Category: News

The morning after our Madrid debut, we are on our merry way to La Coruña.  We eventually arrive at the Street of Glass, which looks like it’s been plopped down at random in the middle of nowhere–on one side of the street are a long block of interconnected restaurants, and on the other a series of interconnected nightclubs.  It is not impossible that I am making all of this up, because I can find next to no indication online of this place, which is only fitting because my recollection of the evening, twenty-five years ago today, is that there was no evidence whatsoever that we would be performing.  But I’ve got a setlist that says we did, opening with “The Evil That Men Do–Craig’s Version,” perhaps because it made sense to start with an instrumental, if I’m remembering correctly that the mixing desk was behind the p.a., and closing with “Bermuda,” no doubt in tribute to the triangle we wondered if we’d stumbled into.  It took hours for our Spanish tour manager, Javier, to get paid, and we didn’t get to a bed until somewhere in the vicinity of 6 a.m., with a wakeup call for the next day’s show in mere hours away.

Our 1989 European tour was a mess.  Band management, handled in-house, could be summed up as “hope for the best.”  Sometimes it worked.  This was not one of those times.  We committed to seven weeks away from home before we actually saw whether there were enough dates to make it worth our while (there weren’t).  As our bassist–Stephan–was someone with whom we had little in common (best as we could tell, as he rarely spoke), we made the perhaps understandable, but nevertheless short-sighted decision to pass up traveling with a European tour manager who could’ve doubled as soundman in favor of someone we thought it’d be fun to travel Europe with.  And no doubt, were we not so far out of our depth, we would have been right in our choice of Chris Nelson, taking time out from The Scene Is Now and Mofungo to don his self-styled factotum hat.   We brought him up a few times to sing “Let’s Compromise,” which he recorded with Information and we covered on New Wave Hot Dogs, before switching his turn in the spotlight to “1969.”  And what a turn.  Creating mayhem wherever he roamed on stage, one never knew what would happen next.  Twenty-five years ago today, we were in Madrid, at the just-the-facts named Rock Club.  It was a big place, but it was also a free show, so the attendance was sizable, as was the height of the stage.  Who could blame Chris for picking this night to stage dive?  Unfortunately, equally blameless were the people up front–turned out it wasn’t quite as  packed as it seemed–who to a man got out of his way.  As loud as we were playing, I still imagine that I heard Chris land.   He had a noticeable limp for quite a while, and we decided to remove “1969” from the rotation for a few weeks.

Our one and so-far only appearance in London, Ontario takes place 17 years ago today (native Justin Bieber’s third birthday).  But first it’s a matinee at the Toronto HMV.  Honestly, what I remember best about the day is purchasing the Velvet Underground box set Peel Slowly and See (shrewdly waiting for the deep discount of an in-store and taking advantage of the then-favorable exchange rate).  But looking over the setlist in London, it’s clear we’re taking advantage of it being a Sunday night in what we in the industry refer to as a “secondary market”: as many covers as there are songs from our new record, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (and even one of those is “Spec Bebop,” a band favorite though not exactly one of the album’s emphasis tracks).  Having approached much of the set like it was an encore, the encore is more like the end of a regular set–for the only time all year (and I wonder how often this has happened, period) we play no covers, choosing instead a guitar version of “Sudden Organ” and “I Heard You Looking.”

If I polled the members of Eleventh Dream Day and Yo La Tengo, I suspect no one would have predicted that Discoteca Y in Certaldo, Italy would still be a going concern in 2014, but apparently it is.  No thanks to the night we played there, 23 years ago today.  It was a select gathering of music lovers on hand, especially when it came time for our opening set.  Professionalism as ever our watchword, we took some precautions to ensure that we didn’t take our performance lightly.  First we fortified ourselves with a healthy serving of Cynar, the artichoke liqueur that we were making our first acquaintance with.  Then we made sure to hit the stage running, opening with an adrenalizing cover of Roky Erickson’s arrangement of “Heroin.”  Expecting to slam right into our next number, “Upside-Down,” I was instead startled to see Georgia had vacated the drums, and was in fact standing beside me, whispering in my ear, “I feel like I’m tripping.”  I don’t believe she’s drunk Cynar since.  A more lasting relationship began two years earlier, the occasion of our first-ever appearance in Spain.   The show in Barcelona nearly resulted in the cancellation of our other three dates in the country (a long, confusing story!) and that has nothing to do with the copious amounts of liquor spilled during the tumultuous evening.   Velvet Underground songs–“Sweet Jane” and “I Heard Her Call My Name”– on the setlist once again, in tribute to our pal (and the evening’s promoter) Ignacio Julia.

Twenty-three years ago today, the Eleventh Dream Day/Yo La Tengo caravan pitches our tent in Bern.  We’re met there by Rick Brown, and we put him right to work: he sings “It’s Too Late” and “Neutron Bomb” with us.  The audience, understandably, wants more, so utilizing a twin Rick lineup with the addition of Mr. Rizzo on guitar, we close the evening with “What Goes On.”  (To be completely accurate, we arrived the day before, the 22nd being the first off day of the tour, and went to the cinema to see Madonna: Truth or Dare.)

One day after John Hubley’s centennial, it’s Sun Ra’s.  Last year, we acknowledged his 99th in Kansas City by closing our Crossroads show with “Somebody’s in Love.”  Did we know it was his birthday the two previous times we played on May 22?  Maybe yes, maybe no–“Nuclear War” ended our set in 2003 (then again, it ended most of our sets that year) in Madrid, where we shared the bill with the Go-Betweens.  Three years earlier, in Munich, “Rocket #9” found its way onto the setlist.  Tomorrow: Jon Benjamin turns 100!  (Unless I misread the fine print.)