Cookie scene

So we’ve only played twice on this date in the last 17 years, and both times it was at the same club!  To be precise, Zakk in Dusseldorf, 2006 and 2009, the latter with Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby.  Setting the Wayback Machine even earlier, our first visit to the Vera in Groningen was 27 years ago today (we’ve returned seven times).  Brought back for an unwarranted third encore, we finally resort to playing something we’ve never even rehearsed: Roky Erickson’s arrangement of “Heroin,” which remains in the repertoire all these years later.  Our pal, Heather from Texas, was at none of those shows, but she’s been to plenty of others, most recently in Austin and New Orleans earlier this month.  She writes: I have been all over this time line from day one.  I can’t believe I’m submitting this so late, but I have found it nearly impossible to think of one memory to share because there are so many!  So I wrote a bunch of entries and then just never submitted them.  If I want to get in a good date-specific story, I better do it now, with just a few minutes left on the clock!  OK so here is my little YLT story that I hope you think is funny.  It’s a cookie story, a Yo La Tengo cookie story and it’s a birthday party.  It was Nov. 22nd of 2011, my 35th birthday.  (I think if I remember correctly, I share a birthday with the hater of trios?)  My friend threw me a small YLT themed birthday party, there were YLT balloons and my main birthday present was a big box of YLT cookies!  Cookies that had your beautiful images emblazoned on them.  It was similar to my 10th birthday party when it was all Boy George.  Anyway, a few weeks later, in December, we took the cookies that weren’t finished at the party and shared them with another YLT fan, your favorite, Allen Hill of the Allen Oldies Band.  (Oh and don’t worry the cookies were air vacuumed sealed and used before the expiration date.)  Allen had a small event at a local Houston record store where he was spinning his newly released 45 rpm record 45 times in a row.  My friend and I thought it would be fun to go and hand out a few of the cookies to random people that we thought might appreciate a Yo La Tengo treat.  Needless to say, Allen ended up with a set of Ira and Georgia cookies (unfortunately, we had run out of James cookies by then).  So in a way, Ira and Georgia were able to remotely join Allen Hill that day, in the spirit of sugar cookies, for spins 37 through 45 and the pictures attached have caught this fine moment in Yo La Tengo history . . . and you know I have YLT Monomania, so I’m sure none of this is surprising, haha!

 

yltcookies

Slang city rockers

In 2010, City Slang nabob Christof Ellinghaus invited us to take part in his label’s 20th anniversary celebration.  Specifically, he asked us to play, in its entirety, Fakebook, the first record of ours he released (previous to that he was our German booking agent).  We politely–at least I think it was politely–declined, making the counteroffer to see if Dave Schramm would join us for an acoustic set of songs that came out on City Slang (everything through Electr-o-pura, though looking at the setlist, I see nothing post-Painful).  Dave was amenable, so that’s what we did, four years ago today.  The concert took place in a beautiful old Berlin theater, the downside of which was that anything German of a certain age comes with a Nazi past–it was pointed out to us the box from where Goebbels enjoyed many an opera, perhaps accompanied on occasion by Hitler.  We sat somewhere else for Lambchop’s performance of Is a Woman.

 

 

sonicrendezvous_city_label_a

 

 

This Masquerade

During 1993-1995, we played five concerts in Atlanta, and four of them were at The Masquerade, one of which was 21 years ago today.  And yet this is the first time I’ve written about the place–that is not an accident.  We never had a particularly good time there, due primarily to it being three venues in one multilevel building: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell.  Naturally, you could always find us in Heaven, but in case you were curious what was going on elsewhere, you needn’t go to another floor to find out, because the thumping disco from below was pretty much omnipresent.  (Didn’t this bother everyone going to The Masquerade is the question I’ve always had, but having consulted the F.A.Q.’s on their web site, I’m forced to conclude maybe not.)  What to do?  We didn’t want to have to drop the quiet songs from the set, but they sounded ridiculous–we compromised by playing the impromptu club remix of, say, “Nowhere Near” and grumbling about it, letting a frown be our umbrella, as it were.  When our first Atlanta date of 1996 took place at The Point during an ice storm, there was still no mistaking it for anything but a step in the right direction.

 

Screen shot 2014-11-20 at 12.14.17 AM

Bobby Kinghe’s boswachter

Twenty-seven years ago today, we make our European debut, in Dordrecht, Holland.  That tour, which was both rigorous and exhilarating in the extreme, was an early pivotal moment for the band.  Without it, who knows if we would have found ourselves in Arhus, Denmark 10 years later.  I’m sure the show was fun, but what I recall best is what came afterwards.  Our promoter worked at a cinema, and when I jokingly asked if we could go there post-show, he not jokingly said yes.  Having just finished our eighth concert in nine nights, with long Scandinavian drives between many of them, everyone but me passed on the offer.  So me, the promoter and one of his pals went to the theater, grabbed a beer and had a private screening of Microcosmos.  Sure, I fought to stay awake, but there wasn’t much of a plot, and when my eyes were open I felt like Elvis.  Got back to the hotel and found Georgia watching Yentl on tv with Danish subtitles.  Luckily, I had already seen it in the theater.

 

11.19

Oslo syndrome

It must be our love of afternoon darkness and autumn snowfall that has led to multiple trips to Scandinavia on this date.  We made our Oslo debut 17 years ago today at the now-defunct So What–had such a good time that we returned for one-offs in both 1998 and 1999–and played at the less-fancy-than-it-sounds Rockefeller last year.  Not as easy to judge the book by its cover in 2009 in Lund, Sweden, as my computer can’t translate the venue name Mejeriet (I’ll assume it’s a type of herring).  Maybe we don’t love the dark as much as I thought, because I must admit that none of the aforementioned is as memorable as our 2006 visit to Brussels.  Among multiple shows happening inside the AB that feature Espers, Edith Frost and many others, we play a long set, second encoring with two Velvet Underground songs and third encoring with “What Can I Say.”

 

SelldinFairyOnDuckWPussyWillows7571                                                      (Happy Thanksgiving in Norwegian)

 

 

I’m not afraid of you and I will beat your ass and you’re not

During the 2007 Writers Guild strike, both 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live performed live shows at the UCB Theater to support and raise money for the strikers.  Michael Cera hosted the Saturday Night Live episode, which featured the entire cast save for Maya Rudolph, not to mention alumni Rachel Dratch and Horatio Sanz, and Norah Jones.  We were the musical guest, playing acoustic versions of “Little Honda” and “Mr. Tough.”

 

19snl_600