Category: News

Seventeen years ago today, our “Autumn Sweater” ep was released, featuring remixes by Bundy K. Brown and Team Tortoise, µ-ziq, and Kevin Shields.  As anyone who spent 22 years waiting for the followup to Loveless will probably have no trouble believing, cajoling Kevin to meet his deadline was no fun.  The only way to reach him was by a telephone without an answering machine–the phone would ring and ring and ring and ring.  Sometimes no one would pick up, and that felt bad.  Sometimes, eventually,  Kevin would answer and I’d be the guy trying to pressure him, and that felt terrible.  But then came the day that the track arrived, which in itself felt like a miracle, and when we heard it, the excitement was indescribable.

 

Eleven years ago today, we appeared with Portastatic and Daniel Johnston, at the Phoenix in Toronto.  Did Daniel sing “Speeding Motorcycle” with us?  Undoubtedly,  though I’m missing the setlist for not just this night, but the first five shows of our April 2003 tour–Columbus, Newport, Cleveland, Toronto and Montreal.  If you’ve got any information, let me know!  Four years later, we’re in Madison.  Times New Viking help us conclude our first encore with “Group Grope” and after that spectacle, who can blame the audience for requesting more?   I’ve got to assume that someone asked for “Night Falls on Hoboken” because I don’t think we come up with that song in that spot on our own.

 

Anyone who read the saga of our Albuquerque debut will be less than bowled over to learn that it was four years before our return engagement, on this day in 1992.  Even before arriving at the Golden West, things are going well: we’ve had carne adovada burritos at the M&J Sanitary Tortilla Factory, I’ve scored a Scholastic book about the Blues Project that will eventually provide us with liner notes for Electr-o-pura, and after a small tug o’ war, we’ve recovered the van’s removable tape deck from the housekeepers that tried to pocket it when we inadvertently left it in our hotel room.  The show goes well, and we’re not the only ones who think so.  An audience member tells me something to the effect of that we are as good as Television, to which I reply, “That’s quite a compliment.”  “Here’s another compliment,” offers the eavesdropping frontman of the opening Ant Farmers, of indeterminate sobriety but unquestionable good intentions, “Fakebook is so much better than your new album.”   Soon, we depart for some late-night green chile at the Frontier.  On the short walk from our parking space, our attention is drawn to something we’ve never seen before.  At the end of an alley, someone is urinating, and rather than doing so in the traditional manner, against the wall, back to possible onlookers, he is facing the street.  “Hey, Yo La Tengo!” greets the singer of the Ant Farmers, lack of sobriety now confirmed.

 

Meanwhile, the mailbag is overflowing on April 13.  Jason from Portsmouth, NH tells us: I booked Yo La Tengo at The University of New Hampshire (WUNH 91.3FM) in 1995–actually it was 1996– and only 26 people showed up, I was devastated, but it was on that day and ever since that they’ve become my most favorite band… why? Because they were honest, real human beings that played great music and performed an amazing show.  I even had their song Autumn Sweater as a first dance in my Fall wedding of 2001.  Chris and Linda from Columbus, OH write: We played your cover of “By the Time It Gets Dark” at our wedding in 2007.   Michael from Yellow Springs, OH is not invited to the ceremony: April 13th, 2007 – you played Indianapolis at the Vogue Theatre. That show was the second show I saw with my wife Heather – of 11 shows to this day (her first was at Louisville’s Bomhard Theatre in January).  Like a typical YLT show,  Ira was musing about food,  and in particular a sauce (mustard, horseradish – but no, it wasn’t one of those) that he could only find in Indianapolis.  I’m sure you’ll recall which.  The Vogue is a great old theater and we had a lovely time, and Heather got to see the your Kinks love for the first (but definitely not the last time) in the encore . . . was it “Days”?–it wasn’t, it was “There Is No Life Without Love.”  But I can see into the future and I believe I know YLT’s This Day in History for July 7th, 2014 (or 8th, my future-viewing is fuzzy).  After a spectacular show at Vida Festival, the band travels to Helsinki for a midnight sun concert (as compared to the previous time in that city, which was in November).  Heather and I just happen to be in Finland for a conference. On this day, I actually screw up the nerve to talk to Ira, which I haven’t done since 2000, over a beverage at a nondescript Euro hotel.  Later that evening, the band opens with “Green Arrow,” which I’ve only seen as an opening song – or perhaps ever in the setlist – one other time, that being the supremely captivating
Nelsonville Opera House show of September 24, 2009.  In all seriousness, thanks Georgia, James and Ira for your music.  I’ve been sustained in really bad times and in great times by what you’ve made – I won’t bore you with the specific details, but ever since that fateful day in December ’93 when I bought and listened to Painful,  I’ve been grateful.

