Alienation and Despair - Faves

A Bald Head?!?!

     georgia: hey terry, can you take ira out of these monitors
              back here.
     ira: i can be funnier, georgia. i'll just work on it. 

 hiya,
 for all in the bay area, ira & georgia will be doing a special free
 show at the bottom of the hill in san francisco, july 24th.  Yo 
 La Tengo will also be appearing with Codeine & Jad Fair in Olympia
 soon (date anyone?)

 tim
 tim@vestek.com



 from : Ted James <tedj@oakhill-csic.sps.mot.com> 

 I got the Pier Platter 7" catalog yesterday.  After making a huge order for
 myself, I saw a few things that you might want.

 Yo La Tengo
 -For the Turnstiles (Coyote Test Pressing) $30
 -Dreams (Chem IMB-No pic sleeve comp) $12

 Call them at 201-795-4785.

 Later,

 Ted



 The following interview with James McNew appeared in a great
 new zine, YOU COULD DO WORSE, its premier issue, Summer
 1994, and is reprinted with the generous permission of Rob
 Galgano.  I highly recommend a subscription..... write to Rob
 Galgano, You Could Do Worse, PO Box 74647, Cedar Rapids,
 IA 52407.  $3 per issue or $7.50 for a year's worth (3 issues). 
 You can email Rob at YCDWorse@aol.com.

 Rob mentioned in his opening remarks that Yo La Tengo all
 probably have great record collections.  I think that
 especially applies to James McNew... I recently picked something
 up based on a t-shirt he wore and alas, another great find.

 JM: James McNew

 YCDW: Rob Galgano

 JM:       Last night, since it was April Fool's Day, we opened our
 set with "ANT MUSIC", that Adam and the Ants song.  We
 borrowed the opening band's drum kit,so Ira and Georgia both
 played drums.  I played guitar and sang.  It was a pretty
 interesting way to start the show.
 
 YCDW:     I guess it's something you don't do very often.
 
 JM:       Rarely.  We've done it on stage before, though.

 YCDW:     I remember that you covered Dreaming for the
 Freedom of Choice album.  There were very few songs on that
 album that were worthwhile - yours, the Connells' (I Got You)
 and Big Dipper's(Homosapien)

 JM:       I thought that the Superchunk song (Girl U Want) was
 the only one that had any feet to it. As much as I support the
 cause and respect the people,e that put it together, I think there
 were some choice songs that were snubbed.  How nobody could
 have done Turning Japanese is beyond me, and that Iggy Pop
 song, sorry, it doesn't work for me.When we're out on tour, we're
 always shopping for records. There's always a bunch of new
 wave records I'm looking for that I can never find - any early
 Rough Trade singles from Kleenex, Lilliput, the Terraplanes.

 YCDW:     I was in a record store called Bill's recently.  It's on
 the north side of Dallas.  It's supermarket-sized with tons of vinyl,
 but it's really expensive.  It's a weird place - everything is
 unmarked and pricing is done by Bill.  I picked up 15 pieces of
 vinyl and it came to $300!  I couldn't believe it!  Bill said it was all
 out-of-print and imports.  Normally, I'm a bottom feeder, and I
 refuse to pay those prices.[Rob goes on to say he ended up
 getting 3 albums for $60.Jeez.]

 JM:       I'm totally with you.  I wait and wait and wait.  I'm the
 least enjoyable guy to go record shopping with.  The most I've
 paid for a record recently was for one that I've been looking for
 since 1987.  I finally found it last month in Florida.  It was by a
 band called the Silver Apples.  They were a duo from New York -
 just a drummer and a guy who played synthesizers and
 homemade electronics.  They had all sorts of weird little songs
 that were just unbelievably great.  The made two albums that
 came out in 1971 and 1972.  I found the second record, Contact,
 which is much better than the first one.  It was $10.  I have such
 specific wants at this point, I just look for certain things and then
 I'm done.  I only buy records when I'm on tour.   

 YCDW:     What new bands do you like?

 JM:       Well, there's Sleepyhead, from New York,
 Versus... they have a bunch of singles that are pretty good, and
 the EP was good, too, but they had a demo tape before that - it
 was the best thing I've ever heard.  I like the Damnbuilders, too,
 we played with them last summer in Berlin.  There's also the
 Grifters, the' Faith Healers, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282,
 House of Large Sizes - I did their first ever interview.  I used to
 have a fanzine called And Suddenly.  I only put out four issues. 
 Back to the bands... Refrigerator, they're a band at the top of
 their game; Kicking Giant, Crevice, from Vancouver; Shadowy
 Men On A Shadowy Planet.  At the top of the list is a german
 band called 18th Dye.  We toured with them 2-1/2 weeks last
 year.  We're trying to hook them up with Ajax over here.  They
 sound like Mission of Burma, Versus and Seam.

 YCDW:     How hong have you been in the band and how did
 you get recruited?

 JM:  About four years ago, I was playing bass in Christmas.  I
 joined them in 1989.  We recorded the album Vortex during the
 summer of 1990.  (It just came out recently on Matador.)   We
 got dropped by I.R.S. in late 1990.  Then we went on hiatus
 because we were so fed up and depressed that we just stopped
 playing for a long time.  We only played 15 times in 2-1/2 years,
 and even then, only in Boston, New York and Providence.

 Yo La Tengo played in Providence, where we were living, and
 came over to Liz (Cox)'s house for dinner on the night of their
 show  They had a lot of shows booked and they didn't know if
 their bass player at the time was going to work out, so I half-
 jokingly said, "Well, I'm not doing anything.  I'll be happy to quit
 my job."   They took me seriously, so I filled in temporarily.  Iowa
 City was one of my first ever out-of-town shows.  Before
 Christmas, I was a roadie for Happy Flowers.

