Author: Ira

Seventeen years ago today, we are playing with Barbara Manning at the Troubadour in LA.  I’m selling t-shirts while Joe attends to other business and someone approaches the table and says he’s a writer for The Simpsons.  Sheepish that I can’t recognize a Simpsons writer on sight, I ask his name, and it’s Donick Cary.  Though his face needs an introduction, his name does not.  As soon as Joe returns, I take Donick backstage to meet Georgia and James, and before you know it, we’re contributing our music to “D’oh-in’ in the Wind” and are modeling wigs on Parks & Recreation.  Meanwhile, a gentleman named Hector has been in touch, asking if we’d let him play the trumpet solo from “Shadows” (performed on I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One by Jonathan Marx) during the show.  We don’t make any promises, but invite him to come by early for an audition.  He does, and he sounds just fine–he’s got the job.  We let him know where in the set it lands, and are seconds away from going on when someone, can’t recall if it’s James or Georgia, but it’s definitely not me, remembers that we’ve changed the key of “Shadows” from the one we recorded it in.  The last thing we hear as we go on stage is the sound of Hector trying to transpose the solo, which has less than a calming effect.  But in my recollection, it goes great, and if you know otherwise, please keep it to yourself.  Two years earlier, we made our San Antonio debut at Taco Land.  There’s no stage, it’s possible that we’re lit by nothing more than some overhanging light bulbs, the power definitely goes out not once but twice during our set, and we have a blast.  A few weeks later, we’re hanging around the northwest awaiting the start of Lollapalooza, and are opening for Doug Sahm’s Last Real Texas Blues Band.  I get a belly laugh out of Augie Meyers when I tell him that we just played Taco Land, which makes my day.  In a gruesome postscript to this story nearly 10 years to the day later, owner Ram Ayala and employee Douglas Morgan were murdered during a robbery.

 

Finally, I’d like to reminisce about something a little more current, and thank each and every person who came to see us in South America over the last two weeks.  We had an amazing time.

 

Feeling overlooked in Boston, we decide to play our unoverlookable noise set 26 years ago today at Green Street Station, to the consternation of Steve Michener, and perhaps others.  Three years later, Eleventh Dream Day and YLT have made our way to Frankfurt.  Somehow, we convince City Slang prexy Christof Ellinghaus to sing lead on “Barstool Blues”–years later some German music critic steals Christof’s car just to get his hands on the recording.  But it’s 1992 that’s on my mind today.  Our tour with Seam has reached Spain, Valencia to be precise, aka paella ground zero.  The always challenging act of eating dinner on a show night (i.e. most every night) is never harder than in Spain, where restaurants serving before 9 pm are pretty much nonexistent.  Luckily, our concert in Valencia is late as well, so our party of eight is the first table to be filled and basically have the place to ourselves because we’re eating so “early.”  All tour the omnivores of Yo La Tengo have been amused by dining with Seam.  Bassist Lexi Mitchell would invariably sniff any food placed in front of her, and if it was acceptable–and not much of it was–she would pass it along to Sooyoung Park, who was even pickier, and wouldn’t entertain eating anything Lexi turned down.  When our group was asked if we wanted seafood in the paella, Seam’s food anxiety reflexes were quicker than our We Like It All response, and seafood was declined.  I won’t lie to you: I was not pleased.  Until, that is, our table was filled with tapas, all varieties of delicious fish–if we had been told dinner was over at this point, it would have already qualified as the best meal of the trip.  But dinner was not over.  Someone took off the soundtrack to Beatlemania that had been playing since our arrival, and put on what we’ve always assumed was the National Anthem of Paella.  An enormous paella paraded by for our approval, which was unreserved from our side of the table, in part because that was the night we learned that in Europe “seafood” and “shellfish” are two distinct food groups (presumably Seam were just learning this as well).  As Beatlemania returned to the stereo we tucked into an amazing paella.  No memory of the set, but there’s no way it was our best.  Sorry, Valencia!

