So we’ve only played twice on this date in the last 17 years, and both times it was at the same club! To be precise, Zakk in Dusseldorf, 2006 and 2009, the latter with Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby. Setting the Wayback Machine even earlier, our first visit to the Vera in Groningen was 27 years ago today (we’ve returned seven times). Brought back for an unwarranted third encore, we finally resort to playing something we’ve never even rehearsed: Roky Erickson’s arrangement of “Heroin,” which remains in the repertoire all these years later. Our pal, Heather from Texas, was at none of those shows, but she’s been to plenty of others, most recently in Austin and New Orleans earlier this month. She writes: I have been all over this time line from day one. I can’t believe I’m submitting this so late, but I have found it nearly impossible to think of one memory to share because there are so many! So I wrote a bunch of entries and then just never submitted them. If I want to get in a good date-specific story, I better do it now, with just a few minutes left on the clock! OK so here is my little YLT story that I hope you think is funny. It’s a cookie story, a Yo La Tengo cookie story and it’s a birthday party. It was Nov. 22nd of 2011, my 35th birthday. (I think if I remember correctly, I share a birthday with the hater of trios?) My friend threw me a small YLT themed birthday party, there were YLT balloons and my main birthday present was a big box of YLT cookies! Cookies that had your beautiful images emblazoned on them. It was similar to my 10th birthday party when it was all Boy George. Anyway, a few weeks later, in December, we took the cookies that weren’t finished at the party and shared them with another YLT fan, your favorite, Allen Hill of the Allen Oldies Band. (Oh and don’t worry the cookies were air vacuumed sealed and used before the expiration date.) Allen had a small event at a local Houston record store where he was spinning his newly released 45 rpm record 45 times in a row. My friend and I thought it would be fun to go and hand out a few of the cookies to random people that we thought might appreciate a Yo La Tengo treat. Needless to say, Allen ended up with a set of Ira and Georgia cookies (unfortunately, we had run out of James cookies by then). So in a way, Ira and Georgia were able to remotely join Allen Hill that day, in the spirit of sugar cookies, for spins 37 through 45 and the pictures attached have caught this fine moment in Yo La Tengo history . . . and you know I have YLT Monomania, so I’m sure none of this is surprising, haha!
