C or D : Yo La Tengo

Was waiting for a band/musician to do this, and apparently based on a picture posted on Instagram earlier Yo La Tengo were one of them. Seems like Ira and James played in drag last night (or some version of it) to make a point. Good on them.

Yep, this is what I saw:

yo la tengo protesting anti-drag laws tonight in tennessee, courtesy @JohnQBoxler. pic.twitter.com/kB6IvqUeZX

— jesse jarnow (parody, i think?) (@bourgwick) March 14, 2023

xpost that's so awesome josh

Aw I'm kinda sad I didn't see them in drag. What I get for seeing them in slightly-less-batshit NC. But good for them.

Been 9 years since Australia, fingers crossed they get back around here sometime

Saw em in DC Sunday night. As an encore they did Adam & the Ants “Ant Music.” On Twitter I read that they had done that same song 25 years at the 930 Club in DC . James was on vocals and Ira was second drummer with Georgia

They did that here in ... 2000? When Lambchop opened, and came out later to help with "Antmusic." Iirc not only was Susie Ibarra there to help with the new stuff, but the ranks of Yo La were fleshed out with Mac from Superchunk and David Kilgour!

https://www.setlist.fm/stats/songs/yo-la-tengo-7bd6ae90.html?songid=73dade9d

Per guy on Twitter they have played Antmusic 29 times

Show is tonight, nice to learn it's one of those An Evening With ... performances, with an acoustic set and an electric set. Also means it won't go that late, because they're old!

They sure don't act old on stage. I just saw them last weekend and Ira was bunnyhopping all over stage during one song.

The two sets when I saw them weren't so neatly divided — the second set was noisier, but both had loud and quiet parts.

so far so good! with a friend who has never heard them, he seemed to dig set one.

Songs:
Fallout
Aselestine
Big Day Coming
This Stupid World

I haven't watched it yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV4R0T64RF0

lol they just brought out Wilco as guests. the whole band.

Even before that encore it was one of my favorites YLT shows I’ve seen, they are at a peak now. Just every sing was great.

And yeah, I’ll take a Wiltengo album now.

lol, fat fingers and autocorrect strikes again

killer show, go see them if you can.

What was the third Wiltengo cover? Beatles, Dylan, something I didn't know, and then ... Sandy Denny?

Johnny Thunders’ “One Track Mind” was the last with Wilco and before the Fairport convention song.

Thanks!

I loved taking a friend who didn't know nothing from nothing. He asked me which one was Tweedy, and then later, when he looked up Wilco, learned some of them used to be in Uncle Tupelo, who he and some of his friends used to listen to in college in Texas. He loved the physicality of Ira's playing, how Ira treated the guitar as a physical object to be manipulated into getting different results. He also commented on the size of James relative to his bass. He couldn't tell if it had a skinny neck or if James was really that huge compared to the instrument.

He thought the show was great, of course. Because it was. And I owe the collective enthusiasm of ILM for getting me out there, since as I've posted I've been taking them for granted for years, but this one was indeed up there with some of the mid to late '90s shows I saw. It was funny when Ira introduced "Nowhere Near" as "really old" and Georgia emphasized "really, *really* old," because I remember that song when it came out and I'm not ol ... wait a minute!

Speaking of old, they played "Drug Test," which might be the first time I've heard them play anything *really* old.

I saw someone refer to collective assembly as as Yankee Yo La Tengo Foxtrot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dgyWCkNF6A

thanks, that's awesome

what Beastie Boys song did they do?

when i saw them a decade ago they dug up "did i tell you" from new wave hotdogs & fakebook

I didn't have "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac with Alan Sparhawk on lead guitar on my bingo card

they also did like 8 minutes of Time Fades Away with Mark Freeman of NNB maybe the most storied old Minneapolis post punk band

Slack by NNB one of the great Minneapolis rock song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AWTGExPigI

Time Fades Away (Neil Young) feat. Mark Freeman from NNB pic.twitter.com/qlTDFMTQSM

