Live at Madison Square Garden (Pt. II)

Three nights after seeing the Wallflowers' debut as The Who's opening act, I returned to the Garden to see the Wallflowers perform again. It was the third night of their four-night engagement with The Who. Fortunately, the atmosphere at the Garden was more congenial than at the Tuesday night show.

The Wallflowers arrived onstage at 8:25 p.m. and started off with "Sleepwalker," followed by "Some Flowers Bloom Dead." After thanking the crowd, lead singer Jakob Dylan said: "We're extremely happy to be here. All in one shot, we got to warm up for The Who and we get to play Madison Square Garden. So that's a good thing. We've got a new record coming out on Tuesday, so we're going to play some of the new songs from that. This is called `Letters from the Wasteland.'" The band sounded more like a unit on "Letters" than at the previous show. The audience appreciated the band's effort. Jakob then told the crowd, "Since we've played some new songs, we're also gonna play some old songs. Not as old as some of the songs you're gonna hear, but from our repertoire, we consider them classics. Actually, I wrote this song while I lived here for a short time. It's called `Sixth Avenue Heartache.'" It became quite evident that the band was more relaxed, as evident by Jakob's willingness to chat with the crowd. After "Sixth Avenue Heartache," the band played "Three Marlenas." A big applause erupted from the crowd. Jakob told the crowd that Elvis Costello helped the band sing on the next song--"Murder 101." After that song, Jakob struck a chord with the New York crowd by saying: "We're a Los Angeles band, but I think we have more connections to New York than we actually do to Los Angeles. This next song, I think we made the video for it right here in New York. Michael is so excited, he's going to go ahead and start it." Michael played the notes which signaled the start of "One Headlight." The crowd gave its biggest cheer of the set. Of the band's next song, Jakob noted, "I'm sure that this crowd understands the original intent of the next song. But some of the younger crowd might be confused [and think] that it's actually about a gigantic lizard. This is David Bowie's song `Heroes.'" (After the show, I learned that David Bowie, who was in the Garden visiting The Who, heard the Wallflowers' sing this song and gave his thumbs up to the performance.) After thanking the crowd for being "really nice," Jakob said, "We've opened up for a lot of people and I will admit that some shows are more daunting than others. We're gonna try one more. Thanks for listening. It's called `The Difference.'" After finishing the song, the band thanked the audience and left the stage.

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