Author: Ira

Spent a week in Texas in 2008, starting on this day, mostly at the South by Southwest hullabaloo.   The festival’s never been our idea of fun, but as jobs go, we’re all for one that makes it possible to be a fly on the wall at a Guitar Wolf soundcheck or catch Swamp Dogg and Dwight Twilley on the same night, to say nothing of being just upwind of Lockhart.  This time, we arrived early for the film festival, since Emily Hubley’s The Toe Tactic (which we scored) was being screened–and played acoustically at a TTT function, with James singing Roky Erickson’s “Right Track Now” for a little local color.  Afterwards, me and my nephew brave the revelry on 6th Street to attend a midnight screening of Shuttle (“one of the lamest and silliest thrillers in many a moon”–Jason Whyte, efilmcritic.com).

 

Dave Schramm relinquished the lead guitar chair at the end of August 1986.   We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t sting.  We did one Dave-Who? five-song set as a trio at NYC’s Pyramid Club (performing “The Story of Jazz” for the first time) and then went back to being a quartet; sometimes Dave Rick played lead, sometimes Chris Stamey.  Right before a show, we’d have a practice with Dave or Chris, but more often than not,  we rehearsed as a three-piece, in our basement on Garden Street in Hoboken, where the ceiling was too low for Stephan to stand.  It got to the point where we’d accept a date, and then see who was free to play it.  Finally, on this day in 1987, booked into Albany’s QE2, the answer was no one, and we did the show as a trio.  How much of that was by design?  I can’t recall, but I know the three of us were definitely feeling more confident in the basement, where I’d do my imitations of Dave, Chris and Dave.   We did one more show with Chris and one more with Dave Schramm, and then became a trio full-time.

 

March 6 has found us in six different countries over the years: among them Germany (an acoustic show by Georgia and me in advance of May I Sing With Me that was perhaps the single smokiest place we ever played), New Zealand (1998’s minor fiasco in Hamilton that we dealt with by performing a set of exclusively covers), and the UK (where members of Gorky’s join in on our set-ending “Nuclear War” for the first time, as they will continue to do for the duration of the tour).   Steve from London is fuzzy on a few facts, but in fairness to him, he had a busy day:

My birthday is on 3rd March.  On this day in 2004 I was taken on a third date by a young woman to see YLT/Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, UK (we also took in a matinee performance of George Orwell’s Animal Farm by a young art house theatre troupe that was on in the same building!).  It was the first gig we had ever attended together, so of course the first time we saw YLT together.  We are now happily married with a family and have seen YLT on every tour since!  I like to think that dancing together to an extraordinary encore rendition of “Nuclear War” (by both bands) cemented the bond that has led to this love and lifetime of happiness!  It also means that YLT are a significant part of the soundtrack to our life story – so thanks guys!

 

Nine days after the inspiration for “Attack on Love,” the seed of another song on Electr-o-pura is sown.   At a Salvation Army prior to soundchecking at the Stone Lounge in Tampa on this date in 1994, I found My Little Corner of the World by Richie Van.  It had a lot to recommend the risk of a dollar: it was autographed, it was on Art Records, and there was a cover of “Joy to the World.”   Turned out to be a fake live album–electric guitar, vocal and drum machine recorded in a studio, each song greeted by mismatched applause–allegedly from a  (nonexistent?) Florida nightspot, the Deep Jigger Lounge.   No songwriting credits and our less-than-encyclopedic knowledge of the career of Anita Bryant allowed us to mistake the title track for a Richie Van original.   Georgia sang it for the first time at the Fez, backed by me and Bruce Bennett.    My mom was in the audience that night and told us she was singing along.  Once we ascertained that she was not familiar with Richie Van’s oeuvre, we realized that the song was in fact a standard.  We got a nice return on my investment: Richie Van appears in “The Hour Grows Late,” our version of “My Little Corner of the World” closed I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, and my mom has sung it with us pretty much annually since 2007.

 

Our cross-country tour of 1988, the source of much mirth in this space these last few weeks, draws to a close on this day, in Pittsburgh.  Looking over my set lists and searching the memory bank, after a triumphant date at the I-Beam in San Francisco, the trip east is mostly slog, and upon walking into the Decade, home to what local journalists would later term “a bruising bunch of bar-rock bands,” I doubt we guessed how fun the show would turn out to be.   As I recall, we were treated well by the club and audience alike,  played a longer than usual set, and drove all night back to Hoboken, mission close enough to accomplished.

 

Ten years ago today, our UK jaunt with Gorky’s reaches Basingstoke and it’s not impossible that it was only then that I knew for sure that Robyn Hitchcock hadn’t invented the place.  With members of the Terraplanes in the house, we encore with “Evil Going On.”  Rewind another four years and we’re rejoining the tour promoting the release of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out as it arrives in Detroit.  Things are definitely getting looser.  Lambchop’s Deanna Varagona and Dennis Cronin add horns to “You Can Have It All,” David Kilgour sings “Billy Two” during the encore, and even the Majestic’s fire alarm gets into the act, adding a few deafening flourishes to “Our Way to Fall.”  Willie from Bangor, Maine was there too:

Following YLT’s performance at Detroit’s Majestic Theater, my friends literally shove my timid little self to go say hi to James, who’s hanging around by the bar.  He amiably carries the brief conversation as I am too shy to say much of anything.  For some reason, we begin talking about The Simpsons and he tells me that he recently discovered a real-life establishment named Uncle Moe’s.  He confirms that it does indeed boast “all kinds of crazy crap on the walls,” at which point my night attains perfection. 

Before I sign off, a postscript to Saturday’s installment in which we wondered how “Warm Leatherette” found its way into our encore.   Chachacha Miller offers an explanation.  PPS: It was 1992, February 22, to be exact.   We played with Love Child, and concluded the show with all six of us playing Moondog’s “All Is Loneliness.”