An utterly surprising set, featuring former Rolling Thunder Revue multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield on violin (“the boy with the Botticelli face” — Allen Ginsberg) and all the quiet folkiness and obscure covers that’ve been conspicously scarce for much of the run. Nearly every selection felt like a forgotten (or newly remembered) treat, from the Camp Yo La Tengo “Tom Courtenay” to a random-ass T-Bone Burrnett cover to Georgia’s beautiful, beautiful, beautiful take on the Blonde on Blonde outtake “I’ll Keep It With Mine.”
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
30 December 2005
*(Hanukah, night 6)*
The Volcano Suns and Raisin opened.
Mix disc by Ira.
(entire set with David Mansfield on violin)
Night Falls on Hoboken
Tom Courtenay (quiet version)
Did I Tell You?
Griselda (Peter Stampfel)
Pablo and Andrea
Black Hole (The Urinals)
Something To Do
We’re An American Band
I’m Coming Home (T-Bone Burnett)
Alyda
From Black to Blue
How Much I’ve Lied (Gram Parsons)
Little Eyes
For Shame of Doing Wrong (Richard Thompson)
Sugarcube
I Heard You Looking
I’ll Keep It With Mine (Bob Dylan)
*(encore)*
Autumn Sweater
Can’t Make It On Time (The Ramones, with Volcano Suns guitarist)
Definitely Clean (Steve Wynn, with Volcano Suns guitarist and Peter Prescott on vocals)
I wasn’t there, but thanks to the help of Christopher, Neil, OneLouderNYC, and Ira’s diary, I think I’ve reconstructed the setlist for last night’s show. Looks like fun, with a nice seasonal clump in the middle. (No “I Live in the Springtime,” though.) All corrections welcome, of course.
Also, yesterday, the New York Times featured Laura Sinagra’s very nice review of night 3. (Registration logins here.)
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
29 December 2005
*(Hanukah, night 5)*
Half-Japanese and Louis C.K. opened.
Mix disc by Pee-Wee’s Playhouse designer Gary Panter
Beautiful World (Devo)
From A Motel 6
Today Is The Day
Detouring America With Horns
Season of the Shark
Winter A Go Go
Autumn Sweater
The Summer
Car Gears Stick in Reverse, Daring Driver Crosses Town Backwards (with Jad Fair)
Principal Punishes Students with Bad Impressions and Tired Jokes (with Jad Fair)
Little Eyes
Five-Cornered Drone (Crispy Duck)
Tom Courtenay
Heroin (Velvet Underground, Roky Erickson arrangement)
*(encore)* with David Johansen on vocals
After the Fox (Burt Bacharach)
Out in the Streets (Jeff Berry and Ellie Greenwich)
Doin’ All Right (The Fugs, with Bruce Bennett on guitar)
Chinese Rocks (Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers)
Who Are the Mystery Girls? (New York Dolls).
BoingBoing points to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s announcement of a settlement with Sony over their heinous digital rights management systems. I’m sure DRM isn’t dead, but it’s a step in the right direction. According to the BBC, the anti-privacy lawsuit filed by Texas is still pending.
(No Yo La Tengo for me last night. I stayed home and cleaned my room. True story. Scroll down for reports from the first four nights, or click on the new YLT link over thar on the right, and watch this space for reports on the Friday and Saturday shows. And email me if you have a Thursday setlist.)
I imagine twilight landings are sublime pretty much anywhere, but I especially enjoy coming down over sprawl. I love how literally one can see civilization’s grid wired across the landscape.
The following photos weren’t taken with my cell camera, though there’s a similar limitation. Since I was shooting through the plane window, I couldn’t use a flash. Given the speed of the plane, and the bending of the lights, the results are nothing like the magisterial order of semi-urban suburbia (what I was hoping to get), but are nifty nonetheless.
(Thanks to Ariella for the posting title…)
It’s just a wonder to me that I can see Tortoise and the Sun Ra Arkestra on consecutive nights, on a tiny-ass stage, playing both by themselves and with Yo La Tengo. The Arkestra was in fine form, digging deep and weird, and coming up with “I am Gonna Unmask The Batman,” a cut from the cosmos-spanning Singles anthology that YLT has drawn from repeatedly.
