Author: Ira

In 1990, with Fakebook awaiting release on Bar/None, Georgia and I took a road trip south.  We visited friends, saw the Mets lose to the Braves (a game in which the Braves’ pitcher, Derek Lilliquist, hit the only two home runs of his career), and as long as we were in the neighborhood, brought along an acoustic guitar and promoted our forthcoming record at college radio.  On this date 14 years ago, we were in Tuscaloosa.  Perhaps rattled by the circuitous route we took in search of Archibald’s barbecue, I neglected to note just what station it was we visited, but once there we made ourselves comfortable, playing seven songs.  More acoustic action, four years later, as we turned a one-off at Grinnell College into a two-off, performing a low-key set at Chicago’s Rainbo bar.  We worked up Harry Burgess’s “Chicago Policeman” to provide a little local color.

 

On this date four years ago, we participated in a benefit for Chris Knox at (Le) Poisson Rouge.  We were the backing band for both David Kilgour and Portastatic, and David played with us during out set.  Twelve years earlier, we shared a bill with Toots & the Maytals in Wesleyan.  Don’t know if Toots had another show that same day in another state, but we did.  And David (no relation) from . . .  he didn’t say . . . was there:

May 6, 1998 was a momentous date.  Yo La Tengo played at Bogie’s in Albany, NY and David met Pam there for their first date.  We had been emailing for a few weeks, Pam found me on Yahoo! Personals!

I let her know that the cover was $10 and I’d be there early with friends (little did I know the polite thing would have been to buy her ticket).  I also let her know that when the music started there would be no talking.
(She wasn’t sure what to do/say when she had to pee during your set, but didn’t want me to think she was ditching me.)  We chatted with James a bit at the merchandise table and he seemed a bit put off that we had met online.

On Friday May 3, 2013 we celebrated our 15th anniversary with Yo La Tengo at End of an Ear Records and The Mohawk in Austin, TX.  Thank you Yo La Tengo!

 

During our first couple of tours with James, it was common that Georgia and I would sing a quiet song or two by ourselves. For the moment, he was still the fill-in bassist, on loan from Christmas. But the show in Princeton on this day 23 years ago is unique. Playing on the lawn in front of the Terrace eating club on a beautiful spring day, we did a beautiful-spring-day set: a few more covers than at a regular show, and “Mushroom Cloud of Hiss” got the afternoon off. I’m a little fuzzy about the next part–I know there were two other bands on the bill, so it would not be surprising if the schedule was, shall we say, loose. In any case, James had to leave to catch a train back to Providence. Georgia and I ended up performing a second set as a duo. Dangerhouse Records is in heavy rotation: “Let’s Get Rid of New York” is in the first set, “Adult Books” closes the second.

 

Growing up, my family was not one of those that ate in front of the tv.  The only exceptions were that my brothers and I were allowed to leave the table early if dinner overlapped with either Batman or The Monkees.  So when we found out that two years ago today, Lambchop would be performing in San Francisco with Mike Nesmith as the opener, we nearly canceled our Freewheeling show in Santa Cruz.  Instead, we played our two sets and then hustled to SF for a post-game get-together.  (And no, we didn’t rush through our Santa Cruz concert.  In fact, I’m a little insulted that you would even ask.  We played three encores, including the Pep Lester classic “Ben Wa Baby.”)  The next year we were in Dallas.  Sadly it just wasn’t feasible to hang out for three weeks for the upcoming Peter Tork show, but we added “The Door Into Summer” to our program to help get the audience psyched.

 

One of the perks of being in a rock band that you don’t hear about that often is that only very rarely is one called upon to submit a grant application.  Yet that’s just what we did in advance of our UK tour of May 2000.  A national arts council with money to allocate wanted to know what uniquely English thing we’d do with it.  Persuaded that our first concept, a rock opera starring Susanna Hoffs and Jamie Farr entitled Bangles and M*A*S*H, was a nonstarter, we decided instead to add a couple of Brits to the lineup.  We had done something similar in the U.S. in February/March with our friends, Mac McCaughan and David Kilgour.  But in this case, we went further afield.  It was hard to imagine what Neil Innes and Sonic Boom had in common, other than that we were fans of them.  (And in the case of Neil Innes, that’s an understatement–I had been obsessed with the Bonzo Dog Band since high school.  As much as I liked Monty Python, I went to their NYC live show strictly because Neil was part of it.)  A week into a European tour, we scheduled two days in London for intensive rehearsal before our show in Cambridge, on this day fourteen years ago.  The two-set performance ran close to three hours, with both Neil and Sonic singing a few of their songs (as well as us singing Spacemen 3’s “Walkin’ with Jesus” and the Bonzos’ “Ready-Mades”).

 

Following our Toronto show, we had an off day to drive home, after which we were to play with Hypnolovewheel at the Knitting Factory on this day in 1992.  It was an eerie trip as we followed the reaction to the Rodney King verdict on the radio, not knowing what we’d find when we got back to New York.  We didn’t think it possible to ignore what was going on around us, so we opened our first set with “(You Caught Me) Smilin'” and our second set with some improvised attempt to convey fear, confusion and anger, though I suspect we mostly communicated confusion.  Hopefully the mood was lighter, though probably no less confused, at a Wellesley College matinee in 1998 when we invited our nine-year-old nephew to take a Farfisa solo on “Emulsified,” no prior training required.  Making our way to northern California, we spent a delightful day in Sonoma County in 2012, playing an afternoon set at The Last Record Store and Freewheeling in the evening in Petaluma.  Last/not least: Electr-o-pura released on May 2, 1995.