Yo La Tengo

Autumn Sweaters and Nuclear War   
06:26am 11/10/2003
 
mood: tired
music: Yo La Tengo - Summer Sun

Saw Yo La Tengo tonight at the Warsaw with Bunny. Aislers Set and the Sun Ra Arkestra opened. The Arkestra was amazing!!

Yo La Tengo, as always, delighted me to no end, and if they were still playing, i would still be there grinning like an idiot and spazzing out, as is my wont. But all good things must end and this was no exception, although it did last until 1:40am.

their setlist went something like this:
Beach Party Tonight
Don't Have To Be Sad
From a Motel 6 (extra long and w/ many gtr freakouts!)
Nothing But You and Me
Autumn Sweater (MBV remix version)
Sugarcube
Decora
Tiny Birds
Little Eyes
False Alarm
I Heard You Looking (still the best 7 1/2 minutes you can spend engaged in something besides sex -- although if you combine the two, it's even better!)
Nuclear War (w/ the Sun Ra Arkestra!)
----
Tom Courtenay
something i didn't recognize

there were a couple other songs played that I wasn't familiar with or couldn't remember off the top of my head (I didn't write it all down tonight...I know you are shocked)

Show was damn fine. Something about YLT that just amazes me every time. So much noise for just 3 people...but it's a joyful noise. I went with Bunny from work and she bought me a couple beers. We tried one of the crazy Polish brews on tap at the Warsaw, but it was pretty much like Budweiser but with a name with an odd combination of vowels and consonants. Beer #2 was a bottle of Heineken..not my favorite, but I won't drink Bud...unless of course it is disguised with a crazy Polish name.

Since I had left the house having digested nothing but a bowl of Matzoh Ball soup and a large mug of coffee, I got a bit peckish, so between the Sun Ra Arkestra and Yo La Tengo sets, while Bunny bought the second round of brews, I got myself a plate of pierogies and kielbasa. As of 3am, I could still taste it. That was after the drive to Manhattan and the coffee avec doughnut.

Tonight I think I discovered an answer to the question as to why I'm single. Aside from having too many female friends (if a guy is hanging out with a woman, I think people tend to think that those two people are together), I think the way I spastically "dance" and play air everything (guitar, bass drums, even keyboards) puts me into a category perhaps even more frightening than Elaine Bennis' infamous "thumb dance" from Seinfeld.

I was thinking about this during "False Alarm" as I was not only making the feedback sounds of the bass in the beginning, but also playing an invisible organ, which, I think, perhaps crosses some kind of air instrument line. Of course, doing an Ira-style air-guitar freakout during "I Heard You Looking" (all 7 1/2 minutes) surely doesn't make women's loins all over Brooklyn quiver uncontrollably --- "Oh, look Janie, that guy over there is soo hot! He's spazzing out uncontrollably as if having a seizure in rhythm to the music! I find that SO sexy! I must have him. NOW! (Heads turn as crazy Janie pushes and claws people out of her way to reach J-Ro, who does a dance resembling a ragdoll's with limbs flailing to and fro, but ultimately, she just trips on the many orphaned beer bottles that populate the floor, landing face first in a big puddle of mystery liquid (most likely a mixture of all the leftover beer drained out of the aforementioned bottles, mixed with the half-cup of my first beer -- that crazy, Polish Bud-like -- that I somehow spilled on the couple in front of us. I swear it just jumped out of my hand) before even reaching her density, one George McFly). Man, that was funny. Maybe there is a point to me writing things after all. To make me laugh at how weird my brain is.

Oh, and after having listened to the whole thing finally, aftr purchasing it at tonight's show, let me say how much more I like Summer Sun than And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. I still don't think anything will ever rival the trilogy of Painful, Electr-o-pura and I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One.

I didn't really see anyone I know at the show tonight, but Jeff from Aden stood behind me in the bathroom while waiting for a free receptacle (he astutely informed me and the dork in front of me who insisted that there were no free toilets that there are THREE in the men's room at the Warsaw, and henceforth pushed us in there), making it difficult for me to urinate. Kevin Barker (also of Aden fame) was merely standing in the barroom talking to some girls when I saw him.

I think that's it. Unless you want to hear about how the second time I went to the men's room, I had to go into the stall because of my stagefright, and then while i was in there, a lovely young lady who was behind Bunny on the line for the little girls' room opened the door and apologized for intruding, and then apologized again upon my exiting (since I was behind a door, I didn't really care -- e.g. the stagefright thing saving embarrassment).

Oh, and lest i forget the odd man in the donut shop who could have been Rob Rothenberg's long-lost brother (does he have one), who was playing Bjork on a walkman w/ speakers for an audience of four, and telling stories with his eyes closed in a loud, lower-east-side-accented voice about how that song (Army of Me was what I heard) was her first big hit in America, blah blah, and soon he ranted about how the weather in San Francisco at night and how it's warmer for the football fans than for the baseball fans, and he said something about Kansas and then the temperature differences between Manhattan and Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, it made it difficult for me to think of conversational topics. For some reason I was kinda awkward with that tonight.

After coffee, I walked Bunny to her building and then proceeded to walk in circles trying to find my car, until I finally walked the course I had driven to come to my parking space, and magically, my car appeared. I am such a lamester for not remembering where I parked. If everywhere could just have lots like Disney World -- I could park in Goofy lot 2 and then be fine. Just don't ask my brother about my remembering where I parked.