Like the Arkestra, YLT’s set was, by turns, sloppy, inspired, and joyous. Highlights included a gorgeous “Beach Party Tonight” opener, a half-dozen impromptu Stax-on-Saturn horn arrangements, an overdriven “Big Day Coming” (with trombone blowing a mutated Dixieland counterpoint to the two-note riff), and a full-charge segue into an even-more-overdriven “Little Honda.”
I’m, er, skipping tomorrow. So, if anybody goes and wants to pass a aetlist along, I’d be happy to post it.
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
28 December 2005
*(Hanukah, night 4)*
The Sun Ra Arkestra and Jon Glaser and Jon Benjamin opened.
Mix disc by WFMU‘s Small Change.
(“Beach Party” through “Double Dare,” and “Clumsy Grandmother” through “Nuclear War” with members of the Arkestra.)
Beach Party Tonight
Georgia vs. Yo La Tengo
Don’t Have To Be So Sad
Out the Window
Double Dare
Tears Are In Your Eyes
Stockholm Syndrome
Walking Away From You
Can’t Forget
Clumsy Grandmother Serves Delicious Dessert by Mistake
Deeper Into Movies
Big Day Coming (fast) >
Little Honda (Beach Boys)
Nuclear War (Sun Ra)
*(encore)*
I Dream of Jeannie (Hypnolovewheel, with Stephen Hunking on guitar and vocals)
(I Live For) Cars and Girls (The Dictators, with Todd Abramson of Maxwell’s on vocals)
Dreaming (Sun Ra)
Hallo bloglings & Sunsquahed readers —
(please to be scrolling down for all the latest YLT dorkery)
This here is my equivalent of a Hanukah present to all my friends.
It’s a 600 MB stuffed file of about 170 mp3s that I think are the bee’s knees — old favorites, new favorites, outtakes, hot jamz, shuffle-play weirdness, Brazilian fun, sound collages, and some field recordings of frogs and Chicago radio preachers thrown in for good measure. I’m sure some stuff will be quite familiar, but hopefully you’ll find abundant new goodies. Enjoy!
(And don’t forget to click “save-as” if you download so it doesn’t come up as a jarbled text file…)
Splendid night in Hoboken, and kinda the reason I keep going back to Maxwell’s. Seeing Tortoise on a tiny stage was a treat, and their additions to Yo La Tengo’s set were exactly what guest appearances should be. Switching off on various basses, guitars, and drums, Messrs. Hendon, McCombs, and Parker strengthened the songs in all kinds of subliminal, unpredictable ways, from McCombs and Parker’s spine-like guitar/bass groove underneath “Autumn Sweater,” to McCombs’ one-chord drone below “Last Days of Disco,” to McCombs putting down his guitar altogether after seemingly deciding that “Barnaby, Hardly Working” was working just fine with the core YLT trio (and it was), to Herndon returning to help guide the song through a magnificent coda.
The appearance of Patti Smith Group mastermind and legendary rock scribe Lenny Kaye (on his 59th birthday, no less) was also glorious. The curator of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era — the punk-era equivalent of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music — led by example, running the Tengos through a handful of, er, nuggets with passion and graceful humor. Happy birthday, dude.
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
27 December 2005
*(Hanukah, night 3)*
Tortoise and Demitri Martin opened.
Mix disc by El-P.
(First three-quarters of the set with various members of Tortoise.)
