Category: News

The Clean Compilation, which we first heard on its 12-song-cassette edition, blew our minds.  When we found out that they were coming to CBGB and Maxwell’s in the spring of 1989, but that we would be in Europe, I was crestfallen.  Far and away the best part of the mess of that European tour was that among the excess of off days, we were a train ride from Amsterdam on June 8, when the Clean and Chris Knox were playing the Melkweg.  (Coincidentally, the Feelies were nearby at the Paradiso.)  Afterward we went backstage and met them.  Chris gave us a copy of Tall Dwarfs’ Dogma, and personalized it with a salute to Georgia’s parents.  Then–six people with nothing to lose on the late night streets of Amsterdam–we all went out for hot chocolate.  Robert recently sent me a copy of that night’s setlist, but I don’t need a reminder of the way it felt when Chris Knox sang “Beauty.”  And as it happens, 14 years later, we’re playing with the Clean at First Avenue in Minneapolis.  The whole band joins us at the end of our set for “Nuclear War,” and again during the encore on David Kilgour’s “Seemingly Stranded.”

 

Going through life as I do with a smile for an umbrella, I rarely give voice to a complaint.  That said, it does not go unnoticed that as we approach our 30th birthday, Yo La Tengo is rarely considered the new, young band.  But six years ago today, we were just that, opening a show in Sevilla, Spain for the New York Dolls (a mere six days later it happened again, as we went on just before the Happy Mondays).   And now that I think of it, in 2003, we toured with another group formed before us: the Clean.  June 7 is the our second show together, at the Vic in Chicago.  We encore with Robert Scott singing his “Before We Go Under,” and he and Hamish Kilgour help out on “Little Honda” and “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine.”  Not only that, but Dave Schramm‘s in town, playing nearby in Laura Cantrell‘s group, so he drops in mid-set for three songs.  Great memories, all of them, but I think a band secret ballot would choose our 2009 Freewheeling show in Hamburg as our favorite recollection of the day.  Held in a beautiful old theater with a narrow dressing area filled with costumes and props, when someone asked “What’s on your rider?” we left the stage for a moment and returned with a few samples.  As usual, we introduced the set by suggesting that the audience ask real questions, as opposed to, say, “Will you play ‘Sugarcube’?”  No sooner are the words out of my mouth than a gentleman on the stage right side of the room hollers, “My Heart’s Reflection!”  We reiterate that we’re really looking for questions, which quiets him, but not for long.  “Pablo and Andrea,” he yells out a bit later.  Once more explaining that we prefer that people don’t just shout out song titles, we perhaps send a mixed message by our conciliatory gesture of doing “My Heart’s Reflection.”  Late in the show, someone on stage left interrupts some story the three of us are telling, interjecting a song title that escapes me now, but I recall as tangentially related to our conversation.  Looking right, my thought is to ignore the voice, but then I see out of the corner of my eye a tilt of James’s head pointing me to the source of the request.  It’s the guy from earlier in the show, having switched seats,  I can only assume thinking a new location will result in better reactions to his contributions.

 

Internet free translation sites can’t agree on what I should call it, but Carlos from Guimarães, Portugal writes: The song “you can have it all” opened the dance at my wedding with Sónia on the 6 of June of 2009.  It is a song we both love and that stays with us until today.  Although it is not an original by Yo La Tengo, it is our favourite version.  

Our invitation to the wedding no doubt lost in the mail, we spend the day doing press elsewhere in Europe for our forthcoming I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass record.  But “You Can Have It All” turns up as an encore on this date in both 2004 (in Dallas at the Gypsy Tea Room, on tour with Antietam), and 2011 (the spinning wheel tour in Edinburgh).  It’s also the only non-instrumental of our set at the 2001 Vision Festival, at which we’re joined by Sabir Mateen, Daniel Carter, Josh Madell, and the late, great Roy Campbell, Jr.  And as long as I’m on the subject, the 19th Vision Festival begins on June 11 and concludes on the 15th with a tribute to Roy.

