Twenty years ago today (I guess technically tomorrow because the show started after midnight), we appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, performing “From a Motel 6” while Georgia and Emily Hubley’s animated film The Tower screened behind us. I looked high and low for an image of the show without success, so instead here’s a photo of Gregory Harrison, that episode’s lead guest (who said something tasteless during the taping that didn’t make it to air).
James recalls January 27, 2000: Our old rehearsal space in Jersey City, NJ was on the 3rd floor of a disintegrating, city block-sized warehouse, just off Washington Avenue. The building can be seen briefly in “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” Unlike that movie, the place sucked. But this was a day when it didn’t matter. Sue Garner, Peter Walsh, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, and the late Roy Campbell, Jr. braved the icy fire escape stairs, the terrifying freight elevator, and the never-to-be-mentioned-again bathroom to come and record the “Now 2000″/ “Excalibur 2001″ 2×7” EP with us.
We’ve had some memorable shows on January 26. Rick Brown sang “Neutron Bomb” with us when Inconvenient Music opened up in Birmingham AL in 2007. Both John Cameron Mitchell (“Holly Holy“) and Daniel Johnston (“Speeding Motorcycle” and “The One After 909“) sat in with us at Sundance in 2005. But my sentimental, if that’s the right word (it isn’t), favorite is Denison University in Granville OH in 1991. We were in our Fakebook guise–Kevin Salem on lead guitar and Wilbo Wright on upright bass–and booked to play a free show in some common room. My notes tell me that support was provided by “2 guys with acoustic guitars singing classic rock” and my memory tells me that they killed. We . . . did not. Boredom was audible, but as show business professionals we were undeterred, and played a 15-song set. An encore seemed utterly superfluous, but a couple of friends from Columbus disagreed and demanded their 45-minute drive‘s worth. This created a conundrum until we determined it would take us about five minutes to strike our equipment and set back up in our dressing room, so that’s what we did. We invited anyone from the audience who wanted to join us to do so, and a couple of people stuck their heads in, but no one stayed. We played another six songs and everyone was happy. Almost everyone: The promoter called our agent the next day to complain and threatened to stop payment on our check. He didn’t.
Over the years on January 25, we appeared at two different venues that we’d played before . . . when they had different names. In 2011, our spinning wheel landed on S Songs at the Social in Orlando, formerly the Sapphire Supper Club; two years later we shared the bill with Calexico at the Buckhead Theater, the site of our 1994 Atlanta show with Johnny Cash when it was known as the Roxy. I also want to mention our 2007 concert with Antietam in their hometown of Louisville–mid-encore we yielded the stage so they could play “Orange Song” (which we covered on President Yo La Tengo).
In 2004, we composed scores for Junebug and Game 6. When both of those films ended up at the 2005 Sundance festival, so did we. Georgia and I arrived a day before James, and hit Park City running, playing a few songs at a Junebug soiree at the Levi’s Ranch and yes, it was just about as uncomfortable as you’d think. But we had a good time and saw a bunch of cool movies too.
If my records are to be trusted, then Yo La Tengo has performed four times on January 23, and two of those shows were at Carrboro NC’s Cat’s Cradle. Did I just blow your mind? 2011 and 2013 to be precise. We did two songs on both nights. I wish I could claim that it was something like the only two times we ever played “The Lie and How We Told It” (which in fact we’ve never played), but no, it was “Stockholm Syndrome” and “Tom Courtenay.”