Bad Politics
Green Arrow
Everyday
False Alarm
Autumn Sweater
The Last Days of Disco
Barnaby, Hardly Working
How To Make A Baby Elephant Float
Madeline (false start)
Sugarcube
Artificial Heart
Decora
Tom Courtenay
I Heard You Looking
*(encore)* with Lenny Kaye on guitar and vocals
Night Time (Strangeloves)
No Time Like The Right Time (Blues Project)
Shock Me (Lenny Kaye)
Pushin’ Too Hard (The Seeds)
Moulty (The Barbarians)
Theme from Beverly Hills Teens
Literally nobody I’ve ever mentioned it to has copped to remembering Beverly Hills Teens. It aired (sometimes?) weekday mornings during the half-hour before I boarded the bus to school when I was a kid, when — if I’d finished breakfast and gotten my coat on — my mother would occasionally let me watch cartoons. It was an inane piece of shit, a kiddie forerunner to 90210, and — besides the neon/turquoise color scheme — I remember literally nothing of it. I can’t recall a single character nor recount a single plot (though, I’m sure I could guess and probably be right).
But, for some reason, the melody of the show’s theme lodged itself firmly in my brain, and has stayed there for twenty years (albeit with mostly erroneous words). Hearing it now — because, as we know, everything is available on the internets — returns me somewhat bizarrely to my childhood skin. The melody, I’m happy to report, is exactly as I’ve been humming it for the past two decades, and it still evokes exactly the same exotic images of California that I had as a kid: a land foreign and mysteriously bright.
Word-up to the faceless Hollywood songwriter who penned this.
An effervescent Boxing Day at Maxwell’s. First half of the set was particularly graceful. Precise “Pez Drop” opener (the “bah bah bah bah”s were still in my head waiting for the PATH), purdy-like “Our Way To Fall,” neatly swinging “Tony Orlando,” and delicious Acetone action/two-note riffage on “Big Day Coming.”
Ira is also posting about the run on YoLaTengo.com.
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
26 December 2005
*(Hanukah, night 2)*
PG Six and Todd Barry opened.
Mix disc by Georgia.
Evanescent Psychic Pez Drop
Our Way To Fall
We’re An American Band
Today is the Day (fast version)
Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)
Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House
Season of the Shark
Little Eyes
The Empty Pool
She’s My Best Friend (Velvet Underground)
Big Day Coming (fast version)
Drug Test
Tom Courtenay
Blue Line Swinger
Flowers of the Forest (Fairport Convention, no drums, with Patrick Gubler and Bob Banister (sp?) of PG Six)
*(encore)*
Jeepster (T-Rex, with PG & BB, Todd Barry on drums)
Time (Richard Hell) (with PG & BB)
Burning For You (Blue Oyster Cult)
(thanks to Sam for plugging the holes in night 1, all help appreciated…)
Back from vacation just in time for Yo La Tengo’s annual Hanukah run at Maxwell’s. I’ll be hitting a bunch of these in the coming week. Setlists to follow when I feel like it. Tonight’s show was a lot of fun, with a little bit of opening night glitchery, and definitely a bitchin’ way to spend Christmas.
Personal highlights included a quiet/shimmering “Crying of Lot G,” a blistering false ending on “Styles of the Times,” and the lovely acoustic campfire “Big Day Coming” (the third different arrangement of the song).
Also, the band is going to be selling limited run CD-R mixes each night of the run, $10 at the merch table. Tonight’s was made by brilliant Motherless Brooklyn/Fortress of Solitude novelist Jonathan Lethem. I bought it, and will post a tracklist when I can decipher the liner card.
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
25 December 2005
*(Hanukah, night 1)*
The Mad Scene (with Georgia on guitar) & Eugene Mirman opened.
Band in costume for show:
Ira – Santa
Georgia – Robin (as in “Batman and…”)
James – Hasidic Jew (James McJew?)
Holiday (Madonna)
Eight Day Weekend (“Seven Day Weekend” by Doc Pomus, covered by Gary “U.S.” Bonds)
Little Eyes
The Crying of Lot G
Double Dare
Shaker
Stockholm Syndrome
Lewis
Don’t Have To Be So Sad (James couldn’t get the synth beat going right, so the guitar tech dude played drums)
Sudden Organ
Autumn Sweater
Styles of the Times
Decora
Deeper Into Movies (Hamish Kilgour from Mad Scene on snare)
I Heard You Looking (Kilgour on Acetone)
*(encore)*
Big Day Coming (acoustic, Georgia lead)
Je T’Aime (Serge Gainsbourg, with Kilgour and Lisa Siegel on vocals)
My Little Corner of the World (Ira’s mother on vocals)
Dear bloglings:
I’m going on vacation. I’ll be back 12/23. See you then.
