**1. Wilco at Ninth Street**
What’s better than rounding up all your long-lost Mizzou friends after a summer apart to crowd around Ninth Street in the dusk, basking in the new school year glow and allowing fellow Wilco-lovers to spill warm PBR on you? Nothing. Except maybe Wilco’s seriously jammable actual performance and the six-part encore that you wanted to last forever.
**2. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros at Roots ‘N’ Blues**
Roots ‘N’ Blues has a habit of transforming downtown CoMo into a glorious dream world of magnificent company, good food and even better tunes. Edward Sharpe’s set of was nothing short of a dizzying folk reverie where everyone danced, and nothing hurt.
**3. Fun. at Jesse Auditorium**
On the cusp of Thanksgiving break, Fun.’s show (opened by the beachy, soft-spoken vibes of the vastly underrated Miniature Tigers) gave us a sound education on the heights the band can reach beyond “We Are Young” and “Some Nights.” And if the finale’s confetti explosion didn’t make you believe, well, then we don’t know what can.
**4. Passion Pit/Matt & Kim at Jesse Auditorium**
Post Snowpacalypse II, Passion Pit was a welcome change from staring at snowdrifts and empty fridges. Let’s be real, though — Matt and Kim’s adorableness as partners in crime (and “partners in bed,” as Matt would shriek) earned them the title of The Most Energetic Couple Ever and just fucking completely stole the show.
**5. Fitz & The Tantrums at The Blue Note**
The 2011 Roots ‘N’ Blues headliners returned to Columbia once more to search our souls and make us feel things we didn’t know possible about vintage organs and moneygrabbers alike.