Maron is good at drawing people out. I think he has a hard job mediating the informational needs of the spectrum of listeners he has. Some of us know **** and some don't. And a lot of times he doesn't. He is going to have to make it work. Terry Gross won't live forever, Howard Stern won't, and I really miss Tom Ashbrook who was fired from NPR recently. Good interviewers are rare. Anyway I had to check in because I think he has a bigger musical issue than interviewing. The main axe I have to grind is that he tries to troll people about steely dan, a lot. "What about S.D.? You really like them? Aren't they too slick?" and he combines this with the most breathless obsequious treatment of musicians who are at best OK. And he loves to simmer over hard rock dominion fanboy percolations. Tell me if I'm wrong but I don't think he has ever had Paul Westerberg on.
I don't think he has, Tommy Stinson has been on but not Paul. I like Maron a lot and I think he can be a tremendous interviewer, but it's hit or miss and happens to be miss more often when musicians are involved. When he's on though, he draws out some incredible conversations and sometimes his lack of preparation actually helps, they can talk about anything and avoid the standard PR fluff topics. But he does have his weird focuses and annoyances ("who were your guys?"), for sure. I was disappointed in the Ira interview as well, but I thought that was a terrible mismatch from the start.
Oh man, I love Ira. From the interview linked below with Bob Odenkirk: KAPLAN: We played Albuquerque, one of our most memorable shows, in 19… Oh god, it might be 1988. We were on our first cross country trip. From the moment we walked in the door, we were fighting with the people who worked there about really dumb ****. We had this thing we started doing which was really important in our development, I thought, where if we thought we were really not being respected, we would do this song by Love called “A House is Not a Motel.” It ended with a guitar solo that we frequently used as a bridge to our first noisy song called “The Evil That Men Do.” And we started doing this thing occasionally, if we were pushed too far, we would play basically noise for as long as we felt like it. This night, Georgia came back from being mad at me and I said, “Alright, **** the set list, this is what we’re going to do.” For the first three minutes, it’s just a very relatively gentle folk rock song, so there was no sign of what was about to happen for a good five minutes. And then all hell broke loose, and we would not stop playing feedback. It was essentially an empty club, but people were trying to find a way to unplug the band and we were fending them off. The promoter came up to me while we were playing, apologizing for everything. It was just nuts. And when it ended, there were one or two people who thought it was fantastic, but mostly people were incensed and screaming at us. At some point I’d gone outside, probably lightheaded from the altitude and the pretty heavy emotional experience we’d just gone through and somebody, who I don’t even think was there, he must have been listening, spoke really slowly and thoughtfully and he goes, “That was the best thing I’ve ever heard. You are as good as the Eagles. You are better than Ace Frehley.” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/m...tengo-talk-rioting-breaking-bads-bob-odenkirk
Of course the most disappointing part of that interview being that we still have five months until the next season of Better Call Saul.
One of the features that does keep me coming back to Pitchfork is there 5-10-15-20, where different artists talk about formative albums throughout their lives. All three members contribute to a great one: Yo La Tengo on the Music That Made Them Indie-Rock Heroes | Pitchfork
I have a ticket for the upcoming Glasgow show on the way... but realised after ordering it that I already have tickets for the Natalie Prass show on the same night.
Just found "Genius & Love" on vinyl and since this was the only YLT record I was missing I gladly picked it up
does that include "Murdering the Classics," "They Shoot, We Score," "Sounds Of Silence," "Adventureland," etc. or just the main albums? I didn't know Genius & Love was available on vinyl.
That's for sure. I'm trying to decide how much of a completist I need to be with this band. I love them, but there's so much material...
I just listened to this. How on earth could they do two versions of a monster like this? I mean.. for what it is, it's actually good but two versions? Really?? These two versions are either radically different or totally the same. Amazingly this side of my second hand copy shows some marks so whoever owned this first, clearly played it quite a bit. Apparently this person had some stamina, real dedication, "Genius & Love" indeed I'd love to invite this person over to listen to it again.
I'm looking forward to hearing it. The preview fragments that I've heard sound fantastic. Thanks for starting this thread. Learning about the group's current activities prompted me to plan a trip to Budapest to see them in May. The venue is on a barge anchored in the Danube.
I have the regular black one. It's a little noisy, at least the first of the two LPs is. I can cope with it but I can see how it would be a bother, and from what I've understood about some other recent Matador releases like the Painful reissue, this isn't an unheard-of issue. Would be curious to hear from anyone else, especially if they have the orange edition. I don't know what the consensus was but I thought the Stuff Like That There vinyl was quite nice.
Thank you for the info, i''ll probably get the EU pressing, on average they tend to be of a higher quality, unless it was pressed by the same factory for all markets. i'm not a fan of colored vinyl, i'll buy the black one.
I'm really enjoying the new album. It gets better with each listen and is definitely not something to listen to on shuffle.
7,6 in Pitchfork: "Though it can feel a bit too calm and sedate, the album also reflects the group’s greatest and most instantly recognizable strengths. Their sound might suggest that they’re wound up in nostalgia, but that’s never been the case: They are able to tap into a performative naïvete. Whether through their coy reluctance to talk about themselves or their legacy, their self-mocking covers of a record store’s full of 45s, an unironic innocence distinguishes Yo La Tengo from their peers or predecessors, and it’s in full display on the album’s first quarter."
Did you listen to the John Cale one where Maron just goes on and on about the Velvets until Cale demands they talk about his new album? Ha.
