Review: Golden Smog - 8/7/03 - 400 Bar - Mpls, MN

As if in a dream... (part 1)

Here's an accurate setlist + a few brief comments for night 1 of the 2003 Golden Smog extravaganza, the first GS show with Tweedy since a holiday one-off at First Ave. in December 2000. There hasn't been a GS tour since Dec 1998 / Jan 1999.

*******************

Golden Smog
8/7/03 - 400 Bar - Mpls

Louris - Tweedy - Johnson - Murphy - Stevens - Perlman
(Jessy Green on "Weird Tales" stuff)
Opener = David Poe & The Program

SETLIST
Looking Forward
Ill Fated
Won't Be Coming Home
Lost Love
Making Waves (Tweedy = bass / Perlman = mandolin)
To Call My Own (Tweedy = bass / Perlman = ac gtr)
Glad & Sorry (Johnson = bass / Perlman = ac gtr)
He's A Dick (Tweedy = bass / Perlman = ac gtr)
Walk Where He Walked (Johnson = slide gtr)
I Can't Keep From Talking
Stop Dragging My Heart Around (Melissa Gorman = vocals / Ed Ackerson = organ)
Never Marry a Railroad Man (Melissa Gorman = vocals)
Pecan Pie
Yesterday Cried
Fooled Around and Fell in Love
All The Same To Me (Johnson = bass / Louris = keyboards / Perlman = elec gtr)
White Shell Road (Murphy = kybds)
If I Only Had A Car (Johnson = piano)
Love is the Drug (Perlman = lead vox)
Until You Came Along (with Jim Boquist on vocals and elec gtr)

encores:
Radio King (Gary, Jeff, Jessy)
Please Tell My Brother (Gary, Jeff, Jessy)
Revolution Blues (Tweedy = lead gtr)
V (not rehearsed!) (Louris = kybds / Johnson = harmonica)
Spooky > Down by the River (tease) > Spooky

Highlights for me were a picture perfect "Glad and Sorry," the best "Yesterday Cried" I've ever heard (just heartbreaking), the unbelievably powerful 1-2 encore punch by Jeff, Gary and Jessy (hanky time fer sure and the bar was stone quiet, a moment of pure bliss all too rare at the 400) and the spontaneous excellence of "V," perhaps the definitive Golden Smog song (crowd rapture at its peak during this).