Category: News

When the Noise Pop festival invited us to join them in Chicago on this date in 2001, we thought we’d try something a little different, having played three shows in the city the previous year, one with Mac McCaughan and David Kilgour, and two as a trio.  We got to town a day early and did a warmup of sorts in Evanston with Deanna Varagona, although our mostly-covers set bore little relation to what we planned for the next night.  Susie Ibarra–who played on two tracks on And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out–sat in on various percussion for the whole set.  (We had done that once before in New York in June, 2000.)   I am afraid I cannot recall how she reacted when during the penultimate number, a version of “Time Fades Away,” our guest guitarist Rick Rizzo had his pants pulled down by his Eleventh Dream Day bandmate Janet Bean, though no doubt she was relieved that, according to my research, Rick “neither lost his cool nor his grip on the guitar.”

 

 

Neil Innes was not available to play all of the dates on our UK tour of 2000, his place taken by Robyn Hitchcock.  For our London show, 14 years ago today, we decided to have both Neil and Robyn take part, most spectacularly on a version of “Mr. Apollo,” with Robyn in the role of Vivian Stanshall.  On this date in 1989, Georgia and I took advantage of an off day on our European tour and took a train to Amsterdam, seeing and meeting the Clean and Chris Knox for the first time.  But neither of those occasions inspired this letter from Jason from Minneapolis:

When I was in school at SUNY-Binghamton (now Binghamton University) I was involved with the college radio station, WHRW, and also booked concerts for a small campus organization called S.C.A.B. (Straight Country And Blues). I went off the S.C.A.B. rails a bit for my final show, a co-bill of The Wedding Present and Yo La Tengo, but I figured if CBGBs could do it, so could we. I wasn’t used to hosting two separate acts, and for some reason The Wedding Present used our usual dressing room and Yo La Tengo was put up in the gay student organization office. We fed The Wedding Present ratatouille from our campus food co-op, and then our little S.C.A.B. staff fed ourselves down the hall in the WHRW lobby. I was shovelling it down when Georgia and Ira walked in with a mighty annoyed look and asked when they were going to get to eat too. Whoops. Forgot about the other band. I tried to lighten the air by talking about seeing The Feelies on Letterman.

The show went on a little further down the hall in the Susquehanna Room, known by day as the cafeteria.  It was my first time seeing Yo La Tengo play a full set and it covered all the bases — loud and quiet, old and new songs, and a bunch of covers.  I discretely taped the show from the soundboard (sorry, guys).  They kicked it off with a scorching cover of Let’s Compromise.  Lewis was introduced as a song they likely played at their last Binghamton show in the mid-80s, one of their first as a trio.  We were also treated to an early version of Sudden Organ.

In 1990, with Fakebook awaiting release on Bar/None, Georgia and I took a road trip south.  We visited friends, saw the Mets lose to the Braves (a game in which the Braves’ pitcher, Derek Lilliquist, hit the only two home runs of his career), and as long as we were in the neighborhood, brought along an acoustic guitar and promoted our forthcoming record at college radio.  On this date 14 years ago, we were in Tuscaloosa.  Perhaps rattled by the circuitous route we took in search of Archibald’s barbecue, I neglected to note just what station it was we visited, but once there we made ourselves comfortable, playing seven songs.  More acoustic action, four years later, as we turned a one-off at Grinnell College into a two-off, performing a low-key set at Chicago’s Rainbo bar.  We worked up Harry Burgess’s “Chicago Policeman” to provide a little local color.

 

On this date four years ago, we participated in a benefit for Chris Knox at (Le) Poisson Rouge.  We were the backing band for both David Kilgour and Portastatic, and David played with us during out set.  Twelve years earlier, we shared a bill with Toots & the Maytals in Wesleyan.  Don’t know if Toots had another show that same day in another state, but we did.  And David (no relation) from . . .  he didn’t say . . . was there:

May 6, 1998 was a momentous date.  Yo La Tengo played at Bogie’s in Albany, NY and David met Pam there for their first date.  We had been emailing for a few weeks, Pam found me on Yahoo! Personals!

I let her know that the cover was $10 and I’d be there early with friends (little did I know the polite thing would have been to buy her ticket).  I also let her know that when the music started there would be no talking.
(She wasn’t sure what to do/say when she had to pee during your set, but didn’t want me to think she was ditching me.)  We chatted with James a bit at the merchandise table and he seemed a bit put off that we had met online.

On Friday May 3, 2013 we celebrated our 15th anniversary with Yo La Tengo at End of an Ear Records and The Mohawk in Austin, TX.  Thank you Yo La Tengo!

 

During our first couple of tours with James, it was common that Georgia and I would sing a quiet song or two by ourselves. For the moment, he was still the fill-in bassist, on loan from Christmas. But the show in Princeton on this day 23 years ago is unique. Playing on the lawn in front of the Terrace eating club on a beautiful spring day, we did a beautiful-spring-day set: a few more covers than at a regular show, and “Mushroom Cloud of Hiss” got the afternoon off. I’m a little fuzzy about the next part–I know there were two other bands on the bill, so it would not be surprising if the schedule was, shall we say, loose. In any case, James had to leave to catch a train back to Providence. Georgia and I ended up performing a second set as a duo. Dangerhouse Records is in heavy rotation: “Let’s Get Rid of New York” is in the first set, “Adult Books” closes the second.

 

Growing up, my family was not one of those that ate in front of the tv.  The only exceptions were that my brothers and I were allowed to leave the table early if dinner overlapped with either Batman or The Monkees.  So when we found out that two years ago today, Lambchop would be performing in San Francisco with Mike Nesmith as the opener, we nearly canceled our Freewheeling show in Santa Cruz.  Instead, we played our two sets and then hustled to SF for a post-game get-together.  (And no, we didn’t rush through our Santa Cruz concert.  In fact, I’m a little insulted that you would even ask.  We played three encores, including the Pep Lester classic “Ben Wa Baby.”)  The next year we were in Dallas.  Sadly it just wasn’t feasible to hang out for three weeks for the upcoming Peter Tork show, but we added “The Door Into Summer” to our program to help get the audience psyched.