Month: April 2014

There’s got to be a fancy scientific and/or Latin term for the process by which NKOTB and Yo La Tengo ended up under the same roof, 20 years ago today.   For as Sleepyhead is my witness, that’s precisely what happened in Pittsburgh: Donnie, Jordan & the boys in the main room, the Metropole, and us in the adjoining Rosebud’s.  Before we went on, we got the chance to watch the New Kids in action and perhaps that’s what inspired a few flourishes of showmanship on our side of the divider.  I play the house piano amidst the chairs and tables in the middle of the room on an impromptu microphone-less version of “Cast a Shadow” with James on acoustic guitar.  All of Sleepyhead joined us for a haphazard “Ramblin’ Rose.”   At the end of the evening, NKOTB pointed their bus toward Indianapolis, and the YLT caravan made its way to Rochester, the twain never again to meet.

 

If you’ll allow the present day to intrude on these recollections, I’m in Hollywood right now, looking forward to the TCM festival, most particularly Saturday’s tribute to Georgia’s parents.  Which reminds me of this date in 1988, when we were unwise enough, for the second year in a row no less, to book a show against the Academy Awards.  Admittedly it’s debatable how many people would show up to hear us in Normal, Illinois on any Monday night, but ours is an exclusive affair indeed.  1992 finds us at the Clearview in Dallas, which among its charms featured a disco next to the band room clearly audible should you dial down the volume on stage at any point.  Receiving multiple requests for our quiet songs (and having already suffered through “For Shame of Doing Wrong” during our set), we grab an acoustic guitar, a snare drum and a floor tom, and invite the audience into the parking lot for a six-song encore.  Of course, it being Deep Ellum, it’s even louder outside, but it’s the thought that counts–especially to the bar manager, who threatens not to pay us because of the post-set drinking he claims we cost him.  One last story: 1991, YLT and Eleventh Dream Day are in the last of three shows in Missouri supporting Redd Kross.  The first night in Lawrence we opened.   When the audience is slow to arrive, the club invites us to go on late.  An hour or so later, Redd Kross’s tour manager gets there, freaks out, and insists that Eleventh Dream Day shorten their set so Redd Kross can start on time.  Next night in St. Louis, Eleventh Dream Day go on first, right on schedule, in front of another sparse, slow-arriving audience.  Now we’re the opener again, after which I’m watching Eleventh Dream Day from the wings with a member of their crew.  During “Awake I Lie,” I spot Redd Kross’s tour manager standing right in front of Rick Rizzo, looking miserable.  I’m incensed–it’s obviously their last song, somebody should tell the TM to fuck off.  Crew guy goes off to do just that.  I see him tap the TM on the shoulder, and the TM turns to him–and I realize it’s not the TM at all, but some guy in the audience (in the front row, you’ll recall) with similar hair.  Frantically, I try to wave him off, but he doesn’t see me until after he’s told an Eleventh Dream Day fan to fuck off.  Oops.

 

On this day in 1994, we played with Sleepyhead at Sudsy Malone’s in Cincinnati, a venue which as the name implied doubled as a laundromat.  Across the street, at Bogart’s, a line had already started to form for the next night’s appearance by NKOTB, the farewell tour (I think) of New Kids on the Block.  It wasn’t a particularly long line, and when we departed Sudsy’s eight or so hours later, it didn’t appear to have grown any, and if you detect a note of bitterness, maybe I’m just jealous because no one’s ever waited outdoors for over 24 hours to hear Yo La Tengo.

Closer to home, AJP from Brooklyn writes: On this day in 2013, I walked a block from my office to see YLT perform the live score to The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller at the Kitchen in NYC.  As a former architect, present design nerd and devout YLT fan, it was about as enticing an evening as I could imagine.  I attended that night’s early show, notable for the fact that I sat one seat over from Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.  Laurie smiled and said “hello” when she sat down.  Lou said nothing, then fell asleep quickly and stayed asleep through the show – which is a shame because it was tremendous.  In the post-show Q&A with Bucky’s adorable and elderly daughter, I mustered the nerve to ask a question (“Did you grow up in a dome house?”) in front of my assembled musical heroes.  For the record, she did not.  I said “hello” to James and Georgia after the show, then walked toward the exit with Georgia, who noted with disappointment that it was raining.  I left for the subway, and only then realized that I should have offered her my umbrella.  