If you’re bored, might I recommend obsessively clicking the Comrades & Daily Repeck links o’er there on the right column (like I do when I should be working)?
The milk is on the second shelf on the door, and the chocolate syrup is just below that. Clean up when you’re done, or Mayur’ll be pissed.
Love,
Jesse.
While it’s not quite as delicious as last year’s rumor that El Zimmy was gonna guest judge on American Idol, the prospect of the following has me hugely intrigued (to say the least):
Bob Dylan shocked his fans 40 years ago by embracing the electric guitar. Now he’s stunning a few more by embracing another technological innovation: satellite radio. The singer has signed on to serve as host of a weekly one-hour program on XM Satellite Radio, spinning records and offering commentary on new music and other topics, starting in March. The famously reclusive 64-year-old performer said in a statement yesterday that “a lot of my own songs have been played on the radio, but this is the first time I’ve ever been on the other side of the mike.”
“Other topics,” hmm? After doing a Victoria’s Secret ad, I don’t think anybody can possibly spin a Dylan radio show as “shocking.” It kinda makes too much sense. Unless, that is, he starts hawking underwear on the air (and even that would be in the fine tradition of King Biscuit Flour and the like…)
If heads can’t figure out how to get this on BitTorrent, I might have to actually subscribe to XM!
1. Would you like to be invited to a wedding?
2. Walk, human!
3. Rock and roll.
4. Midwood sunset.
The website for David Byrne’s always-hep Luaka Bop Records reports that Brazilian psychedelic legends Os Mutantes are considering a reunion:
We are working on an expanded Os Mutantes record. The band members have been discussing possibly getting back together for a few shows in 2006, hence we are also talking to people who might be excited as all hell to put on an Os Mutantes show. Are you one of those people? Would you mind if we use your basement/rec room for a show or two? When’s the last time you entertained 1,500 people down there? Yeah. You’re gonna have to move the coffee table.
Hot diggity! This is one of the few reunion shows I’d flip over. I’ll post an mp3 sometime.
I sometimes use the phrase “body massage!” to express happiness. This is why.
Mike has adapted the “go!” to various situations, ala Inspector Gadget — e.g. “iPod, gooooo!” “cell phone, gooooo!”
“In A Cold-Ass Fashion” – Beck
from Jabberjaw: Good to the Last Drop (1994)
released by Mammoth Records (buy)
“Crushed Bones” – Why?
from Elephant Eyelash (2005)
released by Anticon (buy)
(both files expire on December 15th)
In honor of my friend Joey and coming across Bulworth on my chum’s television-box (I’d never seen it) and having already planned to post a Why? track and getting thrown “In A Cold-Ass Fashion” on the ol’ shuffle shuffle this evening… well, what reasons could I have for not celebrating a decade of dorky white boyz rapping?
I’d forgotten about “In A Cold-Ass Fashion,” a Mellow Gold-era b-side from some random compilation called Jabberjaw: Good to the Last Drop. In some ways, this is quintessential mid-’90s Beck: total absurdity (“smoke a pack of whiskey with Jesus Christ / I’ve got options / I’ve got cop shows / I get nauseous and the sweat is day-glo”), but the beats and the bassline that comes in at around the 2:10 mark and the robot voice at the end and the way the banjo breakdown drops in all kind of feel like a throw-forward to me — a prototype for the dancefloor sexx music from Midnite Vultures and Guero. And, besides, it’s where Beck declares himself the original gluesniffa. Take that, ya Houston robotrippers!
