Music: John Mellencamp With ... Nobody

On Wednesday night the Wife and I went to see John Mellencamp perform at the Omaha Music Hall.  I had been led to believe by an upcoming events RSS post that Elvis Costello would warm up for him.  It turned out to be incorrect.  This tainted the evening for me as I was more interested in Elvis Costello than in Mellencamp.

The show started with an hour long concert movie filmed during Mellencamp's last tour and during the recording of his latest album "No Better Than This".  This was done in lieu of a warm up act and seemed a little odd.  I kept thinking that I was going to hear the same music twice.  Turns out, I was right.

After a short intermission after the movie, Mellencamp and his band came on and played two solid hours of music.  The set was a mix of old and new with a slight bias towards the new.  I have to admit, since I never was a big Mellencamp fan, I did not recognize many of the songs.  That being said, it was an enjoyable concert.  I especially like the slightly tweaked version of "Jack & Diane" - He gave it a more contemporary, up tempo sound to the song.

In my opinion Miriam Sturm,  the violinist/fiddler, stole the show.  She was awesome.  The Wife also liked her and was also impressed by the use of the accordion in the music.  The accordion didn't impress me as much but that might be because it was featured during the Decemberists concert and I liked their player better than Mellencamp's.

Overall, the Wife thought the concert was awesome and I thought it was okay ... pretty good even ... but not spectacular.

One cool thing was, when you bought the concert tickets, you were emailed a link to download the MP3 for John Mellencamp's new album for free.  That was a nice touch.  It's an idea that I hope catches on.