Month: April 2014

Our visit to Grand Rapids on this day in 1994 coincides with Melissa Etheridge’s, and just our luck, our pal Will Rigby is drumming for her opening act, Matthew Sweet.  He comes over to the Reptile House after his set and joins us for two songs.  In 2000, in Champaign, we salute Cities In Illinois That Aren’t Chicago by covering “Come On, Come On.”  But with all respect to Will and Bun E., the most memorable event on April 6 happened offstage.  With a travel day on our 1992 tour of the south, we hightail it to our next stop, New Orleans, arriving in time for lunch at the late lamented Uglesisch’s.   Afterwards Mr. Soundman declares himself “kinda tired” and seeks a park where he can lie down.  Let me backtrack for a moment and emphasize the tight squeeze of touring circa 1992: the five of us are traveling together in a van, and pretty much always on the move–most every day includes not just a nighttime concert but daytime promo at a record store or radio station.  Even the two hotel rooms we are paying for every night feel like a luxury, although James and Joe, sharing a room with the soundman, might not reach for that specific word.  Anyway, our snooze-bound soundman has now left the four of us by ourselves for the first time in a week.  For the next hour we remain in Uglesich’s parking lot, complaining, laughing, and–if I may go way way out on a limb here–perhaps stumbling onto what might be termed by someone else a Team Building Exercise.  At this point, James (and Joe) have been part of Yo La Tengo LLC for just over a year.  None of us have any inkling that we’re going to be doing this for another 22 years and counting, and it’s just possible that were it not for the way we united over HOW HE WAS DRIVING US BONKERS, we may not have.

 

Maybe I’m being melodramatic.  The truth is I don’t remember much about our trip to New Haven on this day in 1985, our first show outside of New York and New Jersey, except for the Mikey-like “Georgia likes it” moment of her trying clam pizza at Frank Pepe’s.    But one look at our 1991 set list, opening for Eleventh Dream Day at Marquette, and I’m reliving the nightmare:  When we fail to complete either of our first two songs, we leave the stage to regroup.  We tiptoe back on with “Andalucia” and then rip through another two numbers before having to bail on yet another midway through.  Oy–is this the show where we attempt to anchor Georgia’s wandering bass drum with an IBM Selectric?  Luckily for us, there’s no time to brood.  We pack up and drive from Milwaukee to Chicago, where we’ve got another show that night at Lounge Ax (an SST-esque stunt we’d never attempted prior).  That one goes just fine.  One last April 5 first, our first post-Katrina date in New Orleans.  Georgia sings Irma Thomas’s “Ruler of My Heart” and we’re very happy to be back.

 

Having packed up the tent and said goodbye to Lambchop in late March 2000, we made our way to the midwest and seven shows with Quickspace, the last one occurring on this date fourteen years ago, at Shank Hall in Milwaukee (considerably smaller than its This Is Spinal Tap namesake).  Tom Cullinan agrees to play Th’ Faith Healers’ “This Time” with us, and by the time we wrap up the first encore with “Group Grope,” every member of the band has joined in.  Things are not quite so hunky-dory on our 1992 tour.  Our inability to keep our soundman from playing the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack and Sha-Na-Na before we go on (among other things) is fraying the nerves.  On the drive from Carrboro to Atlanta, we stop at the Beacon Drive-In.  The second we enter, Soundman says “This place is great,” which I understand may appear fairly innocuous to you the reader.  But after only four days with him, there’s really nothing he could say except “I quit” that would mollify us.  “How do you know?” I snap, and then we enjoy a delicious lunch.  The owner spots us for out-of-towners, and brings us complimentary t-shirts and an entire strawberry shortcake, which we serve to the stragglers at the conclusion of that night’s show at The Point.

 

Starting in 1992 until this date in 2001, almost all of our Madrid shows happened at a venue called Revolver.  It is common that clubs will schedule late-night discos for after the concert, but only Revolver started the evening with the disco, and a goth disco at that.  We would arrive at midnight,  loading our equipment down the same stairs that the dancers were using to exit, set up, sound check, and start our set 2-ish.  I’m not sorry we’re no longer on that schedule, but the shows were always great.   (We ended a European tour there in 1995, and rather than spend an hour or two in a hotel, we went straight to the airport, and catnapped on our luggage.  As we checked in for the flight home, the smartly dressed ticket agent looked at us and said “I guess you are very tired,” and then pulled out his ticket stub from just a few hours earlier.)  April 3, 2001 is a Sunday, so we open with the theme from “The Simpsons.”  When we spot someone in the audience wearing a bootleg President Yo La Tengo t-shirt, he’s brought  on stage to model it, then we play him off by adding “Drug Test” to the set list.  He returns to play maracas on “You Sexy Thing” during the encore, which also includes “Speeding Motorcycle” made into a medley as I salute the goths with a chorus of “Boys Don’t Cry.”   And Cristina was there:
This was my 4th YLT concert but the first and only time I had to attend without the company of my beloved boyfriend, Fino.  (He gave me Fakebook as a present when we started to date, c. 1996 – that’s how I learned about you.)  You were fantastic, and I missed him even more the whole show because of that!   Afterwards, I asked Ira for some autograph (why?? I don’t know, I guess I wanted Fino not to feel so bad for missing your show . . . with some piece of paper that could always remind him that he missed that show?? oh well . . .).

We’ve had the chance to see you again like 12-13 more times, to this day, always happily together.
He’s a musician and nowadays he also runs Libros de Ruido, the book collection that will publish “Big Day Coming” in Spain next May.

Happy 30th anniversary, dearestssss Yo La Tengo!!

 

So far you have seen: As we approach December 2, our 30th anniversary as a band, I am endeavoring to look back each and every day at whatever’s caught my eye about that day in our illustrious history.  We start today’s stroll down memory lane in 1992 in Richmond.  For the third day in a row, we play both a record store and a regular show, the former at Plan 9–can’t remember if this is the day I find a 10¢ copy of the Nervous Eaters’ “Loretta” or if that was another visit.  Encouraged by a friend who shall remain nameless to travel with our own soundman, we are doing just that.  It’s not going well.  The year before, we play the Bluebird in Bloomington, Indiana with Antietam . . . for the first of two times in 1991!   Tim and Tara accompany us to WISU for some promo, where we join forces on an impromptu “I’m a Believer,” and at the superfun nighttime show (only the fourth date in James’s tenure), Tara sits in on “Dreams,” “Orange Song” and “Heroin.”

 

April Fools’ Day 1992 in Charlottesville, we open with James–in his first show in his home town–singing and playing guitar on the Happy Flowers’ “I’m the Stupid One.”  Is that a holiday selection?  Two years later in St. Louis, we’re definitely playing to the calendar by opening with “Antmusic” and probably by encoring with “Turning Japanese.”   We’re not in a joking mood in Lawrence in 2000.  Should we blame Mark?

While waiting in line at the Bottleneck in Lawrence, Kansas, I shouted, “Hey, the line’s back there!” at some asshole trying to squeeze through the front door out of turn.  Only when the asshole turned her head in response did I realize it was Georgia.  Thankfully Ira didn’t send James out to rough me up—or if he did the basketball game at the bar seemed more compelling to him.

Good thing for you, Mark, that it was the Final Four.  Elite Eight and you’re a dead man!