Belated Street Blues: Wilco Recalls the Best of the ‘70s

One fan appreciated Wilco’s show on Sunday so much that he tried to press some extra cash into bandleader Jeff Tweedy’s jeans as the singer ended the concert by strolling along one of the long tables at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, singing a heartbreak ballad by Carole King.

But the gift this 29-year-old product of small-town Illinois really needs is beyond anyone’s power to give: a birth date in the mid-1940s instead of in the mid-1960s.

Tweedy plus a time machine equals hall-of-fame greatness. With his gift for earthy, feeling-filled, memorably tuneful countrified rock (bountifully exemplified on Wilco’s excellent new album, “Being There”), plus a stage presence that’s both dynamic and unforced, a backward leap of 20 years would make him a worthy peer to Gram Parsons, to the warm and folksy early Rod Stewart, to Neil Young’s throb-and-twang take on country and to the Rolling Stones bashing their way through “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street.”

Instead, he’s here in the ‘90s, exiled on Belated Street, where a listener so inclined can hear “been there, done that” echoing in the overtones of every song he and his Chicago-based band play.

Tweedy knows this, and it galls him. After the first of several Stonesy bashers better than anything the Stones themselves have bashed out in half a generation, Wilco veered into “Someone Else’s Song,” in which a defiantly barking Tweedy confronted his predicament:

“I keep on singin’, your eyes they just roll

It sounds like someone else’s song from a long time ago.”

No matter. One way to keep rock interesting in the absence of fresh invention is to fire up the old classic forms with enthusiasm, skill and a passion for using them to grapple with enduring human concerns.

Music fans convinced that classic rock is classic for good reason should make a point of putting this too-late-but-still-pretty-great band on their itinerary.

* Wilco plays tonight at 8 at the Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., $10 in advance, $12 at the door. (310) 276-6168.