Merge Records determined that there was no way they could throw a fifth anniversary party in 1994 without my other group, Double Dynamite, and who could blame them? After a grueling rehearsal, we went to Cat’s Cradle for the evening’s festivities and that was my first encounter with Lambchop. It was love at first sight. Yo La Tengo got to know them a bit while we were recording Electr-o-pura, the first of many sessions in Nashville with Hoboken ex-pat Roger Moutenot, and when we started touring on that album, they were at the top of our bands-to-play-with list. I was about to say that our first show with them was 19 years ago today, but actually I got a little confused crossing the international date line–it was in fact 19 years and one day ago. Oh well, this is definitely the anniversary of the first time any of them sat in with us; at the 930 Club in D.C., Jonathan Marx and Deanna Varagona played saxophone on “Bad Politics.” Hold the phone! Jonathan on sax? That’s what my notes say, but I don’t remember that at all. Clarinet, trumpet, yes, but sax? My research doesn’t lie (except of course when it suggests that our first show with Lambchop was May 13).
