Category: News

Today is the 22nd anniversary of our appearance in Gent with Seam, the second of 28 shows in 33 days in Europe we’ll be spending together.  Eight people–among them John McEntire, who you’ll remember from such records as Fade, taking over from original drummer Mac McCaughan–are shoehorned into a van that whatever number it holds comfortably, it definitely isn’t eight.   In a bit of foreshadowing that I’m pretty sure is coincidental, our second song that night is “Cubist Grid,” (“Hey, James?” “WHAT!”  “Are you used to it yet?” “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it”) and we encore with “Shape of Things to Come.”   Last year, when members of our touring party are walking around Boulder before soundcheck and see something, they opt not to say something, but later that afternoon someone else does.  (Fortunately it turned out to be nothing.)

And speaking of anniversaries, today is the centennial of the birth of John Hubley.

 

City Slang macher Christof Ellinghaus suggested that Eleventh Dream Day and Yo La Tengo tour Europe together in the spring of 1991, taking turns opening and closing.   Twenty-three years ago today we played our fifth show together, all in Holland.  The night before we were the headliners and had brought Rick Rizzo up during the encore for a couple of Neil Young songs.  Now, at the Burgerweeshuis (which I’m told translates to “burger weeshuis”) in Deventer, it was our turn to support.  We played our set to palpable indifference, the first and only sign of life from the audience being the perversely persistent clapping for an encore.  Our first thought was not to bother, but then we reconsidered.  For the last three weeks, we’d opened most of our shows with a new song, a slow, dreamy instrumental, as-yet untitled.  We hadn’t played it in Deventer, so we decided this was the perfect moment–seemed to strike the right passive aggressive note.  Afterwards, I went to the merch table . . . you know, now that I think of it, with the details that follow, perhaps we were the headliner on this night too.  Anyway, Eleventh Dream Day guitarist Wink O’Bannon was making a rare appearance as salesman, aided by a bottle of bourbon and two Dutch drinking buddies.  Upon my arrival, one of them sneered at me, “Your music is like a sleeping pill to me.”  I don’t remember my response, but presumably I was insufficiently chastened because he added, in the withering tone the Dutch have mastered, “Burger eater!  Burger eater!”   Naturally the instrumental soon acquired the name “Sleeping Pill.”

Elsewhere in Europe, Todd drops us a line:  Greetings from the very small village of Jettenbach, Germany (population 900 – salute!).   May 20 is my birthday; it also marks the first time I saw the band live, in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2000.  I had been a fan since I read a concert review in one of the San Francisco area weekly alt-papers, probably in autumn 1993.  The review was celebratory, and within a week I had purchased Fakebook, Painful, and May I Sing With Me.  I missed the show, but I caught the fever.   My career path sent me to off live in various locations around the world, unfortunately none within striking distance of a live YLT show. Nonetheless, and sometimes with great difficulty, especially in the pre-internet days, I managed to keep track of my favorite band, buy your records, and, as many commenters have already noted, you’ve become the soundtrack to my life.  Fortune smiled in my direction when I moved to Germany in 1999, and  on  May 20th, 2000, I embarked on a short hour drive to Karlsruhe, Germany for the best birthday present a YLT fan could ever ask for – a show!  The show exceeded all expectations and I mustered the courage to talk to Ira afterwards.  I mentioned it was my birthday and Ira, ever the quick wit, signed my ticket “Happy 18th!”  (My true age was somewhere just slightly north of 40 at the time.)  Fast forward three years and on May 20th, 2003 I found myself at your show in Frankfurt, Germany, at the Mousonturm.  Once again I approached Ira after the show, mentioned that it was my birthday, and when I produced my ticket from the Karlsruhe show, Ira gleefully grabbed the ticket and proved that the intervening three years had not diminished his wit, as he signed it “Happy 21!”  No YLT show in Germany on my birthday this year; however I will enjoy the wonderful memories of the 2000 and 2003  shows as well as the many other YLT shows I’ve attended here in Germany and Switzerland in the past 14 years.  Thank you Georgia, Ira, James for the amazing performances and the music!  Thanks also to the YLT extended family of musicians, sound crew, engineers, producers, road crew, Matador, etc., for all they do.   Looking forward to seeing you all again soon.

