For Your Weekend Listening Pleasure: That Night Wilco Just Destroyed the Palladium

Wilco plays Denton tonight, and for those so inclined who don't yet possess ducats for the sold-out occasion, buck up: The band sent word yesterday that at noon today, remaining tickets for the University of North Texas appearance will be released right ... here. Good luck. I'm rooting for you. You, especially.

For the first time since I can't remember when, I'll miss a Wilco North Texas appearance; I'll spend the rest of the next long while, from this a.m. till who knows when, regretting not being there. So I'll console myself with the memory of that chilly October night in 2009 when Jeff Tweedy and the boys played the Palladium -- the memory and the music, courtesy this link, since the one to which I referred you way back when is long since dead.

Every song was climactic -- the last song of the third encore, back when such things mattered. I remember asking my concert companion after "A Shot in the Arm": "Good Lord, how do you top that?" That was the second song on the set list, and 26 songs later, Tweedy, John Stirratt, Nels Cline and the boys showed how -- by digging in, goofing off (ah, The Great Shirt Swap of '09, captured here in all its silly glory), turning up and going way out to meet that demon who lives in the thin air, to quote Levon Helm.

That show was, and is again, a sprawling time-travelogue -- a generous 1970s rock-and-roll-and history-of updated to accommodate the bleeps and skronk of the 21st-century arena. In short: The Greatest Recording Ever Made of one of The Best Shows I've Ever Witnessed. Just remember: Wilco loves you. You, especially.