C or D : Yo La Tengo

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."

feel like we've been in the same room tons of times probably

bet I could find plenty of evidence on ILM confirming this!

I can't remember exactly what he said, but Ira actually had a few moments of playful banter with the crowd at the Chicago show.

The first was a jokey acknowledgment that he didn't say "hello" to the crowd until four or five songs in and the other was in response to some overzealous "woo"ing when they announced they were going to play a song not from the new album. He seemed in good spirits all night.

Yeah at the show I saw they did 3-4 songs from the new album and Ira made a low-key joke about "For those keeping score — and I know some of you are — those were all from the new record." Kind of a nod to their obsessive-geek fans, also implicitly acknowledging that he's an obsessive-geek music guy himself. Or that's how I took it.

At the DC show he stopped "Periodically Double or Triple" before doing the 2nd verse and humorously explained he regretted writing that part because it was too brash, and didn't want to contribute to today's thoughtless climate.

8 minutes of Time Fades Away with Mark Freeman of NNB

Holy shit, I haven't seen him on a stage since early 80s. NNB and YLT kindred guitar drone/noise spirits for sure.

oh wow you saw NNB?

Yes, Red House moreso. I'm old.

how was NNB live? I don't know Red House, was that a later project?

Great dance and trance band with clashing guitars, like Television. By the time I saw NNB Cindy was already playing drums, so they were halfway to the Red House lineup. There is/was a live Red House song on youtube but I'm not finding it at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnSNEymcd_8

Oh they were still NNB at the time, here it is! I know we've had this convo on another thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUSTH7qMwb4

"Slack" rules so hard, yeah we've talked abt this on other threadz

Well, I just learned the bass line for "25 Reasons" this afternoon, so thanks thread!