Author: Ira

Three years ago today, we were playing the second of a two-night stand at Minneapolis’s 400 Bar.  We coaxed our old friend Mark Freeman on stage to play “I Wanna Be Your Lover” with us (Dylan’s, as opposed to the other geographically appropriate song of that name we could have picked), and then retired to our tour bus, where we awaited our driver and the early morning trip to Chicago.  To quote Snoopy, suddenly a shot rang out!, and before we knew it we found ourselves police-taped into a crime scene.  From our windowless bunks, we had no idea what happened,  and wondered if our equipment was safe, though no one was exactly anxious to leave the bus to check.

 

It’s a day of unusual bills.  Nineteen years ago today, having discovered that our preferred Portland date would put us in competition with a bigtime local act, we opt instead to open for Everclear (the Dandy Warhols play first), and the less said about that, the better.  In 2006, we participated in a benefit for the ailing Arthur Lee at the Beacon Theater, headlined by Robert Plant, and also including Ryan Adams, Ian Hunter, Nils Lofgren, and Garland Jeffreys.  Where to begin?  There were lots of empty seats, which was weird because you had to figure that Robert Plant on his own could sell the room out easily, but apparently no amount of pre-show publicity could convey that he was playing a full set–and what a set!  Love’s Johnny Echols sat in with him on some (if not all, the memory’s a bit hazy) of the five Love songs Plant included; his lead guitar on “A House Is Not a Motel” was especially spine-tingling.  There were also a bunch of Led Zeppelin songs and a duet with Ian Hunter on “When Will I Be Loved.”  If I’m reading your mind correctly, you’re thinking “Wow, Robert Plant must’ve played a lot of tambourine that night.”  And you’re half right–he would have, had he remembered to bring one.  Instead he was forced to borrow Georgia’s.  At the end of the evening (and it was a long evening that came after a long afternoon), the tambourine was nowhere to be found on stage.  It took some doing but Georgia was finally granted an audience with Robert Plant, who in her telling was clad only in a towel, having (presumably)  just emerged from the shower.   He had brought the tambourine with him, for safekeeping, he claimed, though you’ll never convince me he wasn’t hoping to go back to England with a souvenir of the night he played with Yo La Tengo.  Our five-song set began with Love’s “A Message to Pretty,” included “Luci Baines” (recorded by Lee and Echols in their days as the American Four, and concluded with us backing Johnny Echols singing “Signed D.C.”

 

Heading west from yesterday’s Boston post, we arrive at Mass MOCA in North Adams, one year ago today, home of Wilco’s Solid Sound festival.  On this, day one, we are performing The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller with Sam Green, minutes after the conclusion of Wilco’s all-covers, all-requests set.  The trick is we’ve been asked to participate in Wilco’s show–first on “Tom Courtenay” (which has never sounded the same to us, now that we no longer have the use of Glenn Kotche’s gong), and then on the climactic “Roadrunner.”  So while Fuller fans make their way to our venue, we are being escorted through secret passageways in the depths of Mass MOCA, real spy stuff.

 

We asked Dave Schramm to play some guitar on our first Water Music session (where we recorded the “River of Water” single and our contribution to Luxury Condos), and were so happy with the results that we invited him to join the live act as well.  Somewhat surprisingly, he agreed.  His first shows were 29 years and one week ago, our Boston debut, followed on this day with an appearance at Maxwell’s, opening for the Go-Betweens.  New to the repertoire: “The Cone of Silence.”  Twenty-four years later, wearing our Condo Fucks hats, we return to an old haunt, T.T. the Bear in Cambridge, to help Jon Bernhardt commemorate 25 years on WMBR.  In case anyone forgets where they are, our set includes DMZ’s (by way of the Fugs) “Frenzy,” the Lyres’ (by way of the Customs) “Long Gone,” Pep Lester’s “Ben Wa Baby” and Classic Ruins’ “1 + 1 < 2” (which James performed once before, with Christmas).  For an encore, we empty the bench, adding Sleepyhead and the Bevis Frond for “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” saluting our pal Chris Knox in the weeks following his stroke (coincidentally, the last time we were at T.T.’s, it was with Tall Dwarfs).

 

On this day in 1989, we’re in London.  It’s the first time we ever play with the Clean and the last time we ever play with Stephan Wichnewski.  I manage to finagle my way into the Clean’s set as the third guitarist (Martin Phillips is the second!) on “Point That Thing Somewhere Else.”  Three years later, we’re in London again, and again it’s the last night of the tour.  Both Seam and we are opening for the Screaming Trees at the Underworld, and a great time, it is not.  Seam begin their short set concurrent with the doors opening, and if that sounds to you like they played in front of nobody, then like the great Bob Murphy before me, I have successfully painted the word picture.  As usual, we close our set with “Sudden Organ.”  Do I have to remind you that there’s no guitar on that song, that I play organ?  Or that the drums drop out close to the end, leaving the organ and fuzz bass to finish the song?  Of course not.  So on this night, time clearly being of the essence, as soon as “Sudden Organ” begins, Joe and the members of Seam strike my guitar amp.  When Georgia drops out, while James and I play on, she walks off and the drum set is removed from the stage.  I hit one last note, then organ and amplifier . . . gone.  James finishes the set by himself, his bass amp the only remaining piece of gear on the stage.  We weren’t sure that one could sneeringly break down  backline, but much to our satisfaction, it turned out that we could.

 

 

 

In the latter days of our 2003 with the Clean, June 19 finds us in San Francisco, midway through a three-night run at the Fillmore.  Shaking the setlist up for repeat visitors, we play “Night Falls on Hoboken” for the first time that year, and close with “Take Care.”  The Clean join us for the second encore, Robert Scott singing his “Block of Wood” and me on a cacophonous “Somebody’s Baby.”  But it’s the first encore that’s the lasting memory of the day, or maybe more accurately the soundcheck.  A mutual friend has arranged for the Flamin’ Groovies’ Cyril Jordan to play a few songs with us.  We meet for the first time that afternoon when Cyril arrives at the Fillmore.  He pulls his classic Dan Armstrong guitar from its case, plugs into his delay unit and our Fender Super Reverb, and we start playing “You Tore Me Down.”  I can’t believe what I’m hearing–it’s no longer our cover from Fakebook, but the Flamin’ Groovies!  We sing “Eight Days a Week” together, and close with, what else, “Shake Some Action.”