Author: Ira

We used to make a regular stop at the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Enger, Germany, home of Forum Enger.  Easily the highlight of our first trip to Europe in 1987, we were brought back for so many encores that we started inserting songs we hadn’t rehearsed (and if you’ve got a recording of that show, please keep it to yourself!), and then hung out drinking beer and listening to records till daybreak–I know it was the first time I heard “Lee Remick” by the Go-Betweens.  Not sure when the club shut down; we played there for the last time in December 1993.  Anticipating our WFMU appearances by over two years, we played nothing but requests, among them the version of “We Are the Champions” that appeared on the Little Honda cd.  Seven years later, on this day 14 years ago, the club has relocated down the street a spell in Bielefeld.  We’re glad to be back.  We salute Robyn Hitchcock, last seen in Scotland a week earlier, and say all we’ve got to say with the only appearance on the tour of “Love Power.”

 

Twenty-five years ago today, we played one of the more enjoyable shows of our European slog of 1989, in Nuremberg, opening for Nikki Sudden & the French Revolution.   Our set went well, and we had a great time hanging out with Nikki’s band.  Things got a bit awkward when I confessed to drummer Andy Bean that I was unfamiliar with Can, but not only didn’t he hold a grudge, he compiled a greatest hits cassette and presented it to me in London at the end of our tour.  I am currently without a cassette player, but I’ve still got the compilation.

 

Eighteen years ago today, we performed at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.  Films were projected on us, Phil Morrison and Bill Mooney go-go danced, and we played “Damage” for the first time.  And Sari was there:

I’m also part of the set that played a Yo La Tengo song as the first dance at their wedding.  It seemed apt as we met at a YLT show in 1995 (Opera House, Toronto).

But what I really want to tell you about is the time I found myself on a road trip to Pittsburgh to check out the Andy Warhol Museum’s first anniversary celebration.  Yo La Tengo played a gig in the parking lot and after the show my friends and I walked slowly away.  We could hear someone shouting “Derek! Derek!” and turned to see James running after us.  I wasn’t dating Derek yet but my crush swelled as not only was this guy smart and good looking, apparently he was in with indie rock celebs.  Our stop at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Museum the next day sealed the deal and we began dating.  We married in 2000.

Speaking of “indie rock celebs,” last year in Seattle, the Baseball Project’s Peter Buck joins us during our encore for “The Queen of Eyes” and “Tell Me When It’s Over,”  and M. Ward helps us pay tribute to June Carter Cash in Malmö.  Klaus from Berlin witnesses one of those: 11 years ago I saw you in Malmö, being an exchange student in nearby Lund.  I was in the front row enjoying every minute.  I didn’t really know what to expect beforehand, having gotten to know you just two years earlier (“And then nothing” was album of the month in German music magazine “Musikexpress”) and downloaded a few of your albums enjoying fast Swedish internet (I now do own all your albums – if possible on vinyl).  But it was great, one of the greatest concerts I’ve been to.  Not being able to really go into details, I was really amazed by the curve of dynamics you created.  Starting really quiet (I got a setlist from one of your crew members, which he produced neatly folded from his breast pocket, I posted it on setlist.fm (and if you click on who created the setlist (Zues), you can see most of the other concerts I’ve been to, YLT is on place 3)), you really rocked out later and then really managed to calm the whole thing down with “Nuclear War”.   I am unsure about the encores, I do remember “Madeline” and I think you did “You Can Have It All”.   Thanks for your music.

 

 

 

 

 

Heather from Baltimore writes:
My most visceral YLT memory is spring semester, 1997, staying up all night on the last night before finals week ended.  I played “Center of Gravity” on repeat on my CD player the entire time I wrote all 4 term papers for my University of Montana Shakespeare class (56 pages in 8 hours).  I got an A in that class, and I think YLT deserves at least partial credit.  (Coffee also deserves some credit, and my firm commitment to procrastination.)  She guesses that the morning in question is May 16, earning high marks for honesty by conceding: (That’s an educated guess because I don’t have that year’s academic calendar anymore.)  Had she hightailed it back to Baltimore, she might have arrived at Fletcher’s in time for the first night of our I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One tour.  “Center of Gravity” was not in the set, but presumably she had heard enough of it by then.

 

Not that long ago, Vernon from Birmingham, AL dropped us a line, asking me to be more generous to our early years, citing one show belittled in these pages as the one that turned him into a convert.  Sorry, Vernon, but like Paul McCartney before me, here I go again.  For the second consecutive day, we’re in Berlin–this time it’s 1989, our first time in the city, back when east and west were still divided.   We’re nearly two weeks into what will be our final tour before Stephan retires from the organization once and for all, and we’re not having a great time.  Having committed ourselves to seven weeks in Europe, we ultimately have one day off for nearly every show we do, and that’s after scaring up at least a half dozen dates during the tour.  Shigaku Presents, our English label at the time, proposes recording tonight’s show at the Ecstasy, 25 years ago today.  I can’t say we’re particularly pleased with the results; can we pretend to blame the mix rather than our performance?  Eventually, five songs appear on the Bar/None “Here Comes My Baby” cd ep .

 

 

Fourteen years ago today, we flew into Berlin to take part in City Slang’s 10th anniversary.  It had been five years since we’d parted with the label, but nothing could diminish our love and appreciation for Christof.  And I do mean nothing, because if this show couldn’t, nothing can.  A seven-band spectacular set in a gigantic former post office, things started off innocently.  We did our soundcheck without incident, and later began our set as we often did with “Night Falls in Hoboken.”  I played that one on acoustic guitar, then switched to electric for “Tears Are in Your Eyes.”  The first time I went to the mic to sing, I was thrown backwards (fortunately) by the largest electrical shock of my life.  Still don’t know how the ground changed in between soundcheck and show, but it did.  We weren’t precisely finished for the night, but for the purpose of brevity, let’s just say we may as well have been.  Alec Empire would soon criticize our performance, suggesting that it should be every artist’s goal to die on stage.  Fourteen years earlier, we took part in a triple-bill record-release show at another non-music venue, the Limelight disco (current home of Limelight Shops).  Once again the reviews were not good.  I can’t really argue with Robert Palmer’s critique except to say he had clearly not seen us before, because–sad but true–that night was actually us at our most confident.  We brought a kitchen timer on stage with us and set it to 20 minutes, and squeezed in six of the songs from Ride the Tiger with guest bassist Steve Michener, before giving way to Mofungo (End of the World, Part 2) and the Feelies (The Good Earth).  More uncomfortable memories tomorrow!