Category: News

June 26 is so eventful for us over the years that I don’t know which 930 Club appearance to start with.  Let’s go chronologically.  In 1990, we had just begun touring supporting the Sundays when I got Lyme disease.  Luckily, it was caught early, and we never missed a show, although I was pretty loopy for this one.  (I even neglected to note the setlist!)  Eight years later, and a brownout in D.C. keeps the club from opening while hundreds of people wait on line.  When it’s determined that the date will have to be postponed, we go outside with a Casio, an acoustic guitar and some percussion and play eight songs.  Of course, given the way we project, I suspect no one actually heard us, but it’s the thought that counts, right?  But my favorite memory of the day comes in 1995.  When we get offered the sidestage for the first two weeks of Lollapalooza, beginning in the northwest, we do some quick rerouting, resulting in three stops in western Canada, including this date in Kelowna.  As usual, our contract calls for some provision for dinner–most venues give us money to fend for ourselves, sometimes a meal is provided in-house.  Never before had we been invited to the promoter’s home where his dad would be grilling steaks.   At some point, the promoter’s little brother made a brief appearance, picked up some food and split–it was explained that he was in the doghouse, having recently been nailed for racking up an enormous long-distance phone bill for calls to an Asian sex line!

After a successful escape from Minneapolis, we arrive in Chicago for the Green Festival, three years ago today.  We’re in for the long haul–an outdoor show, after which the three of us play records deep deep into the night at Big Star.  The next day we’re playing a Wheel show at Subterranean, which naturally is on the second floor.  A couple of days earlier we received a really really nice email from M.E., suggesting we play “Sister Ray,” and somehow she is so persuasive, we’re willing to overlook that we don’t know “Sister Ray.”  Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo and Mark Greenberg help us out on guitar and organ, and I use a few pages of cheat sheets.  “Sucking on my . . .”  Line!

Three years ago today, we were playing the second of a two-night stand at Minneapolis’s 400 Bar.  We coaxed our old friend Mark Freeman on stage to play “I Wanna Be Your Lover” with us (Dylan’s, as opposed to the other geographically appropriate song of that name we could have picked), and then retired to our tour bus, where we awaited our driver and the early morning trip to Chicago.  To quote Snoopy, suddenly a shot rang out!, and before we knew it we found ourselves police-taped into a crime scene.  From our windowless bunks, we had no idea what happened,  and wondered if our equipment was safe, though no one was exactly anxious to leave the bus to check.

It’s a day of unusual bills.  Nineteen years ago today, having discovered that our preferred Portland date would put us in competition with a bigtime local act, we opt instead to open for Everclear (the Dandy Warhols play first), and the less said about that, the better.  In 2006, we participated in a benefit for the ailing Arthur Lee at the Beacon Theater, headlined by Robert Plant, and also including Ryan Adams, Ian Hunter, Nils Lofgren, and Garland Jeffreys.  Where to begin?  There were lots of empty seats, which was weird because you had to figure that Robert Plant on his own could sell the room out easily, but apparently no amount of pre-show publicity could convey that he was playing a full set–and what a set!  Love’s Johnny Echols sat in with him on some (if not all, the memory’s a bit hazy) of the five Love songs Plant included; his lead guitar on “A House Is Not a Motel” was especially spine-tingling.  There were also a bunch of Led Zeppelin songs and a duet with Ian Hunter on “When Will I Be Loved.”  If I’m reading your mind correctly, you’re thinking “Wow, Robert Plant must’ve played a lot of tambourine that night.”  And you’re half right–he would have, had he remembered to bring one.  Instead he was forced to borrow Georgia’s.  At the end of the evening (and it was a long evening that came after a long afternoon), the tambourine was nowhere to be found on stage.  It took some doing but Georgia was finally granted an audience with Robert Plant, who in her telling was clad only in a towel, having (presumably)  just emerged from the shower.   He had brought the tambourine with him, for safekeeping, he claimed, though you’ll never convince me he wasn’t hoping to go back to England with a souvenir of the night he played with Yo La Tengo.  Our five-song set began with Love’s “A Message to Pretty,” included “Luci Baines” (recorded by Lee and Echols in their days as the American Four, and concluded with us backing Johnny Echols singing “Signed D.C.”

Heading west from yesterday’s Boston post, we arrive at Mass MOCA in North Adams, one year ago today, home of Wilco’s Solid Sound festival.  On this, day one, we are performing The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller with Sam Green, minutes after the conclusion of Wilco’s all-covers, all-requests set.  The trick is we’ve been asked to participate in Wilco’s show–first on “Tom Courtenay” (which has never sounded the same to us, now that we no longer have the use of Glenn Kotche’s gong), and then on the climactic “Roadrunner.”  So while Fuller fans make their way to our venue, we are being escorted through secret passageways in the depths of Mass MOCA, real spy stuff.

We asked Dave Schramm to play some guitar on our first Water Music session (where we recorded the “River of Water” single and our contribution to Luxury Condos), and were so happy with the results that we invited him to join the live act as well.  Somewhat surprisingly, he agreed.  His first shows were 29 years and one week ago, our Boston debut, followed on this day with an appearance at Maxwell’s, opening for the Go-Betweens.  New to the repertoire: “The Cone of Silence.”  Twenty-four years later, wearing our Condo Fucks hats, we return to an old haunt, T.T. the Bear in Cambridge, to help Jon Bernhardt commemorate 25 years on WMBR.  In case anyone forgets where they are, our set includes DMZ’s (by way of the Fugs) “Frenzy,” the Lyres’ (by way of the Customs) “Long Gone,” Pep Lester’s “Ben Wa Baby” and Classic Ruins’ “1 + 1 < 2” (which James performed once before, with Christmas).  For an encore, we empty the bench, adding Sleepyhead and the Bevis Frond for “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” saluting our pal Chris Knox in the weeks following his stroke (coincidentally, the last time we were at T.T.’s, it was with Tall Dwarfs).