Category: News

In 2000, Ray Davies played at the Jane Street Theater, and we were his backup band for about half of it.  Ray came out to our Jersey City rehearsal space to rehearse, and if the NSA was bugging us, we could really use a copy of those tapes.  In addition to working on a bunch of his new songs, we tried out all sorts of obscure old Kinks numbers, most of which never left the practice room.  Hard to narrow it down to a favorite memory, but here goes: Pretty much the only song we suggested that Ray wouldn’t entertain was “You Shouldn’t Be Sad.”  Undeterred, we started playing it anyway, and Ray eventually joined in, in a self-mocking music hall croon that left us slightly delirious.  Fourteen years ago tonight was the third and final show of the run.

 

                                                        John Chamberlain – Kinks (1965)

Today marks the 21st anniversary of our first release on Matador, the “Shaker” 7-inch.  Our heartfelt thanks to Gerard, Chris, Patrick, and everyone at the label, past and present.  We marked the fifteenth anniversary by playing in the then-empty McCarren Pool in Brooklyn.  We brought a horn section for the set openers “Mr. Tough” and a cover of Bobby Freeman’s “C’mon and Swim” (co-written by Sly Stone), and encored by joining forces with Titus Adronicus to salute  NJ with “Where Eagles Dare.”

 

Closing night of our 1986 tour, in Cleveland.  Headliner Pete Shelley’s soundcheck goes so long that we are forced to set up and hastily check after doors open.  When we get back to the shared dressing room and find we have it to ourselves, we decide to make our displeasure known, and take a single cherry tomato from the catering and place it in an empty guitar case that’s been left there.  Speaking of Cleveland, twelve years later, it’s tension-free as we share a bill with David Thomas and Two Pale Boys in Edinburgh, unless you count David’s backstage dismissal of skim milk as tension.  He accepts our invitation to sing “Pushin’ Too Hard” with us, to which he adds some stellar Ace Tone work, particularly when he removes one of his shoes and places it across the keys.  And just last year, we can be found in Mexico City for a wild show that includes a bra being thrown onstage during “I’ll Be Around.”  (And its own Cleveland content: an encore of “Accident.”)

 

. . .  when you’re the only surfer boy around.  Ray from Irving, Texas writes:  I won the Yo La Tengo surfboard just a few days after my birthday in ’03!  (My birthday is August 17; the contest winner was announced on the 22nd.)  Unfortunately, I had to part with it when my wife (now ex) and I moved to Japan in ’09.  So many regrets — selling that board . . .  moving to Japan . . . getting married.

We don’t recall exactly what was required of Ray before he won, but based on this news item culled from Matador’s website . . .

Win an unbelievably cool custom-designed Yo La Tengo surfboard, or runner-up prizes of autographed Yo La Tengo CDs, by entering our complicated contest which requires you to watch amusing video clips of Ira interacting with Jon Wurster of the Midnight Pajama Jam, along with puppets Lumpy and Scott Fellers.

. . . we’re guessing that distinguishing Jon Wurster from Jon Benjamin was a key component.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty-two years ago today, we’re at CBGB with Chain Gang and Love Child.  Shades of the old CBGB, we play two sets: the first one is quiet and includes the premiere of “A Worrying Thing”; the encore for the loud set is our one and only performance of the Terraplanes’ “Evil Going On.”  Sounds like a full evening of entertainment, does it not?  If you said yes, then you clearly didn’t spend a lot of time at CBGB, who were famous/notorious, call it what you will, for adding one more group to mop up after the headliner.  If the band was lucky, there’d still be a few people in the club when you went on; there surely wouldn’t be by the time you finished (as we learned first-hand when we played the late late show for our 1985 Bowery and Bleecker debut).  And for the most part, that group would never be heard from again, as was the case on this night when the night concluded with an act called . . . let me check my notes . . .  the Dave Matthews Band.

 

Old friends and new on this date in YLT history.  Our 1986 tour is in the home stretch 28 years ago today in Nashville.  We are at the Exit/In and Flaming Lips are across the street at The End.  A jumping Monday night, yes?  Or no–when the two bands compare notes years later, it turns out that both blame their empty room on the other show.  In our case, our former Hoboken roommate Danny Amis is in the audience, until we bring him up to play “Penetration” which leads to another inter-band controversy.  I’ve always maintained that Danny taking the stage reduced the attendance to zero, and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner insists he was there.  But I’ll bet he says that to Wayne Coyne, too.  Seven years later, we are in Köln for Popkomm, Germany’s Antwort to South by Southwest, laying the groundwork for the release of Painful.  City Slang chancellor Christof Ellinghaus introduces us to Rob Challice, who becomes our European booking agent, and has remained so for 21 years and counting.