 

 

There’s got to be a fancy scientific and/or Latin term for the process by which NKOTB and Yo La Tengo ended up under the same roof, 20 years ago today.   For as Sleepyhead is my witness, that’s precisely what happened in Pittsburgh: Donnie, Jordan & the boys in the main room, the Metropole, and us in the adjoining Rosebud’s.  Before we went on, we got the chance to watch the New Kids in action and perhaps that’s what inspired a few flourishes of showmanship on our side of the divider.  I play the house piano amidst the chairs and tables in the middle of the room on an impromptu microphone-less version of “Cast a Shadow” with James on acoustic guitar.  All of Sleepyhead joined us for a haphazard “Ramblin’ Rose.”   At the end of the evening, NKOTB pointed their bus toward Indianapolis, and the YLT caravan made its way to Rochester, the twain never again to meet.

 

If you’ll allow the present day to intrude on these recollections, I’m in Hollywood right now, looking forward to the TCM festival, most particularly Saturday’s tribute to Georgia’s parents.  Which reminds me of this date in 1988, when we were unwise enough, for the second year in a row no less, to book a show against the Academy Awards.  Admittedly it’s debatable how many people would show up to hear us in Normal, Illinois on any Monday night, but ours is an exclusive affair indeed.  1992 finds us at the Clearview in Dallas, which among its charms featured a disco next to the band room clearly audible should you dial down the volume on stage at any point.  Receiving multiple requests for our quiet songs (and having already suffered through “For Shame of Doing Wrong” during our set), we grab an acoustic guitar, a snare drum and a floor tom, and invite the audience into the parking lot for a six-song encore.  Of course, it being Deep Ellum, it’s even louder outside, but it’s the thought that counts–especially to the bar manager, who threatens not to pay us because of the post-set drinking he claims we cost him.  One last story: 1991, YLT and Eleventh Dream Day are in the last of three shows in Missouri supporting Redd Kross.  The first night in Lawrence we opened.   When the audience is slow to arrive, the club invites us to go on late.  An hour or so later, Redd Kross’s tour manager gets there, freaks out, and insists that Eleventh Dream Day shorten their set so Redd Kross can start on time.  Next night in St. Louis, Eleventh Dream Day go on first, right on schedule, in front of another sparse, slow-arriving audience.  Now we’re the opener again, after which I’m watching Eleventh Dream Day from the wings with a member of their crew.  During “Awake I Lie,” I spot Redd Kross’s tour manager standing right in front of Rick Rizzo, looking miserable.  I’m incensed–it’s obviously their last song, somebody should tell the TM to fuck off.  Crew guy goes off to do just that.  I see him tap the TM on the shoulder, and the TM turns to him–and I realize it’s not the TM at all, but some guy in the audience (in the front row, you’ll recall) with similar hair.  Frantically, I try to wave him off, but he doesn’t see me until after he’s told an Eleventh Dream Day fan to fuck off.  Oops.

 

On this day in 1994, we played with Sleepyhead at Sudsy Malone’s in Cincinnati, a venue which as the name implied doubled as a laundromat.  Across the street, at Bogart’s, a line had already started to form for the next night’s appearance by NKOTB, the farewell tour (I think) of New Kids on the Block.  It wasn’t a particularly long line, and when we departed Sudsy’s eight or so hours later, it didn’t appear to have grown any, and if you detect a note of bitterness, maybe I’m just jealous because no one’s ever waited outdoors for over 24 hours to hear Yo La Tengo.

Closer to home, AJP from Brooklyn writes: On this day in 2013, I walked a block from my office to see YLT perform the live score to The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller at the Kitchen in NYC.  As a former architect, present design nerd and devout YLT fan, it was about as enticing an evening as I could imagine.  I attended that night’s early show, notable for the fact that I sat one seat over from Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.  Laurie smiled and said “hello” when she sat down.  Lou said nothing, then fell asleep quickly and stayed asleep through the show – which is a shame because it was tremendous.  In the post-show Q&A with Bucky’s adorable and elderly daughter, I mustered the nerve to ask a question (“Did you grow up in a dome house?”) in front of my assembled musical heroes.  For the record, she did not.  I said “hello” to James and Georgia after the show, then walked toward the exit with Georgia, who noted with disappointment that it was raining.  I left for the subway, and only then realized that I should have offered her my umbrella.  

I’m sorry, Georgia.

It would soon be publicly revealed just how ill Lou Reed was at the time; mere weeks later he would undergo a liver transplant.  We never saw him again, and awake or asleep, we were very excited he was there.