Yo La Tengo - The Grotto, New Haven, Connecticut, October 23, 1987
The always-awesome Yo La Tengo is out there promoting This Stupid World in 2023, playing what some are calling the band's best shows ever to adoring crowds. It wasn't always that way! Not that this performance — another fantastic offering from the Alex Butterfield Archives — isn't killer. It's just that not many people at The Grotto seem to really know much about Yo La Tengo. You can almost count the hands clapping. "How ya doin', New Haven!!!" Ira Kaplan shouts, rock-god-style, at the outset, to a thoroughly muted response.
The band (then consisting of Ira, Georgia and bassist Stephan Wichnewski) had just released their second LP New Wave Hot Dogs and much of the set is devoted to ferocious versions of tunes from that (kinda underrated?) album. There are also plenty of covers, of course — a vicious "A House Is Not A Motel," "For The Turnstiles," Antietam's "Orange Song" and a ripping "Rip This Joint" to close things out. Also some rarities, like an Ira-sung "White Rabbit," which would show up about a decade later as "Demons" in a Georgia-led recording for the I Shot Andy Warhol OST.
And then YLT oblige a request for Ride The Tiger's "Cone Of Silence" — a request made by our taper himself. This stupid world might not have been quite ready for Yo La Tengo in 1987, but they were getting somewhere.
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