my interview with Yo La Tengo

i did this interview last year but Yo La Tengo has been brought up to me a few times this week soooo i'm re-releasing it to the public. 

     Yo La Tengo, one of the most well-known and respected names in the underground alternative rock world, graced San Diego with their presence this past Sunday, and were kind enough to give an interview to The Vista. 

     The Freewheeling Yo La Tengo Tour brought the band to San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, at which they held an exclusive engagement that brought together fans of all ages. Children, teenagers, middle-agers and elders sat in anticipation as they waited to see such an influential group take the stage. And once they took the stage, the music took hold of every single person in the room. All sat in silence as Georgia Hubley’s soothing voice covered the room like a blanket, and the guitar skills of Ira Kaplan kept all eyes centered on the strings.

     Standouts of the show, besides the very funny comments of the band members, were crowd-pleasers “Autumn Sweater” and “You Can Have It All,” of course, as well as “Stockholm Syndrome,” “Alyda” and the purely instrumental songs that induced chills.

     What makes this tour unique, according to Yo La Tengo’s bassist James McNew, is that “not a single thing is planned, it’s very spontaneous.”

     The way the Freewheeling tour works is unlike anything most young adults have experienced in the concert scene of today. The band welcomes questions from their audience and tells stories about how they came up with song titles or about projects they have worked on (think VH1’s Storytellers) and then choose the next song they play according to what fits with the discussion that was just held. There is no set list, no agenda; just a show that, as McNew puts it, consists of the band “flying by the seats of [their] collective pants.”

     Yo La Tengo has been around since 1984, the year their first album came out, though the three current members, husband and wife Kaplan (guitar/vocals) and Hubley (drums/vocals), and McNew (bass/vocals), have been together since 1991.  The chemistry between the threesome is intriguing. It’s a perfect combination of talent, emotion, and comedy; it’s no surprise their music is so affecting and has become a staple of varying generations.

     Yo La Tengo doesn’t just put out records either. They do movie scores too. Their compositions can be heard in “Shortbus,” “Old Joy,” and “Junebug” among many many others, as well as the surrealist undersea documentary shorts of French filmmaker Jean Painleve. 

     The band will soon be kicking off their eight-day set of Hanukkah shows in their hometown of Hoboken, New Jersey.  They started doing the Hanukkah shows back in 2001, very soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.

     “It was a weird time to be an entertainer in New York,” said McNew. “People were kinda going out and getting together again.”

     This year’s Hanukkah commemoration will be the fifth in the last seven years. The shows consist of an opening act, which the band books on their own, a little bit of comedy and then a set by Yo La Tengo.  The shows are very intimate and fun and proceeds benefit charities yet to be named.

     Here are some fun facts about Yo La Tengo, many of which were shared with the audience at Sunday’s show. The band portrayed the Velvet Underground in ‘96’s “I Shot Andy Warhol.”  They got a lot of their song titles from messed up sentences that Kaplan and Hubley would come across when proofreading soft porn books (see “Mushroom Cloud of Hiss” off the album “May I Sing With Me” and ponder what it was supposed to be). Kaplan’s favorite color is green while McNew’s is orange. Their song arrangements are not set in stone, which makes them all favorites to perform. McNew is “bummed out by the second season of ‘Heroes’” and considers Nashville to be the “unsung hero of American cities.” Their favorite venue is Maxwell’s in Hoboken. Kaplan has been referred to as the Jewish Jimi Hendrix.

     Yo La Tengo’s most recent album, “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass” came out in September of 2006 and is the springboard for the ongoing Freewheeling Yo La Tengo Tour. If you already have that, check out “Yo La Tengo Is Murdering the Classics,” which is accompanied by an “order at your own risk” warning from the band, or “The Sounds of the Sounds of Science,” which is made up of the scores of those aforementioned undersea shorts.

     Yo La Tengo is a band that has already made great waves in the music world, and will go down in history for their bravery in experimentation and their true talent. All 500 people that were able to attend the show at the Museum of Contemporary Art were very lucky, and if you are ever presented with the opportunity to see Yo La Tengo, do not let it pass you by.