Twenty-five years and one day ago, Tesla played Virginia’s Richmond Coliseum. They had February 1 off, so went straight to Charlotte NC, where they were booked for the following night, and where as it happened Yo La Tengo were opening for the Feelies. At some point that night at the Pterodactyl, Georgia overheard one or more people–Brian Wheat? Troy Luccketta? crew? your guess is as good as mine–trying to talk their way into the show, dropping the name Tesla. The door man would have none of it, and Georgia didn’t have the juice to get them in. We tried to convince the Feelies to intercede and maybe even jam, but oddly this idea didn’t fly. “I bet you’d let us in if we were R.E.M.” complained one of the Teslas, no doubt correctly assessing the situation, and that’s [popup url=”https://yolatengo.com/wp-content/uploads/howimet.jpg” width=”833″]how I (almost) met Tesla[/popup].