Elephant Eyelash by Why? — a rapper from the Anticon collective (2) — is easily one of my top 10 faves from this year. When I first heard Why?’s work with cLOUDDEAD, for some reason, little bits of his melodies reminded of some Beck’s acoustic tunes, not his rap stuff at all. There’s a real playfulness in the way the song is organized, which I love. As it progresses and builds from section to section, these modular scenes surface (“the rain comes down in late July” is particularly vivid), each defined by its own combination of rhyme, melodic turn, and arrangement. On one hand, “Crused Bones” not a song you can sit down and play with an acoustic guitar, but it’s definitely a song you could play with a band (3), though — as near as I can tell — the type of song that almost nobody would actually think to play with a band. Nearly all of Elephant Eyelash blows my domepiece as such.
(1) Holy shit, the redesign of beck.com is annoying. They used to have a great, functional, searchable discography. Now, the site’s all purdy & shit, with exclusive web tunes (cool, I guess), but — dammit — all I want is information.
(2) Man, there’s a lotta exploring to be done with these guys.
(3) Still kicking myself for skipping out when Why? & his comrades descended on Brooklyn a few months back.
1. Starlight on Union Square.
2. I wonder what the SC stands for.
3. Ghost trees on the Lower East Side.
“Postal Workers Canceling Stamps at the University of Ghana Post Office” – field recording by Jim Koetting (File expires on December 14th.) .
This is a remarkable field recording that I first encountered in Rod Knight’s world music class at Oberlin College. “Postal Workers Canceling Stamps at the University of Ghana Post Office” is a pretty well spread track, and I imagine it gets taught in many/most world music courses, but there’s no harm in spreading it further. The content is exactly what the title implies, yet it still surprises and floors me just as much as it did the first time I heard it. From the textbook we used:
The men making the sounds you hear are workers canceling letters at the University of Ghana post office… This is what you are hearing: the two men seated at the table slap a letter rhythmically several times to bring it from the file to the position on the table where it is to be canceled (this act makes a light-sounding thud). The marker is inked one or more times (the lowest, most resonant sound you hear) and then stamped on the letter (the high-pitched mechanized sound you hear). As you can hear, the rhythm produced is not a simple one-two-three (bring forward the letter — ink the marker — stamp the letter). Rather, musical sensitivities take over. Several slaps on the letter bring it down, repeated thuds of the marker in the ink pad and multiple cancellations are done for rhythmic interest… The other sounds you hear have nothing to do with the work itself. A third man has a pair of scissors that he clicks — not cutting anything, but adding to the rhythm…. the fourth worker simply whistles along. He and any of the other three workers who care to join him whistle popular tunes or church music that kits the rhythm.
(Blast, I see that WFMU recently blogged this track, too. Fuckers. This has been in my backlog since October.)
o Reportedly, Bob Dylan recently gave Neil Young a copy of this box set as a gift. Gotta git my hands on that one.
o Get yourself a Team Zissou identification card.
o Earlier this year, the Coen brothers and writer Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) created “sound plays” for the Theater For the New Ear. Scored by longtime Coens’ collaborator Carter Burwell, the one-acts starred (among others) John Goodman, Philip Seymour-Hoffman, Steve Buscemi, and Meryl Streep. Burwell has posted some excerpts on his website. They’re ridiculously tantalizing, if a bit cryptic without context. Hopefully, they’ll see full release in the future. (Particularly bitchin’ and self-contained is Kaufman’s Computer Love.)
o JEFF GOLDBLUM IS WATCHING YOU POOP! (Told you.)
I guest-blogged again over at LiveMusicBlog.com. Could the story be over? Is it an end or the beginning?
I sometimes have a hard time expressing how important Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea remains to me. (Sometimes.) Without getting all obsessive, some links of interest:
o Some “new” old Jeff Mangum tapes have been posted online. They’re very much in the vein of the other pre-Avery Island projects that have been circulating. “How did Aeroplane happen?” people ask. The answer — as these tapes prove — is very slowly.
o Over at John Darnielle’s Last Plane to Jakarta, there’s a very thoughtful discussion about the ethics of circulating old tapes and demos, with a few chimings from the head Mountain Goat himself. Given the totally inspiring Elephant 6 enthusiasm for exchanging music, I don’t think it’s wrong to be circulating these. For that matter, I think to call them “demos” is to sell them short. Just because they were never issued on CD makes them no less important. In fact, it makes them more quintessentially E6.
