Music Review

In late August 2008, I attended the concert festival Outside Lands in San Francisco.  The performances took place over a weekend at Golden Gate Park.  Of all the acts I saw, the best by far and bar none was the set by Wilco.  Wilco was the second to last band to play at Outside Lands.  This was the first time I saw Wilco live.  I had looked forward to their performance more than any other band and they didn't disappoint.  My brothers and I had tried to get closer to the stage, but by the time we got their, two hours before their performance, it was packed for them.  We were lucky ,though; We were able to squeeze all the way up to the fifth row off to the right of the stage.  We had to stand waiting for them with no wiggle room for nearly two hours.  When they finally came on, all the pain in my legs went away.  I might want to add that this pain was the build up of a weekend where I walked eighty blocks on friday, forty blocks on Saturday, and another forty on Sunday, not to add all the walking inside the festival.  Wilco started with some songs that I didn't know very well.  I still enjoyed it a lot, but many of the songs early I just didn't know well, until the song "spiders (kidsmoke)".  This already is my favorite Wilco song and when they played it, it blew me away.  The song, being already ten minutes, was turned into a twenty minute jam for the band.  They played just about every song I could have asked for.  As they were playing, I started to get worried that they would have to stop soon as that had happened to many bands at the festival already, but they just kept trucking along.  After the greatness that is Wilco had ended, I got into a few conversations with the people around me and it seemed that the general consensus was that Wilco should have ended the festival and NOT Jack Johnson.  Johnson is alright, but for the Sunday headliner, singing to 100,000 people, he should not be there.  I guess that is alright though.  I got to the greatest band of right now.  And please go away Jack Johnson.  Go smoke a joint on the beach in Hawaii and never come back.  You can still make music, but do NOT leave and steal headlining acts again.