Category: News

On this day in 1989, we’re in London.  It’s the first time we ever play with the Clean and the last time we ever play with Stephan Wichnewski.  I manage to finagle my way into the Clean’s set as the third guitarist (Martin Phillips is the second!) on “Point That Thing Somewhere Else.”  Three years later, we’re in London again, and again it’s the last night of the tour.  Both Seam and we are opening for the Screaming Trees at the Underworld, and a great time, it is not.  Seam begin their short set concurrent with the doors opening, and if that sounds to you like they played in front of nobody, then like the great Bob Murphy before me, I have successfully painted the word picture.  As usual, we close our set with “Sudden Organ.”  Do I have to remind you that there’s no guitar on that song, that I play organ?  Or that the drums drop out close to the end, leaving the organ and fuzz bass to finish the song?  Of course not.  So on this night, time clearly being of the essence, as soon as “Sudden Organ” begins, Joe and the members of Seam strike my guitar amp.  When Georgia drops out, while James and I play on, she walks off and the drum set is removed from the stage.  I hit one last note, then organ and amplifier . . . gone.  James finishes the set by himself, his bass amp the only remaining piece of gear on the stage.  We weren’t sure that one could sneeringly break down  backline, but much to our satisfaction, it turned out that we could.

 

 

 

In the latter days of our 2003 with the Clean, June 19 finds us in San Francisco, midway through a three-night run at the Fillmore.  Shaking the setlist up for repeat visitors, we play “Night Falls on Hoboken” for the first time that year, and close with “Take Care.”  The Clean join us for the second encore, Robert Scott singing his “Block of Wood” and me on a cacophonous “Somebody’s Baby.”  But it’s the first encore that’s the lasting memory of the day, or maybe more accurately the soundcheck.  A mutual friend has arranged for the Flamin’ Groovies’ Cyril Jordan to play a few songs with us.  We meet for the first time that afternoon when Cyril arrives at the Fillmore.  He pulls his classic Dan Armstrong guitar from its case, plugs into his delay unit and our Fender Super Reverb, and we start playing “You Tore Me Down.”  I can’t believe what I’m hearing–it’s no longer our cover from Fakebook, but the Flamin’ Groovies!  We sing “Eight Days a Week” together, and close with, what else, “Shake Some Action.”

 

Let’s drop in on Chicago, shall we?  Fourteen years ago today we are there, at the Cabaret Metro, with Rick Brown & Sue Garner.  Taking Ernie Banks’s advice, we’ve decided to play two; tweaking his recommendation, we’re playing consecutive days and not a doubleheader.  This is night two, with Brokeback on the bill as well.  We encore with “Come On, Come On.”  (Before I continue, a Chicago baseball digression, as we wish a happy birthday to Lou Brock, whose misguided trade from the Cubs to the Cardinals smoothed the way to another few years of Cubs mediocrity.)  Two years ago, we are back in Chicago–it’s the first day of our Fade recording session with John McEntire at Soma.  Can’t recall precisely what we worked on that day, but I can all but guarantee we ran into Pat Sansone at Big Star.

June 18 looms large in the lives of Michael (and Heather) from Gloucester, Massachusetts: In June of 1997 I asked my wife to marry me while walking through the Maudslay estate in Newburyport MA one afternoon.  We decided to walk our highly emotional selves through town later that afternoon and have some fun before dinner, which for me meant visiting the record store.  I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One just looked really appealing on the shelf, and I had read a few things about it, so I bought it without having heard a note.  It was a “stare-at-my-speakers-for-a-week” event after I put that CD on.  This kind of event has only happened a few times in my life, and I’ve listened to a lot of music.  The record is deeply and permanently integrated with that moment, and even that period, of my life, which was one of my happiest, and since then I’ve looked under every rock for every scrap of YLT material I could find, and had the pleasure of seeing YLT play many times.  A few years later I wrote the band a note telling our story and I got a card back from Ira, which I will always appreciate.  

Maybe not the most unique story, but momentous in its own way.  Thanks for such great music.

And it’s the anniversary of Roger Ebert’s birth, too.

 

Thirty years, one show in Santa Fe, three years ago today.  We play “Right Side of My Mind,” just in case Gregg Turner‘s on hand (he isn’t).  Sixteen years earlier, we’re again in the southwest, Tucson, to be precise.  I’m looking at the set list, and I don’t remember a thing–we used to cover Hypnolovewheel’s “You Choose“?!  But here’s what I do recall:  dinner earlier that night at the Congress Hotel.  Our soundman Terry Pearson is having a rough tour.  Traveling the USA by van, troubleshooting p.a.’s on a nightly basis is a full-time job, but Terry–whose main gig is mixing Sonic Youth–is also doing pre-production for the upcoming Lollapalooza, which is one headache after another.  We’re doing all we can to make him comfortable, but all we can do is cede him the entire back seat of our van (and dub it Terry’s Room) and it’s not enough.  He’s growing increasingly short-tempered, and when the Congress serves him a martini with one olive instead of two, he’s inconsolable.  OK, right now I’m typing this with a smile on my face, but I do nothing but sympathize.  Who among us hasn’t been driven by the combination of stress and fatigue to overreact?

 

We haven’t played in Albuquerque all that often, but somehow we appeared there twice on this day, in 1995 and 1997 (the latter show featured a reading from my just-purchased copy of Dr. Eugene Landy’s The Underground Dictionary).  Not in attendance: Bryan & Heather from Philadelphia:

My (now) wife Heather suggested that we go see YLT on New Year’s Eve 12/31/1998 at the TLA in Philly.  Said it would likely be an interesting show, I had never seen them before.  Needless to say, the show was fantastic.  At midnight the band tore into an amazing cover of New Day Rising, one of my top 5 all-time favorites songs/albums by one of my all-time favorite bands Husker Du.  This not only secured the night as a definitive moment, but YLT became forever ingrained in my soul. That night I also realized that I would spend the rest of my life with Heather.

On June 16th 2001 we got married and danced to the YLT version of Whole of the Law.

We have since seen YLT dozens of times, and are always thrilled to see them again.

 

Last year, when it was announced that Maxwell’s would be closing, it seemed possible that we wouldn’t be able to fit in a farewell show, and we were fine with that.  But then the Pastels asked if the Condo Fucks would open for them when they were in town for the Chickfactor shindig, and it turned out we’d get in one more appearance after all.  And when the watchdogs at U.S. Immigration decided that we as citizens would sleep easier if Stephen, Katrina and the gang were denied entry, plans changed again.  Maybe under normal circumstances, we’d have canceled, but that was never considered.  Instead we opened the evening with an acoustic YLT set, including “3 Blocks from Groove Street,” played at our very first appearance in 1984, and “Mr. Tough,” with its shout-out to Maxwell’s impresario Todd Abramson.  Performing “Speeding Motorcycle,” dedicated to the Pastels, who recorded it too, proved a challenge–I had to ignore a commotion in the audience, couldn’t tell if it was requests or questions or heckling.  It was definitely tempting to put on the brakes and see what was going on, but there was a separate-admission late show after ours, and we wanted to use our limited time wisely.  Only between sets did I discover that the source of the ruckus was Maxwell’s founder Steve Fallon.  He had surprised us by coming to the show, and picked the moment of us playing a song he put out on his SOL label to let the cat out of the bag, except I missed it entirely, despite him standing right in front of–and yelling at–me.  Following the Condo Fucks set, we did a single, acoustic encore: “This Is Where I Belong.”