 

 

Our 1991 European tour with Eleventh Dream Day was a huge success.  From the audience perspective, a double bill greater than the sum of its parts; on a personal level, we were friends when we started, and better friends when it ended.  Whichever band was headlining on a given night, inevitably one or more members of the other group found their way on stage.  On this night 23 years ago, we were playing last.  We did our set, and a three-song encore, but the audience at the Loft in Berlin wanted more, so we returned for one more number as trio, then brought up Wink O’Bannon to play guitar on “I Heard Her Call My Name.”   He was situated on stage right, just a few steps from the door to the dressing room.  I’ve never thought to ask Rick, Janet or Doug how this started, but somehow they decided it would be a good idea to pelt Wink with every last bit of food that had been provided for us–and it had been a very generous spread.  The stage covered with fruit, bread, meat and the like., we finished the song and said goodnight.  Once again, the response was too enthusiastic to ignore (I’m sure the mayhem from out of the dressing room contributed).  Georgia and I came back by ourselves for one quiet song, something we did frequently, which never failed to convey that we were done . . . except for this night.  There was really no point in Yo La Tengo playing anymore, so we quickly figured out what the two bands could do together and came up with Roky Erickson’s “John Lawman.”  It was part of Eleventh Dream Day’s repertoire, but the three of us also knew it, so Wink went back to guitar, and Rick and Janet stood up front singing.  As Wink and I let our guitars feed back prior to the beginning of the song, Rick picked up an entire pineapple, bit a leaf off it and flung it back to the ground, announcing “This is called ‘The Pineapple Song.'”  During the guitar solos, which were plentiful, Rick and Janet, idle hands etc., started tossing the food that littered the stage into the audience, and the audience started throwing it back.  Someone–I no longer remember who–came out of the dressing room with a bottle of ketchup and squirted it all over the place.  Do I have to tell you that nothing could have been more out of character for either band?  It was a never-to-be-repeated event, but that didn’t mean that the staff from the Loft was anything but livid (who could blame them).  As we were packing up our equipment, they were describing everything we’d ruined and what it was going to cost us.  Rick–who probably wasn’t sober but had definitely lost his shirt (and had banana and other food in his hair)–was insisting that if we’ve destroyed microphones and are being charged for them, then we get to take them with us.  It was left to Christof Ellinghaus, from our label City Slang–who managed to miss the whole thing because he was in the office getting paid–to somehow work it out.

 

1992 again, still crammed in the van with Seam.  Twenty-two years ago, yesterday and today, we’re in Austria, and sharing the bill with us is the Dead Milkmen.  We’re not happy about it and not shy about our unhappiness, and from the vantage point of today it’s hard to come up with a good reason why, other than it’s easier to complain about someone else than each other.  At least we’re funny on the subject: Sooyoung puts up a countdown calendar in the van, each page with its own Dead Milkmen trivia question (e.g., Q: Can you name all four members of the Dead Milkmen?  A: No.).  Naturally, when we actually do the shows together, it couldn’t go smoother.  They’re disarmingly nice, and we feel terrible about everything we’ve said about them.  And then the next morning, I really feel terrible, waking up with an intense back pain that I’ve never had before or since, and can therefore only attribute to karma.  Sitting in our van for the ride from Vienna to Ebensee is out of the question, so I start looking into taking a train, and standing the whole way.  Dead Milkmen to the rescue–their van has a loft.  Somehow managing to hoist myself into it, I can lie down, a much less painful proposition.  As uncomfortable as our sardine can has been, it’s nevertheless a very strange experience being separated from Georgia and the team.  I have no memory of how I made it through the set that night, though it must have been a challenge, since for the only time on the tour, our encore is comprised of a single song.

 

 

Today marks the one year anniversary of Maxwell’s announcement of its imminent closing.  As it happens, we are already planning to spend the evening there to see the Bats and Wild Carnation.  Six years earlier, we’re just across the Hudson, taking part in the Bang on a Can marathon at the Winter Garden atrium in the World Financial Center.  For the occasion, we have expanded our score for the Jean Painlevé film “The Sea Horse” to 20 minutes and expanded our lineup to a sextet, joined by Britt Walford on drums, Elson Nascimento on percussion, and P.G. Six on harp.  Georgia is on Ace Tone, and it’s a good thing she doesn’t need her legs, because she is recently out of surgery, walking with the aid of crutches.