C or D : Yo La Tengo

One thing I love about seeing them live is really getting how crucial James McNew is. A fantastic bass player who's also a fantastic singer, he adds a lot of layers.

Also I feel like they might be at their peak RIGHT NOW, I don't think they've ever been better.

xp
And he knows how to tape a key down on his keyboard to get a drone going. ;)

I've read so many great reviews of this tour, cannot wait for my chance to catch it.

really hope there will be West Coast dates after Europe

Didn't they just play a bunch of West Coast dates? Thought they kicked the tour off in Seattle and worked their way down to LA.

oh damn, you're right, they took them off the calendar, I lose

I have my fingers crossed for at least one Colorado tour date.

coming up on eight (!) years since their last show in Boulder ...

It's kind of a weird tour, two nights each in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Carrboro and Nashville, three nights in LA but only one night each in Chicago, New York, Philly and DC.

Bigger venues?

they're gonna tour more this year for sure--can't wait to see them

xpost - Not really? I mean they played two nights in Neptune Theater which seats 1,000 but only one night at the Metro here in Chicago that seats 1,100. Didn't compare all the others though.

Gonna see them this week, psyched! One bonus of James growing up in Charlottesville, VA, is that they actually come here to play. We are very lucky.

Show I was at (in Asheville) was sold out and PACKED, looks like they've been selling out pretty much everywhere on this tour. Which is awesome but maybe they actually need to be at bigger places, I don't know.

i've never seen them but they're skipping michigan so alas

this is only the first leg--they will likely announce more dates for the summer/fall in the US soon I'd bet.

did the last tour sell out so much like this? anyone remember?

I don't know the answer to that, but I was somewhat (and happily) surprised by the age range of the show I saw. I expected a lot of Gen Xers like me, and we were certainly a good chunk of the audience, but a lot of 20-30-somethings too. I don't even know where people hear Yo La Tengo these days, but the crowd seemed well versed in the material.

really hope there will be West Coast dates after Europe

― obsidian crocogolem (sleeve), Monday, March 13, 2023 10:32 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

And East Coast dates for additional markets

I think the last couple of shows they played in Chicago were sold out. The one next week is so sold out I didn't even see any secondary market tickets available, though I lucked into a pair. Psyched, it's been possibly 10 years since I last saw them.

I don't know the answer to that, but I was somewhat (and happily) surprised by the age range of the show I saw. I expected a lot of Gen Xers like me, and we were certainly a good chunk of the audience, but a lot of 20-30-somethings too. I don't even know where people hear Yo La Tengo these days, but the crowd seemed well versed in the material.

When I saw their free show in Central Park in 2017, that was pretty much the age group around me - not far from college age, if at all.

FWIW, I was in the very front and the highlight was when Ira climbed over the barrier, seemingly towards me. When he jumped down the stage holding his guitar, I got a little concerned - irrationally but given the determination and speed with which he was moving, it just instinctively felt like he was going to come after me or something. Instead, he thrust his guitar into the hands of the guy next to me and told him to play. He stepped away for a bit, and then after about 10 or 15 seconds, he motioned to the guy to pass the guitar to me, i.e. we all get a turn going down the line. It was awesome, and with my guitar experience limited to a classical guitar class I took in school, I was mightily impressed by how much that guitar weighed and how poorly I would do to just hold it for a few hours.

My story is back in 1993 or so they played at my college for a handful of people, and a friend insisted I get my picture taken with Ira:

https://i.imgur.com/GsEuN9L.jpg

He wrote a note on the back of a promo "Painful" sticker:

https://i.imgur.com/PPtoifK.jpg

That's awesome.

Ahh, that's so cool!

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