 YCDW:     I sa them at the Rat in 1989.  I met them after the
 show and one of them gave me a Wet-Nap.  I still have it
 somewhere.  What are they doing now?

 JM:       John (Mr. Horribly Charred Infant) lives in Atlanta. 
 He's currently unemployed, but playing guitar and writing songs
 in a really good band called Meat.  Charlie (Mr. Anus) is married
 and teaching economics at a college in Maryland.
 
 YCDW:     So they've finally gone straight?

 JM:       Well, they always were.  John was a graduate
 student in mathematics at University of Virginia, where we all
 went to school.

 YCDW:     You printed that awful anti-Semitic letter in the CD
 booklet.  Why?

 JM:       It really freaked us out when we got it.  It came to
 Ira and Georgia's house  At that time, we didn't have a PO box
 for fan mail, so their address was on every record.  We had been
 thinking about getting

 As far as printing it, it seemed like the only thing we could do to
 say "you can't really hurt us."  We printed it in its entirety. 
 Nobody signed it and there was no return address.  We can't
 even tell from the handwriting if the author was male or female. 
 It doesn't bother us as much, now that it's printed.

 YCDW:     Have you done any video clips?

 JM:       We've done four altogether:  one for "The
 Summer," from Fakebook, one for "Upside Down," one for "Big
 Day Coming" and one "From A Motel 6."  All of them have been
 shown, but that one was very popular on the Box.
 
 YCDW:     They're the ones that charge for videos.  I don't
 see why anyone would want to pay to see a video.

 JM:       You'd be surprised how many times your parents
 would call to ask for one.

 YCDW:     Do you do any side projects at all?

 JM:       Under the name Dump, I've recorded a 7" single
 for 18 Wheeler Records.  There's also a CD on a Dutch label
 called Brinkman.  Another 7" is coming out on 18 Wheeler this
 summer.  It's all solo 4-track recordings.

 YCDW:     How does Yo La Tengo write songs?

 JM:       Our songs come about in a bunch of different
 ways.  Someone will come in with an idea and we'll dissect it and
 work on it.  We'll jam, for lack of a better word, until something
 happens.  Then we'll desperately try to remember what we were
 doing.  We played "From A Motel 6" every way we could think of
 and gradually it became "I Was The Fool Beside You For Too
 Long," then that turned into "Shaker," which came out on a single
 last year.  So we'll see what comes out of "Shaker."

 YCDW:     So the songs mutate, but you leave a version
 behind?

 JM:       Like cicadas.  They sort of recycle themselves.
 
 YCDW:     My favorite song on Painful was "Superstar
 WAtcher."  How did that song come about?

 JM:       That's actually an excerpt from the 25-minute
 version.  It's something we did at practice one day.  I decided to
 play organ, Ira came up with a loop on the guitar and Georgia
 played that Fripp-sounding guitar.  The background conversation
 was a tape Ira had from an interview he had done a long time
 ago.  "Sudden Organ" is another song taken from a long version. 
 Originally it was 12 minutes long.

 YCDW:     Did you spend a lot of time in the studio recording
 Painful?
 
 JM:       Not too much, because we were really well-
 prepared.  It took about a week and a half of actual recording
 time in the studio.  The mixing was spread out over a long period
 of time.  We recorded in November of 1992 and we finished
 mixing in April of 1993.

 YCDW:     How did you get the songs to stay fresh in a live
 setting, since you've been playing these songs for such a long
 time?

 JM:       Actually, we've only been playing these songs
 since our show in New York the night before the New Music
 Seminar in mid-July of last year.

 YCDW:     Will any more singles be released from Painful?

 JM:       We're planning to record another EP in
 September.  We don't know what songs will be on it, but it will
 probably be all new.
 
 YCDW:     What's next?

 JM:       Going home, staying inside for a while, watching
 some TV - just time away from a moving vehicle.


 p01400@psilink.com
 glenns@panix.com
 CIS:73424.2630


 Brief Discography
 

 1985          7"                  The River of Water
 1986          Album               Ride The Tiger
 1986          Comp                Luxory Condos Coming to Your 
                                   Neighborhood Soon
 1987          7"                  Asparagus Song
 1987          Album               New Wave Hot Dogs
 1989          Album               President Yo La Tengo
 1989          Comp                Human Music         
 1990          Album               Fakebook
 1990          7"                  Speeding Motorcycle 
 1990          EP                  Here Comes My Baby
 1991          Album               That is Yo La Tengo
 1991          7"                  Walking Away From You 
 1991          Soundtrack          Matter of Degrees 
 1992          Album               May I Sing With Me
 199X          Comp                Slanged
 199X          Comp                Love Is Like A Poke In
                                   The Eye With A Stick
 199X          Comp                Mountain Stage Vol 3
 199X          Comp                Ruta 66
 1992          EP                  Upside-Down
 199X          Comp                Freedom of Choice
 1992          Comp                Delicacy and Nourishment
                                   Ernest Noyes Brookings Vol 3 
 1993          Soundtrack          True Fiction Pictures    
 1993          EP                  Shaker
 1993          7"                  Shaker (diff version)
 1993          Album               Painful
 1993          7"                  Big Day Coming
 1994          CD Single           From A Motel 6
 1994          Double 7"           This is Art

 Videography
 
     19XX       Mouthful of Sweat
     19XX       The Summer
  1/28/94       Conan O'Brien       NYC
     1992       Upside Down
     1993       Big Day Coming 
     1993       From a Motel 6 
   

It's so very lonely; you're light years from home.
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This page modified on June 2, 1996