Wino Wednesday: Acoustic “Manifesto” in Vienna, Austria, 2010
Hard to determine what’s my favorite thing about this clip of Wino performing the song “Manifesto” live at Substance Record Store in Vienna on his 2010 European tour. He laughs as he breaks a string about two minutes in, and that’s pretty enjoyable — probably less for him at the time — and he takes his guitar and walks out into the crowd, troubadour-style, toward the end. Plus the song itself, which lives up to its name in continuing Wino‘s penchant for socially conscious lyric-writing — something that arguably was most present in the word of The Hidden Hand but has been a factor all along — while the quick acoustic strumming provides a kind of tension that usually comes coated in fuzz where his songwriting is concerned.
Either way, it’s a winner, and for me, even more interesting in context. Toward the end of last year, I posted a video shot on the same tour of the same song, and he did basically the same thing — out into the crowd and all that. That video was shot in Belgium on Oct. 10. This one was Vienna just 10 days earlier, and what’s really great about it is Wino, fresh off a tour with Premonition 13, had been on the road for about two weeks at the time, so basically you get to see him become more comfortable with the idea as you go from the earlier video (this one) to the later one. Maybe that’s me putting a narrative to it, or just a bit of super-nerdery, but it’s pretty cool to see, either way, since by the time October rolled around, it was a spirited protest-song bit of populism and here it’s getting there, but not quite as triumphant yet.
Keep your eyes open for that and the broken string, and have a great Wino Wednesday:
