Author: Ira

Warning: I’m about to blow your mind.  We played just three times in August of 1997: once at Tower Records in New York, and twice with Tower Recordings from New York.  You can’t make this stuff up!  Today is the anniversary of our final show of the month, at Cambridge’s Middle East Cafe.  Also on the bill was Versus.  Early in the set, we brought up local impresario and bon vivant, the late much-missed Billy Ruane to declaim “Attack on Love.”  Thirteen years later, due in no small part to his affection for Billy, Peter Wolf would join us at Hanukkah.  Would you believe it–the very next night, Metal Mountains, comprised of three former members of Tower Recordings, were our guests at Hanukkah?  Would you believe two nights later?  OK, it was two years earlier.

 

Not that much to report about this day, so instead, courtesy of historyorb.com, let’s wish a happy birthday to T. J. Beam who, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, spent portions of 2006 and 2008 with the Yankees and Pirates respectively, and a happy birthday to Ralph Woolfolk IV, never to be forgotten for his single season on My Brother and Me.  Though not a complainer by nature, I’m nevertheless compelled to ask of historyorb.com . . . wtf?  Where’s Georgia’s birthday?  Where’s James’s birthday?  Where’s mine?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tell-all appearances to the contrary, the reminiscing on this page is selective: There are some things we’d rather keep private.  And were it not for an email from Judy from my home town of Croton-on-Hudson, NY, I don’t know that I’d be sharing this story.

The only thing I can think of is when YLT played at your brother’s wedding on Woodybrook Lane. What year  . . . hmmm?  Your parents invited us, knowing we (2 small kids and us, all wfmu fans, the children involuntary) were avid Yo La Tengo listeners.  Disappointment reigned.  We were on vacation in Maine.  But boy did we want to be there.

The year was 2000, fourteen years ago today.   My brother got married in our childhood front yard, after which we performed on our driveway.  The bride and groom were responsible for many of our selections. (“Don’t Blame Us–The Groom Requested It” was a sign I wish I had at my disposal when “Mighty Idy” plastered most of the guests to the rear of the tent.)  Just in case that was insufficiently emotional, we got one of my other brothers to sit in on organ for one of the two sets.  My mom (my dad could never have been a party to this) went rogue and invited Judy.  And not just her and her family.  Four days earlier, as we stood on the landing outside the Jane Street Theater awaiting our first song with Ray Davies, a stranger informed me that my mom had invited him to the wedding too!  This came as something of a shock to the married couple who had devoted much time to pruning their invite list to the bare minimum.  Anyway, not to rub it in, Judy, but you missed our one and only performance of Sammy Davis Jr.’s “Keep Your Eyes on the Sparrow (Baretta‘s Theme).”

 

 

Twenty-four years ago today, we begin a two-night run in San Francisco in support of the Sundays.   Touring the USA with them, we received the same payday for every show, except for the pair at Slim’s, where in what we always took as a gesture of their San Francisco-ness we got an extra fifty dollars (and except for the next dates in Los Angeles, where the equal and opposite gesture got us fifty dollars less).  A note on our dressing room door sounds us out about inviting Cyril Jordan to play “You Tore Me Down,” but we’re afraid our opening-act timetable won’t permit it, so don’t pursue that avenue for another 13 years.  Question: Was anyone reading this at the Garage in London 16 years ago today?  And if so, any idea what led us to perform “Born Free” during our encore???

 

 

 

In 2000, Ray Davies played at the Jane Street Theater, and we were his backup band for about half of it.  Ray came out to our Jersey City rehearsal space to rehearse, and if the NSA was bugging us, we could really use a copy of those tapes.  In addition to working on a bunch of his new songs, we tried out all sorts of obscure old Kinks numbers, most of which never left the practice room.  Hard to narrow it down to a favorite memory, but here goes: Pretty much the only song we suggested that Ray wouldn’t entertain was “You Shouldn’t Be Sad.”  Undeterred, we started playing it anyway, and Ray eventually joined in, in a self-mocking music hall croon that left us slightly delirious.  Fourteen years ago tonight was the third and final show of the run.

 

                                                        John Chamberlain – Kinks (1965)

Today marks the 21st anniversary of our first release on Matador, the “Shaker” 7-inch.  Our heartfelt thanks to Gerard, Chris, Patrick, and everyone at the label, past and present.  We marked the fifteenth anniversary by playing in the then-empty McCarren Pool in Brooklyn.  We brought a horn section for the set openers “Mr. Tough” and a cover of Bobby Freeman’s “C’mon and Swim” (co-written by Sly Stone), and encored by joining forces with Titus Adronicus to salute  NJ with “Where Eagles Dare.”