Wilco Concert

I first saw Wilco perform when they were the opening act for REM several years ago, shortly after their acclaimed album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was released. At the time, I went specifically to see Wilco, with whose music I’d become captivated (although REM put on a great show). Back then, Wilco’s creative leader and nasal-voiced lead singer, Jeff Tweedy, spent a great deal of time shuffling about the stage and fine-tuning an array of special electronic effects devices. Being the opening act meant that Wilco played in front of a sparse, inattentive crowd that was mostly still standing in line to get beer. Jeff Tweedy came across as shy and lacking a strong stage presence, although their music was certainly excellent.

How times have changed. Launched as an alt-country band under the influence of the Uranus-Neptune conjunction in 1994, Wilco has gradually morphed into one of the smartest and tightest rock bands in the world. Jeff Tweedy may still lack charisma, but he has become a surprisingly confident performer, with an Everyman voice that now stretches to comfortably fill a small arena. I saw Wilco perform Sunday night at the sold-out Santa Barbara Bowl where they played to a happy mix of young teens, hip senior citizens, and everyone in between.

Bantering easily with the crowd, Tweedy mentioned that he’d just celebrated a birthday, saying, “It felt good to turn 30,” which made everyone laugh because we knew he must be quite a bit older than that. I looked him up later on Wikipedia and discovered that he was born August 25, 1967, in Belleville, Illinois (the band is based in Chicago)—no birth time, of course. So, actually, he just turned 40.

Jeff Tweedy is a Virgo, born with the Sun and four other planets (including the mid-1960's Uranus-Pluto conjunction) in that sign. He also has a close Mars-Neptune conjunction, which is good for creative activity (or actively creating). A Mars-Neptune conjunction can potentially give one charisma and magnetism, but in Jeff Tweedy’s case, he has raised Virgo anti-charisma to an art form: At the start of the concert, he ambled onstage as though he’d just awakened from a nap, dressed in casual garage sale chic.

This Virgo modesty filtered down to the whole venue. The tickets were modestly priced and the t-shirt I bought was not the usual concert rip-off.

In contrast to Tweedy’s self-effacing demeanor, lead guitarist Nels Cline cut an especially striking figure—tall and Ichabod Crane-lanky, he was dressed in a fire engine red shirt and matching red socks, his own amazing guitar riffs sending him into contorted, near out-of-body physical paroxysms.

Because Jeff Tweedy is the creative force who writes and sings virtually all of Wilco’s songs, the band bears his distinctly Virgoan stamp. Virgo is partly about synthesis and personal growth, gathering and assembling what is in order to construct what can be. When we think of growth and personal transformation, we don’t always think of Virgo. Yet Virgo is the self-improvement sign, and musical growth along with continual change have been Wilco’s story. One of Wilco’s songs, “Shot in the Arm,” includes the Tweedy-penned Virgo lyric, “What you once were isn’t what you want to be anymore.” I suppose if I were ever to have a tattoo, my Virgo Moon would like it to say that (although the very fact that I identify with that lyric is one reason why I’ve never gotten a tattoo).

On the way home from the concert, my wife asked me how I would define Wilco's music. The best I could come up with was "alternative rock," but that somehow reduces them. Indeed, Wilco's growth and constantly mutating musical expression elude easy definition. Sometimes their songs are extraordinarily sweet and mellow; or they can be jazzy; at other times, Wilco's music verges on the avant garde and electro-experimental (which first sold me on this group); at other times they can sound like the John Lennon Beatles; on some songs they are heavy-duty, blast the rafters rockers; and on others they still retain some of their alt-country roots.

In concert, all these styles come together and it is a thrill to watch Wilco find a particular rocking groove, with the whole six person band on stage bouncing, weaving, and swaying intensely to the same driving rhythm. At the end of “Handshake Drugs,” the band found this rhythmic furrow and then exploded it into an intense rock ‘n’ roll cacophony. Instead of the usual stage light pyrotechnics which accompany a rock music climax, the stage lights slowly dimmed as the song built to a primal, wailing crescendo—ending in utter darkness.

Except, that is, for the light of a beautiful near-full Moon rising gently above the stage amidst the wooded Santa Barbara oaks.

Sometimes rock ‘n’ roll can still render its own call of the wild.