Author: Ira

The quartet that recorded Fakebook only played thrice, the last of which on this date 24 years ago.  At the time, WFMU’s signal was being threatened, requiring all sorts of fundraising.  A benefit at the Bottom Line was put together, headlined by They Might Be Giants and the Chris Stamey Group.  Georgia, me, Dave Schramm and Al Greller played a short set at both the early and late shows, mostly stuff from the forthcoming Fakebook record, though “I Found a Reason” and “Luxury Liner,” to name two, found their way into the repertoire.  Peter Stampfel was on the bill as well, and he joined us during the first show for “The One to Cry,” just as he did on Fakebook.  Thanks to our efforts, and to our efforts alone, WFMU continues to thrive to this day, although the Bottom Line was not so fortunate, shutting its doors in 2004.

 

Boy do I love the Flamin’ Groovies.  I remember buying my copies of Flamingo and Teenage Head in the East Village at Freebeing, of Grease and More Grease at Discophile on 8th Street, of sitting in my cashier’s booth at the parking lot on Roosevelt Island the summer of 1976, listening to WNEW waiting to hear “Shake Some Action.”  On this day 10 years ago, we’re completing a three-night run at the Fillmore in San Francisco with Antietam.  Our last time in town, the year before,  Cyril Jordan had joined us for three songs, and we jump at the chance for a return engagement.  This time we do “I Can’t Hide” and “19th Nervous Breakdown” and of course “Shake Some Action.”

 

Ten years ago today, we’re in San Francisco, on tour with Antietam.   Tara, Tim and Josh join in on “Nuclear War,” but that’s it for their participation on that night.  (The show also includes a guest appearance by Barbara and Terri Manning, whom we back on “Scissors” and “Every Pretty Girl.”)  Two years later, we’re in Rome for the first time and so’s Tara!  We take a break from eating gelato long enough to perform a set heavy on the just-completed but as-yet unreleased I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.   Tara sits in on the encore of Antietam’s “Orange Song” and Flipper’s “That’s the Way of the World.”

 

Eleven years ago today, you’ll recall, Juventus played Milan in UEFA Champions League final, the first time two Italian teams faced off for the European championship.  In a stroke of bad timing, we were performing in Bologna that night.  Knowing that attendance would be spotty until the match ended, we were happy to delay our set.  And when it was still scoreless after 90 minutes, necessitating first one than a second period of extra time, we waited some more.  Still no score.  Milan eventually won in a shootout, and finally, we could go on–but in a pre-social media era, who’s going to guess that we’ve accommodated Italian football fans (i.e. all of Italy) by starting 90 minutes late?  Answer: not that many.  We open with Joe singing “We Are the Champions” and celebrate the end of another tour by bringing the crew up to help on an encore of “Little Honda.”   More world travels on this day and non-standard YLT activity abounds.   In 2005, we performed The Sounds of Science at Tokyo’s Laforet Museum.  In 2010 the Condo Fucks entertained Primavera Sound attendees in Barcelona (Colin Newman told us that our set closer “Remake/Remodel” was too slow, but he was wrong).  And two years ago, en route to another Primavera, I took part in the Big Star Third tribute concert in London, a show which concluded with Ray Davies singing “The Letter.”

 

 

 

 

The morning after our Madrid debut, we are on our merry way to La Coruña.  We eventually arrive at the Street of Glass, which looks like it’s been plopped down at random in the middle of nowhere–on one side of the street are a long block of interconnected restaurants, and on the other a series of interconnected nightclubs.  It is not impossible that I am making all of this up, because I can find next to no indication online of this place, which is only fitting because my recollection of the evening, twenty-five years ago today, is that there was no evidence whatsoever that we would be performing.  But I’ve got a setlist that says we did, opening with “The Evil That Men Do–Craig’s Version,” perhaps because it made sense to start with an instrumental, if I’m remembering correctly that the mixing desk was behind the p.a., and closing with “Bermuda,” no doubt in tribute to the triangle we wondered if we’d stumbled into.  It took hours for our Spanish tour manager, Javier, to get paid, and we didn’t get to a bed until somewhere in the vicinity of 6 a.m., with a wakeup call for the next day’s show in mere hours away.

 

Our 1989 European tour was a mess.  Band management, handled in-house, could be summed up as “hope for the best.”  Sometimes it worked.  This was not one of those times.  We committed to seven weeks away from home before we actually saw whether there were enough dates to make it worth our while (there weren’t).  As our bassist–Stephan–was someone with whom we had little in common (best as we could tell, as he rarely spoke), we made the perhaps understandable, but nevertheless short-sighted decision to pass up traveling with a European tour manager who could’ve doubled as soundman in favor of someone we thought it’d be fun to travel Europe with.  And no doubt, were we not so far out of our depth, we would have been right in our choice of Chris Nelson, taking time out from The Scene Is Now and Mofungo to don his self-styled factotum hat.   We brought him up a few times to sing “Let’s Compromise,” which he recorded with Information and we covered on New Wave Hot Dogs, before switching his turn in the spotlight to “1969.”  And what a turn.  Creating mayhem wherever he roamed on stage, one never knew what would happen next.  Twenty-five years ago today, we were in Madrid, at the just-the-facts named Rock Club.  It was a big place, but it was also a free show, so the attendance was sizable, as was the height of the stage.  Who could blame Chris for picking this night to stage dive?  Unfortunately, equally blameless were the people up front–turned out it wasn’t quite as  packed as it seemed–who to a man got out of his way.  As loud as we were playing, I still imagine that I heard Chris land.   He had a noticeable limp for quite a while, and we decided to remove “1969” from the rotation for a few weeks.