed out to Cain's Ballroom.



Cain's is my favorite place to see a show these days. A few years ago they renovated it back to it's original state as a western swing joint, "Home of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys." Jeff Tweedy complimented it several times during the show.



I don't have a whole lot to say about Wilco, except that they are one of the tightest bands I have ever seen, and it's amazing how they reinvent their songs in a live setting. They leaned pretty heavily on material from A Ghost is Born though they played a wide variety of material, including a couple tunes from the Woody Guthrie Mermaid Ave tribute albums. They played two long encores, and closed with a cover of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released."

So that was my Rock Concert excitement, hopefully that was sufficiently coherent.