Note: This essay records a handful of brief encounters I had over the years with the members of Yo La Tengo, one of the great American indie bands and, for me personally, one of the most enduring. The moments themselves were small—concert lobbies, a quick conversation after a show, a late-night lounge in New York—but taken together they trace a kind of informal pilgrimage across three cities: Osaka, Nagoya, and New York.
I have always believed that one of the quiet pleasures of music culture lies in these peripheral moments that occur around the shows themselves. The concert may be the main event, but the surrounding details—the room layout, the crowd energy, the odd logistical mishaps, the late-night drift after the final encore—often linger just as vividly in memory. In that sense this piece is less a formal profile of Yo La Tengo than a record of how a band can intersect with the ordinary movement of a listener’s life over time.
Readers familiar with the band will recognize references to particular songs, shows, and traditions, including the annual Hanukkah run at the Bowery Ballroom. Those unfamiliar with them need only know that Yo La Tengo have spent decades building a reputation not only for adventurous music but also for an unusually warm relationship with their audience. The line that Georgia Hubley offered in the Bowery lounge—“I wasn’t laughing at you, I was laughing at us”—captures that spirit better than anything I could add.
As with many pieces on this site, the aim here is simply to record a moment in the long conversation between artists and listeners before the details fade.
Epigraph:
“There’s a girl with cherry chapstick on / and nothing more.”
— Yo La Tengo, “Cherry Chapstick”
Yo La Tengo are one of my five favorite bands of all time. This is not a ranking I arrive at lightly. I have spent a great deal of my life listening to music, following bands around cities and continents when possible, and forming what might politely be called attachments. Yo La Tengo are in that upper tier for me — a band whose records have followed me through several distinct eras of life and whose live shows I have tried to see whenever geography allowed.
Over the years I ended up meeting the band four separate times, in three cities on two continents. None of the encounters were long or particularly dramatic. But taken together they form a small personal arc that seems worth recording.
I. Osaka, 2013
The first time was in Osaka in 2013 at the old Club Quattro Osaka.
This was the old Quattro, not the newer one near Osaka Station. The room had a peculiar layout: two staircases rising on either side and a central standing area with a railing. It wasn’t quite a mosh pit but could probably have doubled as one in an emergency.
The room was packed that night.
I had seen Yo La Tengo a couple of times before by then, but this particular show was one of those nights where everything clicked. They played “Blue Line Swinger,” the electric version of “Big Day Coming,” and then about halfway through the set they launched into “Sugarcube.”
“Sugarcube” might be their most perfect single. Personally I have always had a soft spot for “Cherry Chapstick,” but “Sugarcube” is the one that detonates a room. When that opening riff landed the whole place lifted.
After the show my wife Sachie, my son Hugh, and I ended up in the lobby area where the band were greeting people. Hugh was ten years old at the time and wearing a bright orange Oregon State University T-shirt I had picked up at an IB World Student Conference a few years earlier. We asked if he could take a picture with Ira Kaplan and Ira kindly obliged. Hugh stood there grinning next to him in that oversized orange shirt while the rest of us hovered nearby.
The photo still exists on my Facebook page somewhere.
That was encounter number one.
II. Nagoya, November 2018
The second encounter came five years later in Nagoya.
This was during a strange and transitional period of my life. I had recently resigned from my position at Ritsumeikan and was in what might generously be called a wandering phase. I was writing a lot, experimenting with live-streaming shows on Periscope, and generally drifting around Japan following whatever cultural events caught my attention.
Yo La Tengo were playing at the Nagoya Quattro on a weekday, so I took a train up and stayed in a hotel right next to the venue.
The show itself was excellent, but the real drama of the evening involved the security guard.
I had started filming parts of the set for Periscope, which in those days felt like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately the security guard — a Western guy — did not share this opinion. For the better part of the show we played a kind of duck-duck-goose game around the room. Every time he approached I would lower the phone. Every time he disappeared I would start filming again.
Eventually he gave up.
By the encore I filmed the whole thing.
I also managed to get a couple of photographs of Ira standing above the cables on the stage in a wash of purple fluorescent light that made him look vaguely angelic. They are still some of my favorite concert photos.
After the show I ended up speaking briefly with the band again. I mentioned that I would be coming to New York in a few weeks for their Hanukkah shows at the Bowery Ballroom.
Then I made what I now recognize was a somewhat ambitious request.
I asked if they might consider playing “Shy Dog,” a very deep cut from the early days.
Georgia Hubley laughed.
Fair enough.
So I tried again.
“Well,” I said, “if not that, maybe play something special in New York.”
Ira smiled slightly and said, in a tone that suggested nothing and everything at once:
“Oh, we’ll play something.”
That was the end of encounter number two.
III. New York, December 2018
A few weeks later I arrived in New York.
The first minor complication of the trip occurred before the show even began. For reasons that now escape me I had convinced myself that I needed a printed ticket. So I went to a Kinko’s somewhere near the Westin on 47th Street and printed one out.
It turned out the phone ticket would have worked perfectly well.
So I effectively paid twice.
The show itself cost forty-five dollars, which felt like a bargain.
Night one featured an opening set by the Sun Ra Arkestra. At one point Yo La Tengo joined them on stage and the whole thing became a swirling cosmic jam session. Afterward I wandered outside to smoke and gave a homeless guy two cigarettes and a light. He asked me for cash but I told him honestly that I didn’t have much on me and needed it for drinks inside.
Later that night I met a man who had written a history of LSD. He handed me a copy of the book, but it was a massive hardcover and too heavy to carry around. I ended up leaving it on the back stairs of the venue.
The next day I moved hotels to the citizenM New York Bowery, which sits practically next door to the Bowery Ballroom.
Night two opened with a small comedy trio — two women and a guy — who did an unexpectedly funny set involving various hats as props. After that Jon Langford performed, and once again Yo La Tengo joined him on stage.
The set that followed was eclectic and generous. Georgia sang a lot, which the audience clearly loved — songs like “Autumn Sweater” always seem to produce a particular kind of hush in a room.
They played “Cherry Chapstick,” which made me happy, along with “Blue Line Swinger” and a variety of other favorites.
No “Shy Dog,” though.
The encore leaned more toward the Langford material.
Good songs, but not quite the same thing.
IV. The Lounge
After the show I drifted down to the lounge area beneath the venue.
A beautiful woman was playing vinyl records — mostly old jazz LPs — pulling them out of crates one by one. There is something hypnotic about watching someone work through a stack of records late at night. She seemed completely absorbed in the process.
Eventually I saw Georgia again. Ira was nearby talking with other fans.
I reminded her about the Nagoya conversation.
“You laughed when I asked about ‘Shy Dog,’” I said.
She nodded immediately. She remembered.
Then she said something I have thought about many times since.
“I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said. “I was laughing at us.”
I loved that answer and told her so.
We talked a little longer. I mentioned that on this trip I was also seeing The Hold Steady and Jay Som, but that the main reason I had come east was to see Phosphorescent.
She said she didn’t know them, which surprised me.
Then she asked my favorite band.
“Luna,” I said.
She laughed again — in a friendly way this time — and told me they had actually considered inviting Luna to join the Hanukkah run but it hadn’t worked out.
“They all know Dean and Britta,” she added.
Small world.
After a while I said goodbye, lingered for a few minutes listening to the jazz records, and then stepped out into the night.
Within two minutes I had found myself at Mama’s Ruin, a place that would later appear in my Thin Man New York story.
But that is another tale entirely.
Dedication
For Ira, Georgia and James.