A Bloy and his Blog

The sun peeked out from the clouds in the middle of a rainstorm late this afternoon.

See the tips of the trees in the bottom right corner? Autumn is coming…

I’ve been to five concerts of the band Wilco, and every time I see them, they never disappoint. Perhaps my fondness for their music clouds my judgment, but with each concert I go to, they seem to get better and better. Last night, I was at Madison’s Overture Center where Wilco performed an outstanding show to a sold-out theater.

The band touched on every album from their career last night, playing more tunes from their back catalog than I expected. Some of the best songs of the night were older ones: “Too Far Apart” from their first album, A.M., and “I Got You (At the End of the Century)” from Being There. I also enjoyed the songs from my favorite Wilco disc, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” “War On War,” and “Jesus, Etc.”

read the rest of: Wilco’s live shows keep getting better

Avast! Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day. So shiver me timbers.

If ye mateys will be plunderin’ and pillagin’ and on ye computers, better to use the ergonomic keyboard for pirates, than to suffer the fate of the scurvy dogs with the dreaded carpel tunnel syndrome.

Arrrrrrrrrr!

For you Neil Young fans out there, That Truncheon Thing (an excellent music blog) has posted a bootleg of Neil Young’s Chrome Dreams.

Chrome Dreams is described as “one of those great lost albums, from the further reaches of rock history, that never saw the light of day, except to boot collectors.”

This particular bootleg also includes a “select batch of bonus cuts to give you a further taste of just how creative Neil was during this fertile period” (the mid 1970’s).

Definitely worth downloading. Share and enjoy.

Yesterday I visited Parfrey’s Glen, a State Natural Area close to Devil’s Lake State Park.

read the rest of: Parfrey’s Glen

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Ryan Adams in concert since I first heard his outstanding release, Gold back in 2001. Last night that six year wait was over, when Ryan Adams and the Cardinals played a sold-out show at Madison’s Barrymore Theatre.

The band started the concert with a amazingly tight version of “Goodnight Rose.” Toward the end of the song, they jammed a bit, started fading out and sang the word “goodnight” in an almost mantra-like manner. I expected the song to continue to fade out and finish, when the band crescendoed and launched into the final chorus of the song. Wow! This is going to be good, I thought.

read the rest of: Ryan Adams and the Cardinals in concert