{"id":176,"date":"2010-04-20T20:23:22","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T20:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/?p=176"},"modified":"2010-04-22T16:02:30","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T16:02:30","slug":"velvety-yo-la-tengo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/2010-04\/velvety-yo-la-tengo\/","title":{"rendered":"Velvety Yo La Tengo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"My<\/a><\/p>\n

For the first time ever, Yo La Tengo came to town last night, playing a sold out show at Velvet Jones in Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Their excuse for not playing here previously?\u00a0 They claimed to have vowed not to play here until Jeff Bridges won an Oscar.\u00a0 And voila, here they were!<\/p>\n

Let me just say right up front:\u00a0 middle age becomes this band.\u00a0 The last times we had caught them were in the Bay Area (Berkeley Square and GAMH circa ’93-’95), and there was angst and piss aplenty.\u00a0 It’s nice to see what 15-17 years will do for a band (and, one assumes, the marriage of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley).<\/p>\n

At the Velvet, YLT played like they were making up for lost time and opportunities in Santa Barbara.\u00a0 They were in great spirits, particularly an ebullient Ira, and very generous throughout, providing at least twice as many songs as they performed at Coachella over the weekend (reduced sets being part of our complaint with festivals).\u00a0 Their set covered a good amount of their discography, and stylistically spanned across a wide range of 20th and 21st century American music.\u00a0 Everything from doo wop, to thrash rock, to three-part harmonies, to folky madness was exhibited.\u00a0 And, prodded by the great crowd, they came back for three stellar encores (hello, calling Mr. Yorke), including great renditions of Fakebook’s Emulsified<\/em> and Griselda,<\/em> a rousing cover of\u00a0Adam and the Ants’ Ant Music<\/em>, and a beautiful ballad by John Cale (Hanky Panky Nohow<\/em> off of his classic “Paris 1919” album, which also includes the plaintive Andalucia <\/em>covered by YLT on “Fakebook”).<\/p>\n

The musicianship was marvelous, with Ira alternately wielding fedback and deftly plucked guitar, Georgia reaching high with her mallets to bring the beat back, and James providing adroit bass and guitar touches (and the occasional\u00a0“Indie Barry White” delivery).<\/p>\n

It was all there, and great beyond expectation.\u00a0 They’ve got it, and they gave it all to us.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, it won’t take another 20 years to get them back to Santa Barbara.\u00a0 We’ll hope that Mr. Bridges wins another deserved Oscar next year so the band’s again required, per their own standard, to again play Santa Barbara.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time ever, Yo La Tengo came to town last night, playing a sold out show at Velvet Jones in Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Their excuse for not playing here previously?\u00a0 They claimed to have vowed not to play here until Jeff Bridges won an Oscar.\u00a0 And voila, here they were! Let me just say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}