 

JP from the Joiner Inners writes: My wedding song was “Our Way to Fall” – June 10, 2007.  Our DJ opted to cut it about 30 seconds short, but rather than utilize an elegant fadeout, he opted for the abrupt record-scratch ending.  It went downhill from there.  Since the email is signed Kristen and JP from Cheshire, CT, one can hope that it was the DJ set that went sour and not the marriage.

 

Inexplicably, nothing we’ve done on this day over the years is as memorable as all three of these shows that I didn’t get around to mentioning in yesterday’s all things Clean post.  1991: Running late in Dortmund on our tour with Eleventh Dream Day.  Past curfew, with the audience requesting more music, we’re allowed to continue, so long as we play acoustically, which we do for another four songs.  1995: Our English tour with Stereolab concludes in London.  When it is discovered that Sebadoh are booked to play London the same night, the two shows join forces.   With Quickspace on the bill as well, our set is but a half hour, comprised in its entirety of a medley of “From a Motel 6” and “Blue Line Swinger.”  2011: Live at Leeds, the spinner lands on Sitcom Theater, and we discover that though it appears on English cable tv, not everyone is as au courant with Judge Judy as we are.  Nevertheless, Georgia’s performance as Robert Williams and James’s as John Lydon win plaudits from the critics.

 

The Clean Compilation, which we first heard on its 12-song-cassette edition, blew our minds.  When we found out that they were coming to CBGB and Maxwell’s in the spring of 1989, but that we would be in Europe, I was crestfallen.  Far and away the best part of the mess of that European tour was that among the excess of off days, we were a train ride from Amsterdam on June 8, when the Clean and Chris Knox were playing the Melkweg.  (Coincidentally, the Feelies were nearby at the Paradiso.)  Afterward we went backstage and met them.  Chris gave us a copy of Tall Dwarfs’ Dogma, and personalized it with a salute to Georgia’s parents.  Then–six people with nothing to lose on the late night streets of Amsterdam–we all went out for hot chocolate.  Robert recently sent me a copy of that night’s setlist, but I don’t need a reminder of the way it felt when Chris Knox sang “Beauty.”  And as it happens, 14 years later, we’re playing with the Clean at First Avenue in Minneapolis.  The whole band joins us at the end of our set for “Nuclear War,” and again during the encore on David Kilgour’s “Seemingly Stranded.”

 

Going through life as I do with a smile for an umbrella, I rarely give voice to a complaint.  That said, it does not go unnoticed that as we approach our 30th birthday, Yo La Tengo is rarely considered the new, young band.  But six years ago today, we were just that, opening a show in Sevilla, Spain for the New York Dolls (a mere six days later it happened again, as we went on just before the Happy Mondays).   And now that I think of it, in 2003, we toured with another group formed before us: the Clean.  June 7 is the our second show together, at the Vic in Chicago.  We encore with Robert Scott singing his “Before We Go Under,” and he and Hamish Kilgour help out on “Little Honda” and “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine.”  Not only that, but Dave Schramm‘s in town, playing nearby in Laura Cantrell‘s group, so he drops in mid-set for three songs.  Great memories, all of them, but I think a band secret ballot would choose our 2009 Freewheeling show in Hamburg as our favorite recollection of the day.  Held in a beautiful old theater with a narrow dressing area filled with costumes and props, when someone asked “What’s on your rider?” we left the stage for a moment and returned with a few samples.  As usual, we introduced the set by suggesting that the audience ask real questions, as opposed to, say, “Will you play ‘Sugarcube’?”  No sooner are the words out of my mouth than a gentleman on the stage right side of the room hollers, “My Heart’s Reflection!”  We reiterate that we’re really looking for questions, which quiets him, but not for long.  “Pablo and Andrea,” he yells out a bit later.  Once more explaining that we prefer that people don’t just shout out song titles, we perhaps send a mixed message by our conciliatory gesture of doing “My Heart’s Reflection.”  Late in the show, someone on stage left interrupts some story the three of us are telling, interjecting a song title that escapes me now, but I recall as tangentially related to our conversation.  Looking right, my thought is to ignore the voice, but then I see out of the corner of my eye a tilt of James’s head pointing me to the source of the request.  It’s the guy from earlier in the show, having switched seats,  I can only assume thinking a new location will result in better reactions to his contributions.