While Edmonton rock and rolled all night to KISS Saturday, a strange exodus took place.

 

Hundreds of local 18-plus alternateens hopped into their rusty cars onto Highway 2 down to the City of Cows for a country show.

 

Well, sort of.

 

See, Wilco's kind of a hard band to nail down, but lots of people love them.

 

Calgary's Republik was the venue, a far stretch from Cowboy's, and plastic pants were as common as plaid shirts and rodeo hats.

 

And there wasn't a spare cubic centimetre in the place.

 

The warm-up act was typically loud, loudly typical, and fit in just fine with the surroundings as much as the cute girl at the door and the cigarette ash-covered Japanese racing game.

 

After a break Jeff Tweedy strutted out onto the stage, his entourage looking a little like the Oak Ridge Boys, a little like the Allman Brothers, and started into an orgasmic Misunderstood.

 

Like any Bryan White concert, the nose-ringed gals were rationalizing just what kind of good-looking Tweedy was, the consensus being a kind of just-broke-out-of-jail sexy. Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCulloch, wandering around making friends, then hiding from them, turned up the surreal content.

 

Maybe it was just because it was Calgary, but a lot of Wilco's zingers sounded a little more twangy than usual; no complaints here. But as if to counterbalance this, the band rocked harder than SNFU at a hazy music festival as the night wore on.

 

I truly doubt KISS's encore had more human energy. I Got You was unbelievable.

 

Maybellines front Brent Oliver, thrilled in the front row, had his hat nabbed by the band and sang the words to an old Replacements song as Tweedy held the mike in his face. More crossovers.

 

The question is, how far will this go?

 

More and more "alternative" bands are filling the gap left by country stars lured by rock and roll.

 

For every Garth Brooks or Alan Jackson, there's a Wilco or Robbie Fulks, or even the local Maybellines, ready to capture the spirit of pre-industry-produced hat-act music.

 

As a last jab, Beck and Rusty sport cowboy hats these days.

 

I've got a theory: Everything commercial is melding. And the more times you see Bugs Bunny wearing Nike Air sneakers, playing B-ball with Michael Jordan, having just got back from buying toys of themselves at McDonald's, the more the theory stands.

 

The multibillion-dollar music world is hardly exempt.

 

Like it or not, the down-home rootsiness paradox of at-times uncontrollable Wilco, although genuine, suits the record companies fine.

 

There's no use begrudging anyone as Wilco plays on Power 92. Everything flows in cycles, as it always has, and anyone worth listening to once started out small.

 

There's just more ducking across enemy lines in an attempt to get there these days.

 

Again, no complaints here.