— solace (@kyle_matteson) March 27, 2023

they are not wholly unlike alan lomax/lenny kaye but for . . . other stuff

like, wfmucore

what a great show, I wondered if other ilxors might be there

"I Heard You Looking" was somehow the wildest Ira Kaplan I've ever seen, couldn't always tell what Alan Sparhawk was playing on that but seeing him in that noise was pretty emotional

and many other moments for my personal live music mythology, a YLT guarantee

don't know how I've never encountered the name NNB! thx ums

a record store by me has the Slack 7 inch but it's $100

Dick Champ from NNB moved to NYC and formed The Scene is Now and hung with Sonic Youth

https://www.thecurrent.org/feature/2015/05/12/kim-gordon-girl-in-a-band-giveaway

xpost they are great, hope we cross paths sometime geoffreyeyes feel like we've been in the same room tons of times probably

.@therealylt + Alan from @lowtheband ‘Dreams’ (Fleetwood Mac) pic.twitter.com/JH1j1RyxYh

— solace (@kyle_matteson) March 27, 2023

Low Ya Tengo pic.twitter.com/Ag15H0W3ZH

— solace (@kyle_matteson) March 27, 2023

ah these sound great! seems like alan was mostly just doing the organ drone on "i heard you looking" that they usually get one of the sound guys to do, just with some added chaos when fitting

saw Alan and Zak Sally hanging out too which was nice they seemed very close, I think things were strained for a long time

With all the guests and everything this tour has kind of a valedictory feel, like everybody coming together to celebrate YLT. Deservedly!

Also (and I know it's kind of his deal) when the guests come out it's often the only time Ira smiles and seems to be enjoying himself.

what Beastie Boys song did they do?

Beatles, not Beasties - "She's a Woman".

lol thank u I was very confused

We got I Heard Her Call My Name encore in Milwaukee but no guests. And yes, my mind did indeed split open - twice even!

Like I said, even without the encore, it was probably one of the best YLT shows I've ever seen. They just feel so locked in and Ira was really leaning into the noise, at a few points he was giving me some Thurston Moore vibes with the way he was playing with feedback and hunched over his guitar. The new album sounded incredible in a live context.

Can't miss with this tour: raucous 2nd set closer in DC was "Pass the Hatchet..." with Ira jamming Georgia's drumsticks in his guitar. I especially enjoyed hearing an extended "From a Motel 6," and "Can't Forget" from Fakebook.

setlists are really all over the place

makes sense, 40 years as a band, around 20 albums ...

and on those extended Hanukkah runs they don't repeat any songs (or at least they don't repeat any arrangements, they might do like the slow "Big Day Coming" one night and the fast one on another) — their repertoire is impressively deep. i saw them looking at lyric sheets in the yo la wilco encore, but i think that's a rarity.

Ira seems to be wearing the same striped shirt in every photo or video I've seen, he must have a suitcase full of them.

hahaha my friend and I were joking about that at the show

seems like alan was mostly just doing the organ drone on "i heard you looking"

Drone Not Drones lives on. feel like I can hear it better in that clip than in person -- mostly came through at a few shocking moments, and in the single note candlelight flicker he ended with, very beautiful.

Also (and I know it's kind of his deal) when the guests come out it's often the only time Ira smiles and seems to be enjoying himself.

Now that you mention it, he usually seems really serious or focused on the task at hand whenever I saw him perform.

FWIW, the only time I've ever heard him say anything humorous was at a Hanukkah show (from the first run at the Bowery Ballroom), and given the way it came off, I just got the impression he was generally a shy person. Jeff Tweedy was the guest - he did his set and stayed on stage to play with Yo La Tengo. Eventually Ira pointed out that "when Jeff sang 'New York,' I noticed you all clapped, and then when I sang it on that last number, you didn't do anything, so...just thought I'd point that out..." Then after they performed a few more songs, someone in the audience yelled out "New York!" which got some tepid applause. Tweedy responded with "TOO LATE!" So then someone yelled out "Hoboken!" and almost everyone booed, and Ira just grinned and said "I should've kept my mouth shut."