I’m sorry, Georgia.

It would soon be publicly revealed just how ill Lou Reed was at the time; mere weeks later he would undergo a liver transplant.  We never saw him again, and awake or asleep, we were very excited he was there.

 

“Andalucia pts 1 and 2” read my notes for April 9, 1992, at the Axiom in Houston.  That’s my shorthand for a false start.  Twenty-two years after the fact, I’m guessing it was monitor feedback, and pretty sure that was the last straw with our soundman du tour.  Bad vibes are plentiful.  The band before us “trashes” their drum kit, a gesture that appears somewhat short of spontaneous when they gingerly move the kick drum mic out of harm’s way immediately preceding their moment of rebellion.  The scorn goes both ways: “Stick around for Hoboken” are their parting words.  The next morning, before departing for Austin, we fire our soundman, grudgingly agreeing to drive him to Dallas bus station, where in our mutual haste to be rid of each other, he leaves behind his copy of Stephen King’s The Stand.

 

In October, 2006, we played to an intimate gathering at the Belly Up in Aspen.  After our set, I went out to talk to anyone to wanted to say hi, and met someone who reported that the last time he’d seen us was at Carnegie Mellon on this date in 1995.   A fairly dispiriting and disorganized daytime university show, I nonetheless remembered the afternoon vividly for what happened after we played.  Backstage, so to speak, actually some campus room temporarily turned over to us, we were entertaining a local impresario, someone who had booked shows by many of our friends, though never us.  He was proudly showing us a trombone he had found at our stage, obviously belonging to a member of the big band that had preceded us, uncovered when chairs and p.a. were taken away.   We were appalled and told him he had to bring it back.  But we were driving back to Hoboken that night, and didn’t stick around to find out if he did.  Now, all these years later, I got the answer: He didn’t.   I was having a conversation with the guy whose trombone had been stolen!  My disbelief was in no way due to wondering how someone with one arm that ended at the elbow, as was the case with the person I was talking to, handled a trombone.  I did something I never do, and told him that I’d like to bring him to the dressing room, that Georgia and James were sure to want to meet him, a bona fide celebrity in our band’s lore.  He agreed, and told me that in fact he was something of a celebrity, but I admit it, I was barely listening.  So we get backstage, a small room with Georgia, James, members of Why? and an oxygen tank (the altitude in Aspen can make you woozy if you’re not used to it).  Georgia and James were as flabbergasted as I knew they would be.  We had all sorts of questions about that day in 1995, but the guy was more interested in telling us what had happened to him more recently.   Remember Aron Ralston, who was trapped by a boulder hiking by himself in Utah, and cut off his own arm, thereby saving his life?  The guy who was played by James Franco in 127 Hours?  Did you know he used to play the trombone?   Of course, I have no way of knowing this for sure, but I suspect he never had and has never since told this story, after which the first question was “Did you ever get a new trombone?”

 

 

I’ve got a long story to tell tomorrow, so I’m going to take advantage of a slow news day on April 7 to do a little housecleaning.  Amid all the hubbub in New Orleans yesterday, I couldn’t find an opening to mention April 6, 2006.  In one action-packed day we passed the afternoon on a Warner Bros. lot filming the Gilmore Girls with Ron Mael, Dave “Gruber” Allen, and Russell Mael, and split our night between an incredible comedy lineup at the Steve Allen Theater and, even more incredibly, a reunion of the Flesh Eaters’ Minute to Pray lineup.  I’ll mention right now that on April 8, 2003, Summer Sun was released, clearing the way for tomorrow’s saga.  Teaser: Just like today’s, a cast member of Freaks & Geeks will make an appearance.