Wilco came down to Sydney NSW for a little live show. The lead singer of Augie March opened which was cool.

It was really exciting initially as they opened with "trying to break your heart" that climaxed with a wall of noise as per the album. They sounded as unique, dynamic and engrossing as the albums. But as we left I felt a little disapoint, perhaps I should have spent more memorising their entire catalogue. My feelings were confirmed by my friends/hardened wilco fans, they knew all the songs and admitted it was a little frustrating.

For me the problem is that the stuff from "being there" and to a lesser extent "a ghost is born" sounds largely the same live. When it came to songs from "yankie hotel foxtrot" I was their biggest fan, they sounded like no one else. But the majority was from other albums, and almost nothing from summerteeth. Infact they didn't play summerteeth or radio cure (my two favourite songs) even after 2 encores. Maybe I am just not as big a Wilco fan as first perceived.

Apparently they do this in other shows but a lot of songs were ruined by this wall of noise - just randomly playing the instruments really loud. Infact most of the time they sounded like post punk rock band and not like wilco, unless thats infact what they are and I didn't know.

Plus it seemed like the only two real members were jeff and the guitarist, the keyboard player looked like he was 15 and it was the first time he had been on stage.

Still lots of fun though. Made me appreciate yankie hotel foxtrot even more at least.

That's odd. When I saw Wilco two years ago(they were touring AGIB), I LOVED YHF, really liked Summerteeth and Being There and was ambivalent at best towards AGIB. I thought the YHF songs sounded pretty good, but they just absolutely killed the AGIB songs. I heard Spiders(Kidsmoke) live and I thought "Now I get it". Really, it was a fantastic show. I completely turned the corner on AGIB because of that show.

I got the best tickets possible to go see them in between Baltimore and DC this summer and I'm really stoked about that(Low is opening for them too). Hopefully the whole band is there, and not just Jeff. I also hope their live show is still as good as it was.

I last saw Wilco in Madison, Wisconsin (US), and it was a great show. In fact, they chose to showcase a few MP3's of the show on their website, so they must have thought so as well. I had the same reaction as MajorNougat..a lot of AGIB really came alive for me after that show. I don't recall a lot of excessive noise-making. But I think you're right PrairieFire--Tweedy has said a lot about how they had to learn to play YHF live almost from scratch, because so much of the album involved studio manipulation. AGIB was the exact opposite, he says; they tried to record the songs as "live" as possible, without much overdubbing and techy weirdness (Less Than You Think being an obvious exception).

I saw Wilco live last year, when they were touring for Kicking Television, and they were phenomenal. Kicking Television and their live show brought a lot of AGIB alive for me; only problem was that I'd heard KT before the concert, so it almost seemed like I was just hearing the concert CD live. They did "Theologians", though, so I can forgive them.

Just saw these buttheads in Duluth, MN. It was misting and windy the whole time but they played right through it and seemed to be having a good bit of fun. I mostly agree with what's already been said. Wilco can put on a nifty rock concert. They closed the show with Kidsmoke and it was a rollicking good time. I still don't like Sky Blue Sky though.