o This week also sees the publication of Kim Cooper’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea volume in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series. I read it over the weekend (thanks, Wendy!), and enjoyed it quite a bit, though it’s more of a play-by-play than an attempt to channel or explain the album’s beauty. More of an emphasis on the latter, I think, would have served the former. But, hey, it’s added invaluably to the way I understand Aeroplane without robbing it of any of its mystery. In fact, I think I’ll listen to it right now.
o In the fall of 2002, Jeff Mangum hosted nine radio shows for New Jersey’s WFMU. The only way to grok their mind-bending diversity is to peep the playlists. Or, better yet, check ’em out yourself. A spoiler of sorts: episode 1 begins with one of Jeff’s rare post-Aeroplane creations, a spectacularly weird Korena Pang sound collage, “To Animate The Body With The Cocoon of the Her Unconscious Christ The Mother Removes Her Death Body of 1910 Only To Be Reborn In The Same Spirit as a School of Blow Fish Believing in the Coming of the Milk Christ.”
o In early 2001, Jeff and Elf Power’s Laura Carter played a show at a random-ass bar in New Zealand, where they were camping and visiting (and recording) with the Tall Dwarfs. It remains Jeff’s only public performance of his own songs since 1998. It took, I think, two years for the news of the show to reach the States, and another two years for the tape to circulate. It’s an ultra-crispy soundboard, and — for reasons Jeff explains — an ultra-powerful performance. Perhaps a bit unforgiving, it’s well worth hearing any Aeroplane fan. Check it.
1:02 am Asian markets provide respite.
1:04 am Jealous of silicon, neon broods behind grated shop windows.
1:24 am When society’s dominant sensual paradigm finally switches from sight to smell and cell phone manufacturers are forced to provide odor messaging, this picture will (retroactively) make a lot more sense. Flowers trapped under bodega awnings are just the best.
3:05 am On the First Avenue subway platform, MTA employees cluster, seemingly unmindful of what appears to be a human body several feet away from them…
3:06 am…or, perhaps, they put the dummy there to fuck with people (though that doesn’t explain the fishing twine) (nor the rectangular legs) who are waiting patiently to go home and crawl into bed.
“Playmate” – Pearls Before Swine (file expires on December 8th)
from One Nation Underground (1967)
reissued by ESP-Disk (buy)
Watched a fair bit of Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home Dylan documentary last month. In it, Dylan talks about how musicians began imitating him, doing “some kind of jingly-jangly thing” (I think that was his phrase). He doesn’t name names, but — clearly — Pearls Before Swine’s “Playmate” falls under this heading. It’s got a jangly thing going, alrighty: the still-fresh organ-driven buoyancy of Blonde on Blonde backed by a rhythmic hook lifted directly from “Desolation Row.” And vocalist Tom Rapp sounds more like Dylan than Dylan (at least on this cut) (1). It’s pretty alright, as far as these Nuggets-style derivatives go. As Dylan himself (most likely) knew, there really was a peculiar emotional effect created by that particular combination of carnival organ and electric guitar that probably couldn’t be described as anything but jangly. There’s material on One Nation Underground — recently rereleased by ESP-Disk — that’s far more original (and, er, “influential”), but “Playmate” is certainly a curiosity for the cabinet.
(1) Rapp grew up nearby Dylan in Minnesota. If you believe what you read on the internets (and why shouldn’t you?), Rapp once beat l’il Bobby Zimmerman in a songwriting contest (finishing 2nd to Zimmy’s 6th). No shit? Maybe when they’re singing they’re both doing imitations of the Iron Range’s regional ghosts?
For those of you who didn’t end up here via my post at LiveMusicBlog.com: I made the first of what will hopefully be occasional guest entries over thar, a rant on the aforementoned.
For those of you who did end up here via that post: hallo!
Either way, Brewster’s post at archive.org restoring access to many Grateful Dead recordings seems to conclude this misfit-brand news cycle, though there’s plenty left to the story, though.
