Last week friend of mine, Jesmi, had a birthday wish- to see Wilco at Fairpark. Having never listened to them, but knowing they have a cult like following and some of my friends like them I obliged with purchasing the tickets. Some pre-show observations:
- More plaid patterns than I've ever seen before in my life
- So many scarves. on both guy and girl
- Everyone, less Jesmi who is 1 part Korean and 1 part Puerto Rican, was white. No Blacks, Hispanics, Indians, etc were in sight.
At first glance I figured I walked into an apple commercial; skinny jeans were everywhere and the hipster look was on full steam. We waited about 20 minutes in line as they had both beer and liquor at the bar with 1 bartender at each station. It's never functional to have 5 bars serving 800+ adults and the planning was piss poor to say the least. This did give me ample people watching time. I had misgivings about the show as I could listen in on the conversations that were happening around me. It was pretty much apathetic talk from people that place too a heavy self image on not liking anything in the "mainstream". The metaphorical gun was cocked and loaded while suicide thoughts were playing out in my mind.
The opening act was someone that I'd never heard of- Nick Lowe. He sounded exactly like a combo of James Taylor and Garrison Kehler singing Lake Wobegon stories. I guy with an acoustic guitar sinnging story teller songs. Fucking shoot me in the face. The highlight of his set was checking in on Foursquare and getting enough points to be ahead of Sed. After he finished and bored me to death I asked the plaid tortise shelled framed gentleman who it was, in an expected condescending tone he replied "Nick Lowe". At this point there was an intermission- my first thought was I need something with a beat or screaming to wake me up. We got up and walked around while purchasing another 2 beers. At this point I knew nothing would save me, less a bomb threat. Which I almost called in on Jesmi's phone... well, I at least thought about it.
Wilco- I really don't understand the attraction. As with when Nick Lowe was playing middle aged hipsters would jump up and yell "yeah!!!" then whistle extremely loud. Nothing was going on that denoted a yeah. In fact I thought a "I have a better time on Ambien" was more appropriate. They had nothing that appealed to me but everyone around me was dancing... or white people concert dancing. It appeared like every black comedian ever's impression of white people dancing without rhythm. I was constantly checking my twitter feed and FB to see if anything else was going on while getting in depth knowledge on Weather.com about the impending el Nina winter. If this is the music driving the hipster generation they can have it- that shit Meh'd me to death.
Getting in the car I threw on the new Drake and blasted it... with the beats and methodical rap of "Over My Dead Body" I came to the conclusion that if this is what 25- 35 year old white adult professionals listen to that isn't country these days I'm Black. Black or something other than white.
In short, Jesmi received exactly what she wanted for her birthday, Wilco is never going to make it to my iTunes, and we're in for a wet winter so boarding should be good in the North West. Oh- I'm claiming minority- "Other" on every application from now on.
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