Any Chicagoan who is into good music has been looking forward to this week for a long time. Tonight marks the first of Wilco’s series of five hometown shows at increasingly smaller venues, and it’s going to be a blast. I’ll be at three of them, including tonight’s at Chicago’s Civic Opera House. Yeah, it’s gonna be sweet. It doesn’t even matter that the fam and I will be up in the nosebleeds (effing Ticketmaster), because the other two shows are GA.
I’m going to try to stop writing about Wilco now, though. Nick Lowe—he’s the opener tonight—has some pretty good music himself. I decided to go with his first album (1978’s Jesus of Cool) partially because of that really arrogant title, and also because the track list includes a song called “Little Hitler.” Hey, that’s more than I usually base my decisions on.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting a half-hour commentary on corporate music from this record. We all know Nick Lowe as the guy who plays “Cruel to be Kind,” so I was definitely prepared for some more catchy tracks in that same poppy style. This is cool too, though. “Music for Money,” the albums opener, should be pretty self-explanatory. “Shake and Pop” is an extremely catchy pop song complaining about extremely catchy pop songs, and “I Love My Label” may be a sarcastic track, I couldn’t really tell.
Anyway, in summation, HOLY CRAP, I’M SEEING WILCO TONIGHT. AND TOMORROW. AND THEN AGAIN ON FRIDAY.
Swole Ear 
Mr. Ear: I am assuming that you are too young and protected to have been subjected to The Bay City Rollers and therefore may not appreciate the full irony of “Rollers Show”. In the U.K., these guys were right up there with ABBA in 1976. The horror… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fJv5kUjddc Now, do you understand The Sex Pistols just a little better?