Dateline: Vancouver, 21 years ago today. Show’s over and we’re packing up. It’s been a particularly fun night, a great bill with Kreviss and Cub, and Joe Puleo’s feeling fine. He could walk from the loading dock to unlock the van, but opts instead for a toss to James. Behind his back. James has a long reach, but he doesn’t stand a chance–the keys land on a dumpster. There’s a lid on the dumpster, but the keys manage to locate a gap and fall inside. Joe rolls up his sleeves, eventually finds them, and we’re on our way. One thing leads to another, and 19 years later, we’re in Tokyo, doing advance promo for Fade, which includes a Freewheeling Yo La Tengo concert. We talk so much at those shows that we know we’re going to need a translator. And in fact, we talk SO much that it’s decided that it would be helpful if each one of us had their own translator. In standard Freewheeling style, we open with two songs, then announce the Q&A format, and introduce the translators, who enter dressed and bewigged as us. Quoting Felix Bressart in To Be or Not to Be, it gets a terrific laugh.
Michelle and Greg write from Cornwall-on-Hudson: Our specific memory is the birth of our second son to “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House.” Date: November 6, 2002. I was pretty far along in labor when we got to the hospital, so we started the album and he emerged with the song playing. We left the CD in the labor room, and the next day the labor nurses returned it. They told us they listened to it!
