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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Freewheelin' and fabulous

On Thursday night, Chris and I saw an amazing Yo La Tengo show at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was my fourth (fifth?) time seeing them live and definitely the best. It was an almost-acoustic set they called The Freewheeling Yo La Tengo Tour. The premise is quite simple: Play an intimate sold-out show to a bunch of drooling indie kids and between every song bring up the house lights halfway to chew the fat.

Yo La Tengo accepted song requests (and did a nice job of fulfilling most) and answered questions that were shouted out. Chris was egging me on to yell: "Why wasn't your fourth album double live?!?" Although an obscure reference from their "Sugarcube" video, it would've been pretty funny to ask.

I almost gathered the chutzpah to do it, but instead I shouted "What was your craziest onstage moment?"...thinking that would garner a longer response and a funny story (rather than a deep sigh and a shake of the head - sorry Chris). The lead singer Ira answered with a long, meandering story about how a friend of the band thought it would be a good idea to join them onstage for a song...naked.

Singing naked wasn't a dare; it was more like just something to do. The band gave in and let him. But once he was up there, shyness set in and he turned his back to the audience only to be staring at Georgia, the female drummer. Maybe not the most insane thing to happen to a band on stage, but a pretty humorous story. Maybe they'll have another crazy story after tonight's live performance on Saturday Night Live.

They then floated right into this...

Yo La Tengo: "Pablo and Andrea" (mp3)

Oh yeah, and I should also mention they played a gorgeous rendition of one of my favorites:

Yo La Tengo: "Deeper into Movies" (mp3)

My cameraphone photo is terrible. See better photos from closer fans with better cameras on Flickr.