 

We used to make a regular stop at the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Enger, Germany, home of Forum Enger.  Easily the highlight of our first trip to Europe in 1987, we were brought back for so many encores that we started inserting songs we hadn’t rehearsed (and if you’ve got a recording of that show, please keep it to yourself!), and then hung out drinking beer and listening to records till daybreak–I know it was the first time I heard “Lee Remick” by the Go-Betweens.  Not sure when the club shut down; we played there for the last time in December 1993.  Anticipating our WFMU appearances by over two years, we played nothing but requests, among them the version of “We Are the Champions” that appeared on the Little Honda cd.  Seven years later, on this day 14 years ago, the club has relocated down the street a spell in Bielefeld.  We’re glad to be back.  We salute Robyn Hitchcock, last seen in Scotland a week earlier, and say all we’ve got to say with the only appearance on the tour of “Love Power.”

 

Twenty-five years ago today, we played one of the more enjoyable shows of our European slog of 1989, in Nuremberg, opening for Nikki Sudden & the French Revolution.   Our set went well, and we had a great time hanging out with Nikki’s band.  Things got a bit awkward when I confessed to drummer Andy Bean that I was unfamiliar with Can, but not only didn’t he hold a grudge, he compiled a greatest hits cassette and presented it to me in London at the end of our tour.  I am currently without a cassette player, but I’ve still got the compilation.

 

Eighteen years ago today, we performed at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.  Films were projected on us, Phil Morrison and Bill Mooney go-go danced, and we played “Damage” for the first time.  And Sari was there:

I’m also part of the set that played a Yo La Tengo song as the first dance at their wedding.  It seemed apt as we met at a YLT show in 1995 (Opera House, Toronto).

But what I really want to tell you about is the time I found myself on a road trip to Pittsburgh to check out the Andy Warhol Museum’s first anniversary celebration.  Yo La Tengo played a gig in the parking lot and after the show my friends and I walked slowly away.  We could hear someone shouting “Derek! Derek!” and turned to see James running after us.  I wasn’t dating Derek yet but my crush swelled as not only was this guy smart and good looking, apparently he was in with indie rock celebs.  Our stop at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Museum the next day sealed the deal and we began dating.  We married in 2000.

Speaking of “indie rock celebs,” last year in Seattle, the Baseball Project’s Peter Buck joins us during our encore for “The Queen of Eyes” and “Tell Me When It’s Over,”  and M. Ward helps us pay tribute to June Carter Cash in Malmö.  Klaus from Berlin witnesses one of those: 11 years ago I saw you in Malmö, being an exchange student in nearby Lund.  I was in the front row enjoying every minute.  I didn’t really know what to expect beforehand, having gotten to know you just two years earlier (“And then nothing” was album of the month in German music magazine “Musikexpress”) and downloaded a few of your albums enjoying fast Swedish internet (I now do own all your albums – if possible on vinyl).  But it was great, one of the greatest concerts I’ve been to.  Not being able to really go into details, I was really amazed by the curve of dynamics you created.  Starting really quiet (I got a setlist from one of your crew members, which he produced neatly folded from his breast pocket, I posted it on setlist.fm (and if you click on who created the setlist (Zues), you can see most of the other concerts I’ve been to, YLT is on place 3)), you really rocked out later and then really managed to calm the whole thing down with “Nuclear War”.   I am unsure about the encores, I do remember “Madeline” and I think you did “You Can Have It All”.   Thanks for your music.

 

 

 

 

 

Heather from Baltimore writes:
My most visceral YLT memory is spring semester, 1997, staying up all night on the last night before finals week ended.  I played “Center of Gravity” on repeat on my CD player the entire time I wrote all 4 term papers for my University of Montana Shakespeare class (56 pages in 8 hours).  I got an A in that class, and I think YLT deserves at least partial credit.  (Coffee also deserves some credit, and my firm commitment to procrastination.)  She guesses that the morning in question is May 16, earning high marks for honesty by conceding: (That’s an educated guess because I don’t have that year’s academic calendar anymore.)  Had she hightailed it back to Baltimore, she might have arrived at Fletcher’s in time for the first night of our I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One tour.  “Center of Gravity” was not in the set, but presumably she had heard enough of it by then.